Ladinos with Ladinos,Indians with Indians

Ladinos with Ladinos,Indians with Indians

Land, Labor, and Regional Ethnic Conflictin the Making of Guatemala

rene reeves

Stanford University PressStanford, California

2006

Stanford University PressStanford, CaliforniaC© 2006 by the Board of Trusteesof the Leland Stanford Junior UniversityAll rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any informationstorage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford UniversityPress.

Printed in the United States of Americaon acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reeves, Rene.Ladinos with Ladinos, Indians with Indians : land, labor, and regional ethnic

conflict in the making of Guatemala / Rene Reeves.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0-8047-5213-3 (cloth : alk. paper)1. Mayas—Guatemala—Ethnic identity. 2. Mayas—Land tenure—Guatemala.

3. Mayas—Guatemala—Politics and government. 4. Ladino (Latin Americanpeople)—Guatemala—Ethnic identity. 5. Ladino (Latin American people)—Landtenure—Guatemala. 6. Ladino (Latin American people)—Guatemala—Politicsand government. 7. Land reform—Guatemala—History. 8. Ethnicconflict—Guatemala—History. 9. Social problems—Guatemala—History.10. Guatemala—Ethnic relations. 11. Guatemala—Social conditions.12. Guatemala—Politics and government. I. Title.

F1435.3.E72R44 2006323.1197′4207281—dc22

2005033241

Original Printing 2006Last figure below indicates year of this printing:15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06Typeset by TechBooks, New Delhi, in 10.5/12 Bembo.

Contents

List of Tables vi

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Rewriting Guatemala’s Nineteenth Century 1

1. The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culahato Independence 17

2. Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conflictin the Formation of a Guatemalan Coffee Zone 39

3. Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of CommercialAgriculture 72

4. Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transitionto Liberal Rule 103

5. From Ladino State to Ladino Nation: The Malformationof Guatemalan National Identity 136

6. Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and Nation–State Formation:Final Reflections on Guatemala’s Nineteenth Century 170

Notes and Abbreviations 195

Index 245

List of Tables

1. Coffee Exports, 1853–1885 5

2. Coffee Production in Guatemala by Department, 1880 and 1887 40

3. Occupations of Indigenous Men by Family Position and MaritalStatus, ca. 1830 86

4. Clandestine Aguardiente Arrests, 1862–1886 120

5. Export Earnings and Gross Government Revenues 164

Acknowledgments

books, like most of life’s projects, reflect the input, assistance, andcooperation of many, many people. I wish to thank some of them here,with the foreknowledge that the failings of my own memory will preventme from giving appropriate recognition to all who deserve it. In San JuanOstuncalco, where I carried out the bulk of the research on which this studyis based, I received a warm reception and much patient indulgence from alarge number of the town’s municipal officials and employees. I would liketo single out Concejal Ramon Dıaz, Alcalde Miguel Perez, and Luisa Perezin the Treasurer’s Office. Many other municipal employees offered crucialassistance and camaraderie during the months of research in Ostuncalco.I especially would like to thank Alejandro Elias, Carlos Monterroso, IbethRalda, Amilcar de Leon, Marco Antonio Tirado, and Eddy Castillo.

In Quezaltenango Francisco Cajas was most helpful and accommodat-ing, maintaining the Archivo Historico de Quezaltenango against difficultodds. Likewise, Ana de Rosario Tobar performed a similar function in thesingularly important Archivo de Gobernacion de Quezaltenango with no ap-preciable budget and in addition to all of her other duties. Rainer Hostnig,formerly regional coordinator for Guatemala and El Salvador of the Insti-tuto para la Cooperacion Internacional de Viena, Austria, and now basedin Peru, pointed me to many key sources on Ostuncalco housed within theArchivo General de Centro America (AGCA), and later he single-handedlypublished virtually the entire documentary record of Mam Quezaltenango.

In Guatemala City a number of archivists, employees, and students ofhistory associated with the AGCA were indispensable to my research.I would like to acknowledge Liseth Jımenez, Ana Carla Ericastillo, andMargarita Garcıa Lopez. Thanks also to Hector Aurelio Concoha Chet of theArchivo Historico Arquidiocesano, and to Arely Mendoza, directora of the

viii Acknowledgments

Biblioteca Cesar Branas. In Antigua the staff of the Centro de InvestigacionesRegionales de Mesoamerica aided my research efforts immeasurably, and Ialways looked forward to visiting them on the journey from Quezaltenangoto Guatemala City and vice versa.

Many North American-based colleagues and friends aided this project. Iowe an intellectual debt to Florencia Mallon, Francisco Scarano, and SteveStern at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which I will never adequatelyrepay. Florencia was beyond generous in helping to see this manuscriptthrough to publication. In one way or another Ana Patricia Alvarenga, NancyAppelbaum, Blenda Feminias, Eileen Findlay, Greg Grandin, Ann Jefferson,Anne MacPherson, Patrick McNamara, and Karin Rosemblatt, influencedthe present shape of this work. Hopefully, from their vantage point, for thebetter. Jorge Gonzalez, Todd Little-Siebold, and Chris Lutz all shared theirknowledge of Guatemala with me, and provided crucial advice and encour-agement when it was needed. Both Greg Grandin and Peter Guardino readdrafts of this manuscript and responded with helpful, constructive ways toimprove it. I hope the results are not disappointing. Finally, my colleagues atFitchburg State College have provided the most welcoming and supportiveenvironment that one could hope for when navigating the complexities ofa new teaching career and continued scholarship.

Over the years I have received research funding from the Latin Americanand Iberian Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison andthe Fulbright-Hays Program at the U.S. Department of Education. A RuthButler Grant from Fitchburg State College provided funding for the maps.

Finally, I wish to thank my family and friends for never forgetting to askabout that nebulous research project that would, someday, reach publication.My parents will be proud, I know, even if it does not make the best-sellerlist. I dedicate this book to Deb and Rowan, the two people whose liveshave been most touched by this project, and without whose spark and careI would have been hard-pressed to finish it.

El Petén

AltaVerapaz lzabal

Zacapa

Jutiapa

Guatemala

Sacatepéquez

Escuintla Santa Rosa

JalapaChiquimula

El Progreso

Baja Verapaz

El Quiché

SanMarcos Totonicapán

Retalhuleu Suchitenéquez

QuezaltenangoSololá

Huehuetenango

Chimaltenango

Huitán

San Vicente Buenabaj

Sibilia San Carlos Sija

Cajolá San Francisco La Unión

OlintepequeSalcajá

QuezaltenangoCantel

Almolonga

Zunil

Santa María de Jesús

El Palmar

Colomba

Coatepeque

Flores Costa Cuca

Génova

La Esperanza

SanMateo

Palestina de los Altos

San Miguel Sigüilá

San Juan Ostuncalco Concepción Chiquirichapa

San Martín Sacatepéquez

San Cristóbal Cabricán

map 1. Department of Quezaltenango, Twentieth-Century Municipalities

San Miguel Ixtahuacán

Zaculeu Huehuetenango

San AntonioSac.

Chiquirichapa

SanMartín

VolcánSiete Orejas

VolcánSanta María

Río

Sigüilá

QuezaltenangoSan Mateo

1200 m

600 m

300 m

150 m

San MiguelTotonicapán

RíoSamalá

San CristóbalTotonicapán

Momostenango

Santa MaríaChiquimula

2100 m

2100 m

Town or City

Areas over 3000 mBorder with Mexico

Approximately10 Kilometers

Retalhuleu

San MartinZapotitlán

Río Samalá

San Felipe

San Pedro Sac.

San Marcos

Cerro Cacaix

Coatepeque

Río Naranjo

Soc

onus

co

Soconusco

Río

Nar

anjo

Pacific Ocean

Cabricán

Huitán

Cajolá

BobósSan Antonio

Sigüilá

Qstuncalco

map 2. The Political District of San Juan Ostuncalco, ca. 1870

Town or CityArea over 3000 mEjido of San Martín(approx. boundary)

Approximately10 Kilometers

Costa CucaXolgüitzChuvá

Río Samalá

Río Ocosito

150 m

Río

Nil

El Asintal

El Zapote

Taltute

Retalhuleu

600 m

300 m

Río Naranjo

CoatepequeLas Marías

Río Río

Río

Río

Nar

anjo

Oco

sito

Talc

anac

Nil

1200 m

2100 mOstuncalco

ChiquirichapaQuezaltenango

San Martín

2100 m

ElPalmar 1200 m

San Felipe

600 m

300 m

150 m

map 3. Quezaltenango’s Costa Cuca, ca. 1850

Introduction: Rewriting Guatemala’sNineteenth Century

on the afternoon of march 8, 1837, several thousand Mayan residentsfrom the Mam towns of Quezaltenango gathered in San Juan Ostuncalco todemonstrate their opposition to newly appointed circuit judge Felix Morales.Initially the protesters amassed in front of the interim circuit courthouse,where they confronted Morales with their grievances. When the apprehen-sive judge attempted to excuse himself from the increasingly heated discus-sion, however, he was pursued into the nearby quarters of two appellate-levelcourt officers—Justice Luıs Cardenas and Fiscal Manuel Rivera—who werevisiting from Quezaltenango. There, despite the intervention of Ostuncalco’sparish priest, the encircling crowd began to taunt and jab all three of the be-leaguered judicial officials. Rivera and Cardenas endeavored to flee the houseon horseback, but in the process the latter was knocked from the saddle. AsRivera raced from the scene, Cardenas fell to the ground, the force of thedescent sending him into unconsciousness. Only the efforts of the parishpriest kept the justice from further harm.

Judge Morales, meanwhile, barricaded himself inside Cardenas’ bedroom,where he remained until his pursuers broke through the door and draggedhim to the town jail. The rebels freed the existing prisoners, and then shack-led the judge. Not content to leave matters there, however, they returned “toinflict additional torture . . . ,” or at least that was how Morales saw it. Ac-cording to the judge, “they removed the shackles and placed me in stocks,where I found myself sentenced to death each time that [my captors] feltcompelled to make such a pronouncement, which occurred every minuteover the course of the entire night. . . .”1 Before the fatal sentence could beimposed, however, Morales was rescued by a force of about forty ladinosfrom San Marcos, who entered Ostuncalco early the following day. After

2 Introduction

much delicate negotiation the rescuers persuaded the rebels to release thecaptive judge into their custody so that he could be tried for his crimesbefore the proper authorities. The rescue force “conducted me with all thedemonstrations of a dangerous criminal to deceive the [crowd],” recalledMorales. “But even so, the tumult accompanied the escort for nearly twoleagues . . . , insulting them, and hurling stones furiously, from which manywere injured.”2

So began the first of a wave of rebellions that swept “more than thirty[Guatemalan] Indian villages in mid-1837,” according to the count of histo-rian Mario Rodrıguez.3 The factors and perceived injustices that precipitatedsuch a widely dispersed eruption of largely spontaneous and uncoordinateduprisings were legion, yet nearly all of them could be traced, in one way oranother, back to the Liberal factions that had dominated Guatemala City andGuatemala’s incipient postcolonial state since the late 1820s. Under the ac-tivist administration of Mariano Galvez in particular, the state implemented aseries of dramatic reforms culminating with the notorious Livingston Codes.Few aspects of Guatemalan society were left untouched by Galvez’s ambitiousreform project. The Livingston Codes, for example, overhauled the entirejudicial system, in the process completely redefining community–state re-lations. Local political autonomy was greatly diminished, and special legalchannels that had privileged indigenous access to the courts were abolished.In addition, Liberal reformers discouraged various outward manifestationsof Mayan culture, among other things eroding the legal foundations of cor-porate landholding—the predominant form among the indigenous majority.They also increased taxes and ceded vast expanses of national territory to for-eign entrepreneurs in the name of fostering economic growth, promotingEuropean immigration, and “modernizing” Guatemala’s purportedly back-ward populace.

Needless to say, the Liberal reform project alienated many in a land wherethe stability and continuity of Spanish colonialism remained a compellingmemory. Although the uprising of Quezaltenango’s Mam communities, cen-tered in San Juan Ostuncalco, was crushed less than three weeks after ithad begun, subsequent rebellions were not so easily dispatched. Those thaterupted to the east of the national capital—Guatemala City—coalesced into asustained and effective popular insurgency in large part because the region’shistory of mestizaje and hacienda formation made cross-ethnic and cross-class alliances much more possible than in the west, where regional ethnicantagonism prevented indigenous–ladino coalition building, and the lack ofwealthy landowners with large, subservient labor forces inhibited the emer-gence of clientelistic, regionally based political and social movements. Thiseastern-based insurgency, which came to be known as the Carrera Revolt,eventually toppled the country’s postcolonial Liberal state, and established

Introduction 3

peasant-turned-rebel leader Rafael Carrera as the kingpin of Guatemalanpolitics. Carrera instructed his allies to countermand the offending Liberalreforms and to restore the colonial-era laws that had protected the indigenousmajority, beginning a thirty-year period of a nearly unbroken Conservative-popular rule.

Fast forward to June 30, 1871. On that day Liberal rebel Justo RufinoBarrios led his troops unopposed into Guatemala City after routing Con-servative forces just west of the capital. His triumphal entrance marked notonly the definitive defeat of Guatemalan Conservatives, but also the startof another round of sweeping Liberal reforms designed to revolutionize thenation’s economy and society. These reforms included the “terrenos baldıos”laws of 1873 and 1874, which instructed Quezaltenango’s jefe polıtico to auc-tion off the department’s fertile coffee lands to the highest bidder whilesimultaneously refusing any special consideration for the large number ofsubsistence cultivators who already used the area.4 They also included theinfamous decrees 170 and 177, which called for privatizing communally heldproperty and press-ganging unindentured rural laborers, respectively.5 Sur-prisingly, this reform project did not break apart on the anvil of popularopposition as occurred in the late 1830s, nor was Barrios, or the Liberalsmore generally, driven from office by widespread, sustained insurrection.Instead, the Liberal Reforma—as it has come to be called—survived to leaveits legacy for the twentieth century.6

But why? What had changed from the 1830s to the 1870s to make arepeat of the Carrera Revolt improbable in the face of such apparently similarreforms? Was it that the Reforma-era Liberal state possessed a much moreformidable and effective repressive apparatus? Or did the same depth andbreadth of popular outrage that had greeted, and ultimately shattered, the firstgeneration of Liberal reforms simply fail to materialize during the 1870s and1880s? Juxtaposing the Carrera Revolt with the Liberal Reforma demandsthat questions such as these be addressed because it points to the potential,rather than the impossibility, for popular mobilization to challenge effectivelyand offer alternatives to elite designs. Simultaneously, such a comparisondenies presumptions of Liberalism’s inevitability. Instead, it challenges us toexplain the Liberal Reforma’s success in light of how popular sectors had sothoroughly defeated the earlier reform project.

Unfortunately, most existing narratives of Guatemala’s nineteenth centuryfail even to recognize, never mind address, the paradox or explanatory prob-lem posed by the Liberal Reforma. Instead, their authors are lulled by theoverwhelming preponderance of Liberal opinion into accepting the Reformaas a resumption of the country’s fated historical trajectory after the aberrantdetour represented by the Carrera Revolt and the Conservative interregnum.For much the same reason, few authors question the fundamental outline of

4 Introduction

Guatemala’s nineteenth century sketched by Liberal intellectuals and ideo-logues. In this scenario, Liberalism was the progressive force that overcamemuch Conservative and popular foot-dragging to lead Guatemala down theroad to North Atlantic-style development. Despite the initial setback of the1830s, Liberal reformers returned with a vengeance in 1871, implementingsweeping changes in land tenure, labor relations, and the state.7

Recent revisionists have correctly disputed the meaning of the Reformafor Guatemala’s social and economic development by challenging Liberalnotions of progress—asking the question “Progress for whom?” for example.And although they have turned conventional wisdom on its head by invertingLiberal depictions of Barrios the hero and Carrera the barbarian, they stillhave not gone far enough in challenging the basic contours of the Liberalparadigm. Principally, revisionists continue to agree with Liberal partisansand commentators of years past who heralded 1871 as the start of a decade ofunprecedented, even revolutionary, change. For good or bad, it seems, theReforma was the watershed event of Guatemala’s postcolonial nineteenthcentury.8

Perhaps the most significant achievement attributed to the Liberal reformsof the 1870s is that they established the necessary conditions for coffee to be-come the produit moteur of the Guatemalan economy. Indeed, in the mindsof many authors, the Reforma is synonymous with a dramatic expansion ofcoffee production. Yet how accurate is such an association? Let us brieflyreview the details of coffee cultivation in Guatemala over the course of thenineteenth century. In particular, let us examine coffee’s emergence as thecountry’s economic mainstay and most important agricultural export.9

Coffee has been cultivated on a consistent basis in Guatemala from at leastthe mid-1830s. This early period is often neglected in terms of the magnitudeof production because the first coffee exports were not recorded until 1853.Apart from the export data compiled by the state’s Customs Administration,there is little additional evidence by which to calculate annual production.Yet the absence of such information in the early years does not mean thatharvests were insignificant. Rather, annual production was directed towardmeeting the growing demand for coffee that existed within the countryitself. Even after Guatemala already had begun to ship coffee abroad, forinstance, its domestic market consumed the lion’s share of El Salvador’s firstexports, which amounted to nearly ninety thousand pounds in 1855–56.10

Still, given the difficulties associated with trying to determine the magnitudeof Guatemalan coffee production prior to 1853, let us turn to the exportfigures that exist for the subsequent decades (see Table 1).

The export data demonstrate that coffee production grew consistentlyfrom the mid-1850s to the mid-1880s. In other words, expansion began wellbefore 1871, and in this sense, the year of the so-called Liberal revolution

Introduction 5

table 1. Coffee Exports, 1853–1885

Year Pounds Increase % Increase

1853 5,0001854 800 −4,200 −84.01855 9,500 8,700 1087.51856 14,500 5,000 52.61857 17,000 2,500 17.21858 10,400 −6,600 −38.81859 47,355 36,955 355.31860 155,689 108,334 228.81861 558,866 403,177 259.01862 1,207,415 648,549 116.01863 2,026,468 819,053 67.81864 1,628,979 −397,489 −19.61865 2,242,872 613,893 37.71866 3,253,064 1,010,192 45.01867 3,465,650 212,586 6.51868 7,505,102 4,039,452 116.61869 7,183,887 −321,215 −4.31870 11,322,982 4,139,095 57.61871 13,121,293 1,798,311 15.91872 13,913,779 792,486 6.01873 15,050,668 1,136,889 8.21874 16,158,381 1,107,713 7.41875 16,195,900 37,519 0.21876 20,740,017 4,544,117 28.11877 20,993,476 253,459 1.21878 20,935,877 −57,599 −0.31879 26,228,213 5,292,336 25.31880 28,976,267 2,748,054 10.51881 26,037,289 −2,938,978 −10.11882 31,327,156 5,289,867 20.31883 40,406,939 9,079,783 29.01884 37,130,600 −3,276,339 −8.11885 52,031,815 14,901,215 40.1

Sources (by year): 1853–56, 1867–74, 1876–83, and 1885, Manuel Rubio Sanchez, Historia delcomercio del cafe en Guatemala. Siglos XVIII–XIX, parts 2 and 3, ASGHG 51 (1978): 124–204,and 52 (1979): 110–127; 1859–1866, Michael J. Biechler, The Coffee Industry of Guatemala: AGeographic Analysis (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1970), 265; 1875 and 1884, DavidJ. McCreery, Coffee and Class: The Structure of Development in Liberal Guatemala, HAHR 56(August 1976): 485. The years 1857–58 were estimated from export earnings reported byIgnacio Solıs, Memorias de la Casa de Moneda de Guatemala y del desarrollo economico del paıs(Guatemala: Ministerio de Finanzas de Guatemala, 1979), 844, and an approximate price perpound of 0.10 pesos calculated from 1856 and 1859. I have highlighted 1870 to indicate the yearthat coffee surpassed cochineal as Guatemala’s single most important export. On this point seeRalph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821-1871(Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 379, 383.

6 Introduction

hardly stands out. Indeed, by 1870, coffee already had become Guatemala’ssingle largest export earner, surpassing even cochineal. Considered in termsof average annual growth rates, coffee exports increased at well over100 percent per year between 1853 and 1871. They grew at little morethan 10 percent per year from 1872 to 1885. Even in absolute rather thanrelative terms, annual growth by the end of the 1860s mirrored figures fromthe late 1870s and 1880s. In both 1868 and 1870, for example, exports grewby over four million pounds, a feat that was not repeated again until 1976and 1979. If not for the military disruption of 1871, and the regime changethat followed, it is quite likely that export figures would have continued togrow by several million pounds annually through the early 1870s as well asbeyond. Thus, when viewed from the standpoint of coffee production, 1871does not appear to have been much of a watershed event at all. The healthof Guatemala’s coffee industry would seem to have been assured well beforeit received all of the supposed benefits that most authors attribute to theLiberal Reforma.

The results of this cursory analysis of coffee export data are surprising be-cause a central pillar of the “Reforma-as-revolution” perspective is the closeassociation of Guatemala’s Liberals with the period of rapid coffee growth.As we just saw, however, coffee export figures indicate that this pillar maybe standing on shaky ground. Could the same be true for other pillars ofthe “Reforma-as-revolution” perspective? Might the dramatic rise in coffeeproduction prior to 1871, for example, suggest a concomitant transforma-tion of indigenous community land into privately held agricultural produc-tion units, and indigenous peasants into seasonal wage laborers? Perhaps theLiberal Revolution of 1871 was not such a revolution after all. Perhaps, ifrevolutionary change did mark Guatemalan society during the nineteenthcentury, and coffee was at the heart of it, “then the Liberal reforms weremore capstone than cornerstone in the process.”11 If such a reinterpretationis accurate, then it was Conservatives, not Liberals, who presided over themost important transformations of the nineteenth century, even if they werenot themselves the intellectual authors, and Guatemala thus joins a host ofother Latin American nations and regions that implemented Liberal-orienteddevelopment policies under the direction of Conservative authorities.12

To assert that Rafael Carrera and his Conservative camarilla, rather thanReforma-era Liberals, dealt a fatal and irreversible blow to the indigenouscommunities of Guatemala’s potential coffee zones is to challenge two inter-related interpretations of the nineteenth century that prevail in the historiog-raphy of Guatemala. First, such an assertion questions the work of revisionists,who, over the past two decades or so, have painted a more favorable portrait ofRafael Carrera. E. Bradford Burns is among the earliest and best-known pro-ponents of Carrera as a champion of the underclass rather than a reactionary

Introduction 7

despot.13 And although it is certainly true that various aspects of Carrera’s ruleneeded to be recuperated from the weight of Liberal mischaracterizations,his purported sympathy for indigenous communities has been overstatedgreatly by Burns and other revisionists. Secondly, my take on Carrera andthe Conservatives diminishes the importance of post-1871 Liberal legisla-tion and disputes the notion that the Reforma constituted the key momentin nineteenth-century Guatemala. Supporters and detractors of GuatemalanLiberalism alike perhaps have been too quick to accept the triumphalism andgreatly inflated claims of the contemporary Liberals themselves.14

Several revisionist works on the period have begun to recognize theneed for a reconsideration of these issues. David McCreery suggested such apossibility as early as 1983 when he wrote that “[r]ural Guatemalan commu-nities did not suffer the sweeping land confiscations that characterized somelate nineteenth-century Liberal regimes.”15 McCreery’s argument, whichhe makes most forcefully in the more recently published Rural Guatemala,is that unlike countries such as El Salvador, where community lands weremore successfully legislated out of existence, in Guatemala many indigenoustowns were able to retain significant landholdings long after the LiberalRevolution.16 Indeed, in some cases Liberal authorities actually helpedcommunities protect and even expand their land base.17 Although this chal-lenge to traditional accounts of the Reforma period differs significantly fromthe one that I pose above, it provides a nuanced and necessary corrective toour understanding of Guatemala’s post-1871 Liberals and the policies theypursued.

J. C. Cambranes is another of the revisionist pioneers whose work hashelped to demystify Guatemala’s nineteenth century. In particular, his 1985study of land tenure during the Conservative years helps put the lie toCarrera’s supposed bias in favor of the indigenous community. As Cambranesnotes, “The Conservative Government permitted agrarian redistribution inGuatemala by fostering the handing over of land to private parties, which bylaw belonged to the peasant communities. . . . [T]he sympathy displayedby the Conservatives . . . with respect to the demands and complaints madeby the rural population, was more apparent than real.”18 By presenting a lessromanticized view of Carrera, Cambranes helps to tear down the great di-vide between Conservative and Liberal rule that marks many other scholarlytreatments of the period.

More recently, emerging in the early 1990s, a new wave of scholarship hasbegun to question seriously the Conservative/Liberal duality present in muchof the existing literature. Examples include Ralph Lee Woodward’s monu-mental social history of the Carrera years, Jorge Gonzalez’ dissertation onCentral America’s ephemeral Los Altos state, McCreery’s Rural Guatemala,and Robert Williams’ comparative investigation of state formation in the

8 Introduction

five Central American republics.19 Two additional works—one by WayneClegern, another by Lowell Gudmundson and Hector Lindo-Fuentes—issueparticularly explicit challenges to the bipolar characterization of Guatemala’sConservative and Liberal regimes.20 The consensus of this new revisionismis that far from marking a 180-degree reversal, some important aspects ofthe Reforma were foreshadowed by trends in Conservative policy. Althoughmost of the aforementioned revisionists still would assert that the Conser-vative period did not see a significant shift toward “Liberal” policies untilafter the death of Carrera in 1865, they acknowledge some telling prior ex-ceptions, particularly in the case of land tenure.21 Woodward, for example,notes that “By the 1860s . . . and sometimes even earlier, we find the Ministryof Gobernacion sometimes siding with Ladino coffee planters encroachingon Indian ejidos.”22 Clegern is even more emphatic: “It is well documentedthat from the early 1850s on the coffee revolution had unleashed massive en-croachments on village lands. . . . It is also documented that in large measureboth Carrera and Cerna turned a deaf ear to village complaints, both havingcommitted themselves to developing the coffee culture.”23 Only Gudmund-son and Lindo-Fuentes, however, go so far as to argue that “the Liberalreforms only formalized a situation long in the making:”

[W]e downgrade the significance of the reform movement of the 1870s as a turningpoint in the economic, political, and social history of Central America, however greatits historiographic and ideological significance for Liberal historians and statesmenthereafter . . . [N]o longer can one seriously argue that coffee and Liberalism weresynonymous in Central America. Coffee allowed for a second coming of Liberalism,to be sure, but proexport policies were anything but a Liberal monopoly.24

As I will demonstrate in this study, the evidence from western Guatemalasupports such a contentious assertion. The main difference between Liberalsand Conservatives, particularly with regard to matters of economic develop-ment, was not fundamental beliefs but strategy. The core group of west-ern Liberals that backed the insurgency of 1868–71 and the subsequentLiberal Reforma was motivated more by regionalist resentment—what JorgeGonzalez calls “situational” Liberalism—than a fundamental ideological oreven programmatic disagreement with Guatemala City Conservatives.25 Thehistoriographical postulates that Conservatives desired to protect Mayan landswhereas Liberals coveted them, and that Conservatives desired to preserve thepeasant status of the Mayan population whereas Liberals pushed for proletari-anization are unfounded. Conservative authorities simply viewed a wholesaleattack on Mayan society to be foolhardy. In contrast to Liberals, whether theyhailed from Guatemala City or the western provinces, Conservatives werenot as inclined to use the state in an activist manner. Instead they presidedover a slower, piecemeal, but ultimately much more effective dismantling of

Introduction 9

indigenous communities from the 1840s onward and with little deviation,at least when it came to Guatemala’s fertile Pacific coast. McCreery’s char-acterization of the Reforma in fact applies equally well to the Conservativeinterlude. The greater a region’s commercial agricultural potential, and themore important the ladino who desired to exploit it, the more likely it wasthat the state would intervene to weaken or dismantle the autonomy of therespective region’s indigenous communities.26

This is not to say that Liberals and Conservatives were indistinguish-able from one another. First and foremost, they deeply disagreed over theCatholic Church. Conservatives generally desired to maintain the Church asa significant cultural and social actor, whereas Liberals generally opposed anyinstitutional competition with the state, hoping to replace important Churchfunctions with an expanded state apparatus. To this disagreement, second-generation Liberals from the western highlands added their regionalist re-sentment of capital-city privileges, which they attributed to conservatism.As manifested by the failed separatist project of the 1830s and 1840s—theshort-lived state of Los Altos—provincial Liberals desired to diminish thepolitical prerogatives of the Guatemala City elite, prerogatives that allowedthe latter to impose monopolies and other trade restrictions that funneledmuch of the region’s commerce through one or two official ports and ahandful of capitalino merchants and their allies.

Lastly, Conservatives and Liberals disagreed over how to conceptualize thecountry’s indigenous majority. In essence, the conflict pitted Conservativecaste-based hierarchalism against Liberal universality. Conservatives held aracialized or biologically deterministic view of society, in which the Mayawere considered a distinct class of citizens because of their supposedly stuntedintellect. Legally speaking, the Conservatives treated indigenous people aswards of the state. Liberals, by contrast, believed that the “Indian problem”was more cultural in nature. Mayan “failure” to conform to “modernity” hadlittle to do with biology, and everything to do their implacable resistance tochange and a stubborn determination to retain their distinctive culture andidentity. Caste hierarchy had to be ended, then, not simply because Liberal-ism demanded formal equality before the law, but also because caste-basedlegal distinctions were viewed as tantamount to helping the indigenous ma-jority resist further ladinization (read: modernization). In sum, Conservativespreferred to usurp indigenous lands and exploit indigenous labor under thelogic of caste hierarchy and paternalism, whereas Liberals used formal, legalequality as a mechanism to do the same. As we shall see, however, if the Lib-eral deployment of equality worked rather well to disenfranchise indigenousland, it raised questions when placed in the context of forced indigenouslabor, and generated contradictions that doomed the process of Guatemalanstate formation.

10 Introduction

Indeed, it is probably a mistake to assume that western Liberals ever con-ceptualized state formation in ethnically inclusive terms. As the leaders ofthe new economic center of the country, they believed that they deserveddirect access to the halls of government. As ladinos, the vehicle by whichthey would cement their hold on that government was the creation of aladino national identity that would unite less privileged sectors of the non-indigenous population against the foil of Mayan backwardness.27 Their goalwas to establish a nation in which western ladinos would be on an equalfooting with capitalino elites, many of them Creoles, and in which the statewould be directly under their control as they dealt with the regional Mayanmajority. Equality, for these provincial Liberals, meant equal access to thestate by all political subjects. And just as was true in British North Americaat the time of the anticolonial struggle there, the category of political subjectdid not include indigenous Americans.

The big difference in Guatemala, however, was that the dividing linebetween indigenous and nonindigenous was cultural rather than biological.Acculturated Maya could be brought into the body politic by “becoming”ladinos. Those who refused, however, to shed their attachment to the com-munity of their birth, to forfeit their corporate land rights, to acquiesce be-fore the influx of ladino outsiders who had been entering the western regionsince the late eighteenth century, could not be citizens in Liberal Guatemala.Ladino nationalism had been forged on the anvil of Mayan resistance to theladino presence in the west, and the antagonism toward indigenous insu-larity on which it was based had only grown stronger over the course ofthe nineteenth century. In 1821 Nicolas Juares, an indigenous resident ofConcepcion Chiquirichapa, expressed the following sentiment, widespreadthroughout the Mam communities west of Quezaltenango: “We do not wanta ladino to enter our area. Ladinos with ladinos, Indians with Indians.”28 By1871, as they readied to take state power, western Ladinos had developed anunderstanding of nationalism that was almost a mirror image: theirs was tobe a Ladino nation, and Mayan peoples would not be allowed to enter unlessthey checked their cultural identities at the border.

This study represents a twofold reevaluation of Guatemala’s nineteenthcentury. At the broadest level it is an attempt to place Guatemala’s rural, subal-tern majority firmly at the center of the country’s national-level political nar-rative by addressing the paradox posed earlier in this introduction. Why didpopular sectors reject and destroy one Liberal reform project only to acqui-esce to another? At a more concrete level, it is a bottom-up examination—inboth social and geopolitical terms—of the meaning and impact of Liberalismand Conservatism in Guatemala. That is, the study’s focus is subaltern, butalso regional. The region is southwestern Guatemala, centered in the political

Introduction 11

district of San Juan Ostuncalco, as I will describe below, but also includingsignificant segments of the K’iche’ highlands and coast in the present-day de-partments of Quezaltenango, Totonicapan, Retalhuleu, and Suchitepequez.Given the ethnic composition and political dynamics of western Guatemaladuring this period, such a regional focus implies that the subaltern subjectsof the study are primarily Mayan. Unfortunately, however, it was not as easyas one might expect to uncover the voices of indigenous Guatemalans, nevermind documents produced by their own hand. After several months “orga-nizing” two of the region’s municipal-cum-district archives, literally with awheelbarrow and shovel, it became clear that ladinos had generated most ofthe documents at the subdepartmental level that had not completely turnedto dust.29 Even documents that contained oral testimony or petitions fromthe Mayan majority usually were written by a ladino scribe in one capacity oranother. Nonetheless, despite the predominance of nonindigenous sources,it was frequently possible to find at least some record of the actions andopinions of indigenous community leaders as a body—the “municipalidady principales del comun,” for example—if not of particular individuals.

Had Mayan-authored documents been more plentiful, it still would notbe inconsistent to include ladino voices in an investigation of nineteenth-century subalterns in western Guatemala. First of all, acknowledging theethnic divide that separated indigenous from nonindigenous, and that con-sistently subordinated the former to the latter, especially in the west, doesnot deny the existence of many poor, disenfranchised, and yes, subaltern,ladinos in the department of Quezaltenango during this time. Even some ofSan Juan Ostuncalco’s nonindigenous political leaders arguably could havebeen considered subaltern from the standpoint of the departmental capitaland regional elites, let alone Guatemala City.30 Secondly, as practitionersof subaltern studies suggest, it is impossible to analyze subaltern groups incomplete isolation from those that are dominant. The very category of sub-altern is fundamentally relational, and cannot be understood without someconsideration of its opposite, or at least, of the interactions and practices thatlink subalterns and elites together in their unequal embrace.31

In sum, then, this work employs a range of documentary perspectives toplumb subaltern experiences in western Guatemala over the course of thenineteenth century. My goal is to demonstrate in concrete ways how statepolicy, both Liberal and Conservative, challenged, limited, and was perceivedby the rural folk who inhabited the region of study. In addition, I have at-tempted to uncover why rural subalterns chose to respond as they did, andhow their responses, whether quotidian or extraordinary—including col-laboration as well as indifference, “everyday forms of resistance” as well asrebellion—in turn challenged and shaped the state. As such, this book joins

12 Introduction

a host of recent works on Mexico, Central America, and the Andes, thattrace the connection between regional—often rural—tensions and move-ments and national-level political developments.32 In addition, like some ofthese works, this study uncovers the linkages between local ethnic identitiesand conflicts and the national-level policies and processes that defined citi-zenship and contributed to the formation of national identity. Not only hasthis focus on the subaltern–state nexus in a specific region allowed me topresent a more accurate picture of what Liberals and Conservatives and theirrespective policies meant for rural dwellers nationwide, but it also has con-vinced me that the existing narrative of Guatemala’s national-level politicsin the nineteenth century is fundamentally flawed. In many ways this bookis an attempt to rewrite that flawed narrative based on the lived experiencesof Mam Quezaltenango’s rural subalterns.

Chapter 1 establishes the cultural and political roots of the Mam region ofthe department of Quezaltenango—roughly equivalent to the nineteenth-century political district of San Juan Ostuncalco—from pre-Columbiantimes to independence. Whether San Juan Ostuncalco’s role as the region’sadministrative seat preceded the Spanish conquest or not, the town acquiredcabecera-status with the founding of a Mercedarian doctrina or missionary dis-trict in the midsixteenth century. The doctrina included the towns of Con-cepcion Chiquirichapa, San Martın Sacatepequez, and its namesake in thehighlands, and Santa Marıa Magdalena and Santa Catalina Retalhuleu on thecoast.33 Aside from the Mercedarian priests themselves, the area was entirelyindigenous. By the end of the colonial period, however, the coastal towns hadwithered away, additional highland municipalities had been formed at SanMiguel Siguila, Santa Cruz Cajola, and San Cristobal Cabrican and ladinopopulations had emerged in Ostuncalco proper, San Antonio Bobos (Sibilia),and additional outlying areas of the parish. Despite the questionable legalityof the ladino presence in Mam Quezaltenango, the Crown granted mu-nicipal status to the nonindigenous settlers of Ostuncalco and San AntonioBobos in 1806. And when the region was established as a political districtfollowing independence, it was Ostuncalco’s ladino municipal officials whoinitially were charged with the administrative responsibilities. Beginning in1837, however, district-level executives and judicial appointees were namedby the corregidores and judges of Quezaltenango.

Geographically, the political district of Ostuncalco comprised well overhalf the territory of the department of Quezaltenango. It stretched from SanCristobal Cabrican in the north, southward through the present-day coffeetowns of Flores Costa Cuca, Genova, El Asintal, and Nuevo San Carlos. In-deed, most of Quezaltenango’s potential coffee land fell within Ostuncalco’sadministrative jurisdiction, in an area that came to be called the Costa Cucasometime around the midnineteenth century. As property, however, almost

Introduction 13

the entirety of the so-called Costa Cuca had been titled by San MartınSacatepequez in 1744. In Chapter 2, I trace the conversion of San Martın’smunicipal territory from indigenous ejido, utilized for subsistence cultivationby sanmartineros as well as the Mam residents of the district’s other towns,to Guatemala’s preeminent coffee zone. In addition, I compare this processwith similar conversions that occurred in several nearby K’iche’ towns ofthe present-day departments of Suchitepequez and Retalhuleu. Contrary toexisting narratives of the nineteenth century, in almost all cases this conver-sion did not occur during the Reforma, but rather under Rafael Carrera.For it was Conservative authorities, including Carrera himself, who from thevery beginning of their rule refused to use state power to guarantee the legalsanctity of corporately held indigenous piedmont and coastal property beforea growing wave of invading ladino agriculturists. Instead, the Conservativestate strong-armed the affected towns into accepting the unwelcome usurpersas tenants. Never mind that these “tenants” rarely paid the rent stipulated bylaw, or that they treated their “rented” parcels as private property with the fullblessing of the state. By the time that Barrios and company retook GuatemalaCity in late June 1871, private—nonindigenous—hands already controlledmuch of the costa del sur’s best coffee land, and coffee plantations proliferated.

What did this transformation of the Costa Cuca mean for Quezaltenango’sMam subsistence farmers? The highland frontier had closed by the end of thecolonial period, and with the expansion of cattle, sugar, and—after 1850—coffee estates, the lowland frontier became increasingly crowded as well.To make matters more difficult, the highland population had been growingapace since the beginning of the eighteenth century. How did aspiring peas-ants find sufficient land as their own numbers enlarged and as commercialagriculture engulfed more of the lowland frontier with each passing decade?The short answer is that they did not. It became more and more difficult forrural households to depend on milpa agriculture as their primary method ofsubsistence. Instead they were forced to rely more heavily on other activitiesto meet their needs, including petty commodity production and trade andworking for a wage.

Chapter 3 explores the expansion of this last alternative—paid labor—inMam Quezaltenango over the course of the nineteenth century, as well asits historic relationship to debt and credit since the days of the colonial repar-timientos, and the ever-constant state policies that attempted to enforce debt-for-labor contracts while simultaneously enlarging the workforce throughextraeconomic coercion. Although it is true, as the existing literature con-tends, that indebted labor and forced work brigades proliferated in the lastdecades of the nineteenth century, this proliferation did not begin with theReforma, at least not in the Costa Cuca. Rather, indebted labor expandedalongside commercial agriculture in the wake of the state-sanctioned assault

14 Introduction

on San Martın’s community property that began in the 1830s and that contin-ued through the 1870s, receiving an additional boost shortly after midcenturywith the establishment of the first coffee plantations. More overtly coercivemethods became commonplace when the Conservative state reintroducedconscripted labor drafts or mandamientos around 1858. Despite bold procla-mations, then, Liberal policies resembled quite closely the coercive measuresof their Conservative predecessors. The only saving grace for the region’sMam population was that the demand for labor on the coastal plantationsremained extreme at a time when neither Conservative nor Liberal authori-ties were able to enforce debt contracts with much consistency. In the face ofintense competition among finqueros to recruit and maintain a workforce, atleast some of those who turned to plantation labor were able to defend theirautonomy despite the openly coercive legal environment, and to demandadditional wages regardless of how much they already owed and to whom.

Besides wage income, many of the households in Mam Quezaltenangorelied on the manufacture and sale of petty commodities as part of a diversifiedsubsistence strategy. Unfortunately, the true extent of these activities cannotbe accurately gauged due to the inadequacies of the existing demographicrecord. Small-scale production and trade escaped the census-taker’s eye, whenit was not simply ignored outright, because it was conducted informally andfrequently by women and children. Thus, for example, although some censusdata indicate that Mayan men produced wool and woolen textiles, we canonly guess from our knowledge of the eighteenth-century repartimientos thatindigenous women probably played an important role as well.

One surprising exception to the dearth of information on women’s eco-nomic endeavors was the production and sale of illegal rum or aguardi-ente clandestino. Officials at all levels documented this activity with rare zealprecisely because of its proscribed status. Chapter 4 elaborates the conflictthat emerged in western Quezaltenango as Conservative officials dedicatedgreater and greater resources to repressing this booming cottage industry.Women suffered most directly from the state’s heavy-handedness becausethey were the primary distillers and vendors, regardless of their ethnicity.Male indigenous leaders, however, also came to harbor a special resentmenttoward the state’s repressive alcohol policy because it authorized increasedladino intervention within their administrative jurisdictions. Hence, whenLiberal rebels announced their intention to abolish all restrictions on theproduction and sale of aguardiente, women as well as men, Maya as well asladino, probably nodded their heads in agreement. This, along with populardisillusionment at Conservative land and labor policies, may help explainwhy Barrios and his companions had such an easy time retaking GuatemalaCity in 1871. There was little popular mobilization on behalf of VicenteCerna, Carrera’s handpicked successor.

Introduction 15

Once in power, Reforma-era Liberals pursued a multipronged strategy forkeeping themselves there. Chapter 5 details how they aggressively cultivatedtheir nonindigenous supporters in the west with land grants and other perks.In addition, they consolidated their power base throughout the country bycelebrating ladinos as the bearers of national progress and, hence, the truecitizens of Guatemala. Although this vision of the nation necessarily ex-cluded the indigenous majority, it still implied a strengthening of the state’sties among a significant minority. Moreover, privileging subaltern ladinosover the Maya further damaged the potential for multiethnic popular oppo-sition. At the same time, post-1870 Liberals were not opposed to eschewingthe inflexibility that had served their ideological forebears so poorly in rela-tions with indigenous communities. Taking a page from Conservative rulers,Barrios and company exhibited a remarkable pragmatism, discarding Liberalprinciples when expedient and doling out a combination of repression andrewards to divide Mayan loyalties while isolating unyielding opponents.

In the end, however, Reforma-era Liberals maintained their hold onpower in no small part because they had taken control of the state at anextremely auspicious moment in the nineteenth century. Conservatives, andRafael Carrera in particular, had restored a degree of legitimacy to GuatemalaCity that was sorely lacking in the immediate postcolonial years. State in-stitutions, including the administrative and military apparatuses, were largerand stronger than ever before, and revenues had just begun a period of un-precedented growth. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Reforma didnot loom in the popular imagination as a harbinger of impending disaster.Most of the disruptive changes in land tenure, labor relations, and local pol-itics already were well underway, facilitated by Conservative authorities overthe preceding three decades. Second-generation Liberals succeeded whereMariano Galvez had failed precisely because they did not introduce radicalreform so much as cement on Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes’ metaphor-ical capstone.

chapter1The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango

from Culaha to Independence

san juan ostuncalco’s parish church rises starkly into the radiant blue skyof Guatemala’s western highlands, an austere reminder of the town’s colonialpast, when it served as the religious center for all the Mam communitiesof the Quezaltenango region. During the nineteenth century, Ostuncalco’sexpansive religious jurisdiction was paralleled by broader administrative andjudicial powers, acquired when the town was designated the cabecera of apolitical district soon after independence. In subsequent decades Ostuncalcowas variously home to an assistant jefe polıtico or corregidor, a circuit courtand judge, a juez preventivo, and a political commissioner. By the end of thenineteenth century, however, the political district had been eliminated, andOstuncalco was a simple municipality once more. Over the course of theearly twentieth century the town’s religious reach also was reduced, althougha small number of neighboring communities remain part of the parish eventoday.

Ostuncalco’s rise and fall from municipality to political district andback again is largely the story of ethnicity and state formation in westernGuatemala during the nineteenth century. Late in the colonial period thetown became a center of ladino settlement in an otherwise indigenous zone,and as such it acquired increased importance in the eyes of the state. Formalrecognition of this fact came in 1806, when colonial authorities grantedOstuncalco’s ladinos permission to form their own municipal council along-side the preexisting indigenous one, established back in the sixteenth century.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the late colonial and early postcolonial states turnedto these new ladino governing councils as they endeavored to expand theirpresence in the overwhelmingly indigenous western hinterlands. Toward theend of the nineteenth century, however, given the proliferation of ladino

18 Chapter 1

municipalities, the ethnic significance of Ostuncalco and other early ladinocenters diminished, and thus the state moved to end their supramunicipalpowers.

In the case of Ostuncalco, however, ladino state formation is only part ofthe story of why the town had inordinate religious and political importancewhen compared to its Mam neighbors. Indeed, Ostuncalco’s prominenceamong the Mam Maya towns of Quezaltenango predated the influx of ladinosin the late colonial era, and may well have been why ladinos chose to migratethere in the first place. To explain Ostuncalco’s historical significance amongthe Mam of western Quezaltenango it is necessary to consider the town’sdevelopment over a period of several centuries. It is to this process that Inow turn.

The Political and Cultural Origins of Mam Quezaltenango

On September 15, 1583, a group of enraged K’iche’ Maya from Quezal-tenango entered fields cultivated by their Mam neighbors in the foothillsof the volcano Siete Orejas de la Culebra. According to witnesses fromSan Juan Ostuncalco, the K’iche’ “harassed and beat up all of the [Mam]Indians that they found. . . .” One poor fellow “named Nicolas, they tossedin the river . . . pushing him in and pulling him out of the water until thepoint of death.” “Not content with this,” the witnesses continued, theK’iche’ rampaged through “the milpas of corn that the [Mam] Indians ofthe town of Ostuncalco and its estancia [Concepcion Chiquirichapa] hadthere . . . cutting down and destroying much of [it]. . . .”1

Representatives of Ostuncalco and its “estancia” Chiquirichapa quicklybrought charges against the K’iche’ of Quezaltenango before Guatemala’sRoyal Audiencia, demanding that “the guilty be punished.” The legal pro-ceedings that resulted are one of the few sketches of conquest-era Mam-K’iche’ relations that are known to exist. Anthropologist Robert Carmackhas called the Mam-authored portion of these proceedings the “TıtuloMam,” and he notes “that it is the only early Mam document extant.”2

Aside from this source, all of our knowledge of the Mam Maya people inthe years before and immediately after the Spanish conquest derives froma handful of testaments and reports produced primarily by the K’iche’ orby Spaniards in the second half of the sixteenth century, and from an evensmaller number of archaeological studies.

Ostuncalco’s leaders began the “Tıtulo Mam” by asserting their historicclaim to the entire Rıo Samala valley, from its headwaters in northernQuezaltenango all the way to the Pacific Ocean.3 This was the land thattheir ancestors had peaceably possessed, and to which they were the rightfulheirs. But “the Achıes [K’iche’] of Utatlan province, being ambitious and

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culaha to Independence 19

inclined to action and warfare . . . , forced us to retreat from the plains [ofQuezaltenango], where we were living, to the high mountains where webuilt fortifications.” As luck would have it, however, “within a few yearsafter we left—ten—God was served by the arrival of the Christians and theadelantado Don Pedro de Alvarado . . . to convert and to reduce this peopleto the faith of Jesus Christ and the royal dominion of the Crown of Spain.”“We and our forbears,” continued Ostuncalco’s leaders, “welcomed them[the Spaniards] and served them without fail as was right, but also in orderto seek [Alvarado’s] help . . . to deliver us from the vexations and harassmentof the Achıes [K’iche’] and to restore our lands that they tyrannically hadtaken from us a short time before.”4

According to the “Tıtulo Mam,” then, when Pedro de Alvarado enteredGuatemala’s western highlands for the first time in early 1524, Mam con-trol over the present-day valley of Quezaltenango had only recently beenchallenged. Ostuncalco’s inhabitants remembered well how the K’iche’ haddriven them from the valley of Quezaltenango by military force. They werequite willing, therefore, to help the Spanish invaders subjugate their historicenemies. “We descended to the plains and with the favor of God, we defeatedthe Achıes and they abandoned our lands with much loss of life . . . and thuswe were left as the quiet and peaceful masters of our [former] territory.” Un-fortunately for the Mam, however, Alvarado quickly betrayed their serviceto him. “The adelantado ordered us to allow the [K’iche’] to populate . . . thelocation where Quezaltenango is now . . . [despite] our having protested thatthese are our lands.” In the end, the Mam acquiesced to the conquistador’sdemands because the K’iche’ were “his Indians, and part of his encomienda,and to avoid any negative repercussions, since he was such a powerful manand lord of the entire land. . . .”5

And so Mam-K’iche’ rivalry took a new form within the framework ofthe Spanish Empire. The two antagonists continued to wrestle over the ter-ritory that lay between them, but now their contest was refereed by Spanishadministrators and judicial officials. The violent events of 1583 were only thelatest round in a series of disputes that had marked the preceding decades ofthe sixteenth century; disputes that arose, according to the Mam leaders ofOstuncalco, because “as the said Achıes are numerous, they have continuedspreading out.” Unfortunately for the Mam, however, the Spanish courts didnot always find their claims of K’iche’ expansionism very compelling. Rul-ing in response to a K’iche’ complaint against Ostuncalco in the mid-1550s,for example, Guatemala’s Audiencia ordered Mam leaders “not to disturb orto bother the Indians or naturales of the said town of Quezaltenango in thepossession of the lands that [they] now have. . . .”6

In Ostuncalco’s petition of September 1583, Mam leaders asserted thatthey had territorial rights to the area where Quezaltenango’s residents had

20 Chapter 1

attacked cultivators from Ostuncalco and Chiquirichapa, and that this hadbeen affirmed in the early 1560s by one of the Audiencia’s own judges, anoidor who they referred to as “doctor Mejıa.” They had called upon the judgeto determine the boundary between their lands and those of the K’iche’after the latter had established a cacao settlement called San Luis on Mamcoastal territory near the town of Santa Catalina Retalhuleu. Doctor Mejıa’ssolution had been to demarcate a boundary line halfway between Ostuncalcoand Quezaltenango, approximately one league east of the former and oneleague west of the latter.7 In the view of Ostuncalco’s leaders this divisionplaced the disputed area where Quezaltenango’s residents had beaten theMam cultivators firmly within their control.8

Quezaltenango’s representative agreed that the line separating K’iche’ ter-ritory from Mam lands to the west had been established earlier in the cen-tury, but he did not hark back to the boundary demarcation that oidor Mejıahad carried out ca. 1561. Rather, he invoked “the Adelantado Pedro deAlvarado as the person who [had] apportioned the land to [the K’iche’]by command and order of His Majesty.” Alvarado had erected “a cross asa signal or marker . . . so that each town would know its boundaries andjurisdiction. . . .” Although he had placed the cross “more than a leaguefrom where Ostuncalco el viejo was located,” apparently the town had sincebeen moved to the east, because now the marker sat on “a line of hills justahead of . . . Ostuncalco el nuevo. . . .” In other words, most of the territorythat separated Quezaltenango from San Juan Ostuncalco in 1583 alreadypertained to the K’iche’. Mam leaders disputed the tale of Alvarado’s cross,claiming that the conquistador had never even visited the area where it wasalleged to have been placed, but apparently the K’iche’ version of events wasmore convincing to royal officials. In early 1584 Guatemala’s Audiencia de-clared that the two leagues separating Quezaltenango from Ostuncalco hadnot been apportioned evenly, but rather that the boundary fell 1.5 leagueswest of the former town, and 0.5 leagues east of the latter.9

The extent to which every detail of the “Tıtulo Mam” accurately reflectshistorical events and circumstances is difficult to determine. The Audien-cia’s 1584 ruling in favor of Quezaltenango certainly casts doubt on Mamrecollections of earlier boundary adjudications, although it may be that thejudges were more concerned with providing for the subsistence needs ofdifferently sized communities than with strictly adhering to legal precedent.With regard to the Spanish conquest, Mam claims that they helped Alvaradodrive the K’iche’ from Quezaltenango cannot be verified given the dearth ofpotentially corroborating archival evidence. There would have been amplereason, however, for Ostuncalco’s leaders to believe that they might gain le-gitimacy in their struggle with the K’iche’ by exaggerating the level of theirinvolvement in the adelantado’s exploits.

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culaha to Independence 21

Leaving aside the minutia of specific boundary disputes and legal battles,what about the larger claims staked out in the “Tıtulo Mam?” Had the Mamonce inhabited much of the Samala river basin? Did the K’iche’ expel themfrom the valley of Quezaltenango? These claims indeed are corroboratedby the documentary and archeological evidence. The K’iche’ themselvesconcede this point in their response to the “Tıtulo Mam.” According toQuezaltenango’s representative,

[I]t is notorious that the [K’iche’] came from Utatlan to settle this land. [I]n heathentimes one group warred with another, and those best able to dispossess and take theland from those who fled . . . were the victors, and they had and possessed [the land]as their own. [T]hus in heathen times [the K’iche’] had a war with [the Mam] inwhich they were made to flee, and [the K’iche’] took and won from them the landby force of arms, and cornered them where they were when the Adelantado DonPedro de Alvarado came with the rest of the Spaniards. . . .10

In addition to this response to the “Tıtulo Mam,” several K’iche’ tıtulosalso recount successive waves of K’iche’ expansion prior to the Spanishconquest.11 Utatlan’s first significant usurpation of Mam territory may havebegun as early as 1300, although it probably did not occur until after 1375.Carmack dates the invasion to the reign of K’ucamatz (1375–1425), whereasanthropologist Adrian Recinos points to the early years of Q’uik’ab’s rule(1425–1475).12 Regardless of the exact date, it is clear that the K’iche’conquered a large swath of highland territory in what was to be the firstof several military campaigns against the Mam. They took the valleys ofTotonicapan and Quezaltenango as well as the areas that correspond to thepresent-day towns of Momostenango, Santa Marıa Chiquimula, Santa Cata-rina Ixtahuacan, Cantel, Zunil, Almolonga, Ostuncalco, Sibilia, Huitan andSan Miguel Ixtahuacan.13

Under Q’uik’ab, the K’iche’ conquered Zaculeu, the most importantstronghold of the northern Mam, and left behind a contingent of noblesto rule over the new tributaries.14 They also attacked south again, van-quishing a large Mam settlement near the volcano Santa Marıa, and thenmoved on to the coast where they took several towns along the Rıo Samala.The conquered peoples ceded the K’iche’ the entire coastal strip westwardto the border of Soconusco. Q’uik’ab established military outposts in sev-eral locations along the K’iche’-Mam border, including Momostenango andQuezaltenango, but nevertheless, Utatlan’s hold on this vast area began to slipnear the end of the fifteenth century. According to Carmack, even provincialK’iche’ groups began to chafe under Utatlan’s yoke. Thus subsequent mili-tary campaigns were launched to reestablish dominance over such outlyingareas as northern and western Momostenango as well as the coastal regionthat stretched west from the Rıo Samala into Soconusco.15

22 Chapter 1

Together the K’iche’ tıtulos establish that Utatlan was able to conquerthe entire eastern strip of the Mam region south of the Cuchumatanes, aswell as the entire Mam coastal zone. Less clear is what happened to thedefeated populations, or what sort of relationship developed between thetwo groups in the conquered areas. Perhaps the most clear-cut case is thatof the northern Mam stronghold of Zaculeu. Utatlan placed Zaculeu ina subordinate tributary relationship, and apparently imposed a permanentstratum of K’iche’ rulers.16 In the region immediately west of the centralK’iche,’ it appears that local people were either pushed out to make way forK’iche’ demographic expansion, or that they were completely assimilated bythe victors.17 A little further south and west, the valley of Quezaltenangosuffered two K’iche’ military campaigns, suggesting an interim period duringwhich the native Mam continued to resist complete subjugation or completeexpulsion.18 Although Carmack asserts that the valley’s Mam inhabitants weremade tributaries by the K’iche’, it is not clear under what circumstances thisoccurred.19 I have not encountered any reference to the Mam people thatclearly locates them in the valley of Quezaltenango during the first decadefollowing the Spanish invasion, with the possible exception of the far westerncorner. Based on the “Tıtulo Mam” and the response of Quezaltenango’sleaders, I would suggest that most, if not all, of the Mam were driven fromthe area as the K’iche’ colonized the zone.20

On the south coast various K’iche’ tıtulos indicate the presence of K’iche’or K’iche’ allies on the eastern banks of the Rıo Samala, an area calledZapotitlan.21 West of the Rıo Samala, however, all the way to Soconusco,was an ambiguous territory. Although the K’iche’ invaded this area at leastonce in the late fifteenth century, there is no evidence to suggest that theywere able to impose a lasting tributary relationship on the towns of theregion.22

In sum, the K’iche’ were able to dominate the former Mam areas ofZaculeu south to the valley of Quezaltenango. North, West, and South of thisterritory, however, their control was inconsistent and may have correspondedto brief military incursions.23 In the case of the Quezaltenango region,Ostuncalco’s leaders stated that they were forced to abandon their settlementson the valley floor and to seek refuge in the mountains, where they built de-fensive fortifications. Presumably they were referring to the mountains thatsurround the western end of the valley. This would make sense given K’iche’claims that Ostuncalco “el viejo” had been situated approximately one leaguewest of its present location, placing the old town center somewhere in thehigh valleys directly north of the volcanoes Cacaix and Lacandon. The Mamremained in their mountainous strongholds until the arrival of the Spaniards.At that point, if we are to believe the Mam account, they played an activerole in helping the Spaniards defeat the K’iche’ forces amassed in the valley.Rather than returning their historic lands, however, Pedro de Alvarado

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culaha to Independence 23

forced the Mam to allow the K’iche’ to repopulate the valley at the site ofpresent-day Quezaltenango.24

Shortly thereafter, Alvarado granted the entire southern Mam region ina single encomienda to fellow conquistador and a close associate PedroPortocarrero. Called “Sacatepequez and Ostuncalco” after its two maintowns, this was the largest encomienda in all Guatemala, and among themost valuable.25 It passed on to Portocarrero’s wife Dona Leonor de Alvaradoin the late 1530s following her husband’s death and a brief power strugglethat pitted her father, the adelantado Pedro de Alvarado, against rival en-comenderos. In 1541 Dona Leonor remarried to Guatemala’s interim gover-nor, Francisco de la Cueva, and the encomienda remained under their controlthrough the 1580s, when it was inherited by their son. Although some sourcesindicate that Ostuncalco was transferred to Crown control as early as 1589,other evidence suggests that at least some of the town’s residents continuedto be apportioned in encomienda well into the late seventeenth century.26

Like most of far western and northern Guatemala, Ostuncalco was placedunder the administration of the Order of Mercy by the second half of thesixteenth century, where it remained until the parish was secularized in 1768.Francisco Fuentes y Guzman claims that Mercedarian friars actually estab-lished a mission there in 1538. Whatever the exact date, however, they sub-sequently “reduced” Ostuncalco “el viejo” from its mountainous strongholdto the valley floor and the site of the present-day town. The new location,referred to by the K’iche’ as “nuevo” Ostuncalco in their 1583 response tothe “Tıtulo Mam,” was approximately one league closer to Quezaltenango.Although the Mam did not regain more of their former territory with thismove, they do not appear to have opposed what must have been an otherwisedisruptive process, perhaps because they approved of having the political cen-ter of their population relocated to the valley that they had once dominated.27

That said, in the long term Ostuncalco’s inhabitants did not abide con-gregacion in the new town center. Instead, they opted for a more dispersednetwork of smaller settlements that by the end of the colonial period hadformed the basis for Quezaltenango’s several additional Mam municipalitiesas well as many of Ostuncalco’s present-day hamlets or cantones. The dynam-ics of this dispersion probably reflected some combination of the followingthree processes. First, segments of the Mam, perhaps linked by real or fictivekinship, may have desired to stake out or resettle territory that they had lostto the K’iche’ during the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Similarly, particularMam clans may have retraced the path of congracacion itself, reinhabiting areasfrom which they had been removed by Spanish missionaries in the aftermathof the conquest. Finally, the dispersion probably also reflected the exigenciesof peasant agriculture as families decided more or less in piecemeal fashionto move closer to their subsistence base. Whatever the exact mechanism,however, as early as the late sixteenth-century archival documents mention

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two additional Mam settlements bordering Ostuncalco in the mountains tothe south, the “estancias sujetas” Concepcion Chiquirichapa and San MartınSacatepequez.28 By the early seventeenth-century indigenous officials alsopresented evidence of a northward dispersion, stating that at a location calledSan Cristobal Cabrican, well over 30 km to the north, “twelve Indians [andtheir families] . . . from this said town of Ostuncalco . . . have the majority oftheir milpas and a limestone operation [calera]. Said Indians have movedthere to process the limestone and to tend said milpas.”29

Ostuncalco’s highland “estancias sujetas” grew in number, and eventuallyin size, over the course of the colonial period, splitting off to form indepen-dent municipalities throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenthcenturies. Concepcion Chiquirichapa and San Martın Sacatepequez wereboth considered separate towns by the late seventeenth century, as was SanCristobal Cabrican.30 The entangled histories of San Miguel Siguila andSanta Cruz Cajola offer a somewhat more complicated example. AlthoughSan Miguel received mention as early as 1632, it did not show up in thedocumentation with regularity until the late 1600s, and then as an “es-tancia” of Chiquirichapa. Following a thirty-year absence from the tributeroles, it resurfaced in 1728 as the “Parcialidad de San Miguel.” A little be-fore the midcentury, however, Spanish officials started to confuse the townwith another indigenous settlement further to the north, the precursor ofSanta Cruz Cajola. The two places were not clearly differentiated, at leastin Spanish minds, until ca. 1775. Although I would cautiously suggest thatSan Miguel achieved autonomous status during the 1740s, Cajola remaineda “paraje” of Ostuncalco until 1790.31

Santa Cruz Cajola was a rather ambiguous entity in the late eighteenth andearly nineteenth centuries, just as Ostuncalco had been before its erstwhileestancias delineated the town’s boundaries by breaking away to form separatemunicipalities. Indeed, Cajola emerged amidst charges that its residents wereinvading the lands of San Miguel Siguila and San Juan Olintepeque. The newtown consisted mostly of people from Ostuncalco and Chiquirichapa whohad been forced to go in search of their own lands to the north of Ostun-calco and San Miguel Siguila. Like Ostuncalco before it, Cajola’s tributariesstretched as far north as Cabrican, to the parajes of Huitan, Paxoj, Vixben,and Xacana. These parajes were administered by Cajola’s municipal authori-ties until the late 1860s, when Huitan achieved independent municipal statusand gained administrative jurisdiction over Paxoj and Vixben.32

Highland Mam Society and the Costa del Sur

By the end of the eighteenth century, Quezaltenango counted five Mamtowns in addition to San Juan Ostuncalco. The emergence of these com-munities over the course of the colonial period reflected the demographic

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culaha to Independence 25

dispersion and expansion of the population that Spanish colonial authoritiesoriginally had concentrated in or near San Juan Ostuncalco. I have suggestedthat this migration of Mam peoples from Ostuncalco to the surroundinglands represented a return to areas that they had occupied at some time inthe past. A similar process of reoccupation occurred to the south of the val-ley of Quezaltenango and the tierras frıas that surrounded it, in the coastalpiedmont and tropical plains that stretched to the Pacific Ocean below.

The highland Mam communities of southwestern Guatemala had an en-during relationship with the adjacent coastal region. Early K’iche’ testi-monies, produced to bolster the territorial pretensions of the postconquestK’iche’ elite, indicate that present-day Guatemala’s westernmost coastal re-gion pertained to the Mam in pre-Columbian times. Sixteenth and earlyseventeenth century testimony from various Mam authorities provides ad-ditional evidence of historical ties to the Pacific lowlands, particularly thosewest of the Rıo Samala. The report of Spaniard Diego Garces (ca. 1570),alcalde mayor of Zapotitlan, corroborates Mam claims that San Juan Ostun-calco and San Pedro Sacatepequez—the two major highland Mam centerslocated in southwestern Guatemala—maintained several coastal “estancias ysujetos” into the late sixteenth century. Santa Catalina Retalhuleu and SantaMarıa Magdalena were the most prominent of those with ties to Ostuncalco,although the coastal settlements of Nejapa Tepintepeque and San GeronimoCuyamesumba also were said to have been under the town’s control.33

The genesis of these coastal dependencies, as well as their exact relation-ship to the highland centers, remains unclear. Information from neighboringindigenous societies, however, as well as other evidence from the colonialperiod, is suggestive. Residents of the piedmont and lowland colonies ofSantiago Atitlan, the Tz’utujil capital, reported in the late sixteenth centurythat their ancestors had originated from Atitlan prior to the Spanish con-quest, and that for as long as they could remember their communities hadpaid tribute to the highland capital in the form of cacao and other tropi-cal products. These informants recalled that Altitlan’s elite had maintainedcacao estates in the lowland colonies, and they claimed that many highlandinhabitants continued to tend cacao groves from which they derived theirlivelihood and the resources to pay crown tribute. In addition, the informantsnoted that prior to the Spanish conquest the inhabitants of Atitlan’s colonieshad been much greater in number, and had lived in a more dispersed fashionthroughout the piedmont and lowland jungle.34

Tz’utujil accounts of the historical relationship between highland indige-nous political centers and coastal settlements are reinforced by the writings ofsixteenth-century Spanish observers. Alcalde Mayor Diego Garces affirmedthat the residents of Santiago Atitlan kept cacao groves in the coastal colonies,and he noted that the lowland settlements also produced cotton and cornin significant quantities. Juan de Pineda, in his 1594 “Descripcion de la

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Provincia de Guatemala,” gave similar evidence for the K’iche of Quezalte-nango, who maintained cacao plantations in two coastal estancias. Accordingto Pineda, most of the sierra towns situated along the Pacific rim had com-mercial and familial ties with the coastal settlements below, regardless ofwhether they continued to exercise formal administrative or political con-trol. Highland residents traveled to the coast to sell their crops and goods inexchange for cacao, cotton, and other hotland products that were consumeddirectly or resold for a profit.35

Based on these accounts, it is quite likely that highland Mam commu-nities also established lowland colonies in pre-Columbian times in order tomaintain control over coastal territory, and, in particular, the cacao groveslocated therein. Writing ca. 1570, Garces noted that certain of Ostuncalco’sresidents controlled cacao groves in the town’s coastal estancias. Highland res-idents probably migrated to the coast to grow food crops and to gather andcultivate tropical products, whether permanently or on a seasonal basis thatcorresponded to periods of slack-time in the highland milpa cycle. Coastalterritory would have allowed highlanders to acquire both luxury items andbasic necessities year-round and thus would have helped to maintain theburgeoning sierra population of the late pre-Columbian era.36

Similar to the Tz’utujil communities, highland Mam centers probablyextracted resources from their lowland estancias through trade and tributeas well as the direct cultivation of coastal land by highland residents. Inaddition, highland elites may have maintained cacao estates that presumablywere worked in the manner of Mexican cacicazgos. Resident serfs or mayequeswould have tended the cacao groves and paid a substantial portion of theharvest directly to the estate owner.37

Sometime between the report of Alcalde Mayor Garces, approximately1570, and the second decade of the seventeenth century, the coastal estanciasof Ostuncalco and San Pedro Sacatepequez were granted independent mu-nicipal status. Garces had complained of the difficulties that beset the lowlandMam settlements because they were required to pay tribute to the crown byway of the highland cabildos. He wrote Guatemala’s Audiencia that the es-tancia Santa Catalina “is fifteen leagues from Ostuncalco, and [yet] it goesthere with its tribute, something that is not just nor should it be permitted.”38

Whether or not the Audiencia was swayed by Garces’ advice alone, witnessesreported in 1617 that several years earlier the former estancias had pressedfor, and been granted, administrative autonomy from Ostuncalco and SanPedro Sacatepequez. The independent communities were transferred fromthe jurisdiction of Quezaltenango to Suchitepequez for the purposes ofadministration and tribute collection.39

In marked contrast to the rest of Guatemala, evidence indicates that west-ern coastal settlements, including the Mam estancias, began to experience a

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culaha to Independence 27

temporary demographic recovery near the end of the sixteenth century. Thisrecovery appears to have been based on the growing influx of highland res-idents who sought to partake in the continuing profitability of Guatemala’scacao economy. Although the heyday for Mesoamerican cacao had longsince passed, Suchitepequez still supplied significant quantities to MexicoCity through the first half of the seventeenth century, surpassing evenSoconusco by the 1630s. Garces, as well as later commentators, lamentedthe fact that many highland Mam were obliged to journey to the Pacificlowlands to purchase the cacao and cotton necessary to satisfy their tributepayments to the crown. In the process, migrants established concubines andsecond households in the coastal communities, and some even took up res-idence in them permanently.40 Although such relocation must have made iteasier to collect the much sought after lowland commodities, it also may haveallowed migrants to lessen or even escape the burden of tribute by assum-ing forastero status. For much of the colonial period forasteros were exemptedfrom paying tribute in their place of residence because they continued tobe included in the tribute roll of their community of origin. Aided by dis-tance and difficult terrain, many forasteros found it possible to avoid tributeobligations altogether. Regardless of why it occurred, however, migrationprobably accounts for early seventeenth century observations that the Mam’slowland dependencies had gained population over the course of the sixteenthcentury, in marked contrast to the population decline noted for Guatemalaas a whole.41

Sometime in the second half of the seventeenth century, however, coastaldemographic trends reversed course. Once again, cacao appears to haveplayed a determining role. Although competition from South Americanproducers had eroded Mesoamerican cacao exports since the 1620s, a surgein Venezuelan production around the midcentury spelled imminent collapse.As a result, cacao’s promise no longer compelled highlanders to seek out thecoast, and even lowland residents may have decided to move elsewhere in theface of severe economic downturn. In sum, highland migration no longeroffset nor obscured the high mortality rates that characterized sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Guatemala, and, as a result, the population of theformer estancias plummeted dramatically.42 Two examples illustrate the con-tours of this decline. Santa Catalina Retalhuleu, one of Ostuncalco’s formerestancias, counted 400 “almas de confesion,” or roughly 500 people, nearthe end of the sixteenth century.43 In 1770, however, Guatemala’s BishopPedro Cortes y Larraz estimated only 278 residents. By 1806 the town was“abandoned.”44 Santa Marıa Magdalena, another of Ostuncalco’s erstwhilesujetos, was described as “extinguido” by 1712.45

From the midseventeenth century onward, then, the coastal communi-ties began their precipitous demographic decline, and one by one they were

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abandoned. During this same period, however, the highland Mam townsbegan a slow demographic recovery. They also began to show a renewedinterest in exploiting the lowland region that historically had been undertheir control. The first towns to manifest their interest in an explicit man-ner were San Martın Sacatepequez and Concepcion Chiquirichapa, them-selves former highland estancias of Ostuncalco. Together, they purchased overtwenty caballerıas of coastal land in 1712, near the abandoned communityof Santa Marıa Magdalena.46 Then, in 1744, San Martın successfully titled amuch greater area that included a large swath of coastal piedmont abuttingthe community to the south, as well as the tierras frıas that surrounded thetown center itself. Residents of San Martın had been using the piedmontland informally for an unspecified number of years, and they considered ita part of the community’s ejido or territory. The agrimensor who surveyedthe boundary markers, Juan Antonio del Bosque y Artiaga, estimated thatthe circumscribed area contained 346 caballerıas. Due to the inaccuracies ofeighteenth-century surveying methods, however, later revisions found an as-tounding 1,085 caballerıas, or nearly 500 sq. km.47 San Martın unknowinglyhad titled a majority portion of the potential coffee lands in what wouldbecome, after independence, the department of Quezaltenango.

Although San Martın and, to a lesser degree, Chiquirichapa were the onlyhighland Mam towns to aggressively title land in what had once been Mamcoastal territory, all of the communities with origins in Ostuncalco madeuse of the Pacific lowlands by the late colonial period. Some highlandersmigrated regularly on a short-term basis to hunt the coastal forests, or tocollect fruits and other tropical items to sell in their home communities or inthe markets of Quezaltenango. Others migrated for longer periods of time,taking advantage of the coastal climate and ecology to pasture their sheepand/or cultivate corn during the highland dry season. Some migrants madethe trip only infrequently, for example, during a bad harvest year, whereasothers did so annually. Then there were those “highlanders” who settledthe coast more or less permanently, maintaining lowland milpas on a year-round basis. Although the majority of this latter group probably originatedin San Martın and Chiquirichapa, some hailed from San Juan Ostuncalcoas well.48

The resurgence in highland migration to the coast did not reverse thecontinuing disintegration of Ostuncalco’s former lowland estancias like SantaCatalina Retalhuleu and Santa Marıa Magdalena, perhaps because the lat-ter’s cacao groves were no longer the target of this new wave of immigrants.Instead of cacao, the resurgence was fueled by an increasing need to com-plement highland milpa production with the additional one or two growingseasons made possible by the coastal environment. Thus the new migrants didnot integrate themselves into the old piedmont estancias that colonial officials

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culaha to Independence 29

had separated from the highlands towns, but rather initiated a new series ofinformal, loosely agglutinated settlements while continuing to participate inthe cultural and political structures of their highland home communities.Even well into the nineteenth century this burgeoning population of trans-planted highlanders had no interest in severing ties with the communities oforigin. In this way the new settlements replicated the demographic patternof the pre-Columbian estancias and their relationship to highland authorities.

Ladino Penetration of Mam Quezaltenango

The indigenous population was not the only one expanding geographicallyand eventually numerically over the course of the colonial period. Ladinosbegan establishing haciendas in the interstices of Quezaltenango’s Mam townsfrom at least as early as the seventeenth century. By 1749 a handful had settledin Ostuncalco proper itself, despite Crown prohibitions against Spaniards ormestizos living in indigenous towns.49 This number grew to over 250 beforethe end of the century, and in 1806, due to their relatively large numbers,Ostuncalco’s ladinos were authorized to form their own municipal gov-ernment alongside that of the indigenous populace. Thus began the town’sdual-municipality tradition that lasted well into the 1900s.50

The ladino haciendas, too, often developed into larger settlements, or“Valles.” On Ostuncalco’s northeastern periphery the “Valle de Sija” wassaid to have 60 “almas de confesion” in 1688.51 Another, the “Valle deBobos,” emerged due north of the town proper, but south of Cabrican andthe paraje of Huitan, thus splitting “greater” Ostuncalco in two. The landsof San Antonio Bobos, as it came to be called, were originally titled in 1653by two Spaniards. The area was still being described as a simple hacienda aslate as 1770. That same year Archbishop Cortes y Larraz estimated Bobos’population at fifteen families or eighty individuals. Within three decades theValle’s populace had risen to 269, sufficient to meet the requirements of amunicipality, and thus, in 1806, it too was granted legal municipal status.52

In addition to the two Valles of Sija and Bobos, the haciendas Veinte Palos,Los Granados, Zacualpa, Las Manzanas, and Maclen were established to thenorth and west of Ostuncalco and the surrounding Mam towns. Maclen,like Sija and Bobos, also achieved the status of Valle and then Pueblo.53

The Mam towns resisted the formation of these ladino haciendas andsettlements, which they viewed as encroachments on lands that had per-tained to their communities since time immemorial. Unfortunately, how-ever, as the number of haciendas that achieved municipal status demonstrates,they frequently were unsuccessful. In addition, the sixteenth-century bat-tle that introduced this chapter, and which had pitted Ostuncalco againstQuezaltenango, resurfaced again in the late colonial period as a boundary

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dispute primarily between San Mateo, a K’iche’ offshoot of Quezaltenango,and Chiquirichapa, although both of the former towns continued to beinvolved.54

Another area of Mam-K’iche’ contention was the eastern periphery ofCajola’s parajes Huitan and Paxoj. Buenabaj, an aldea of Momostenango,along with the Mejıa’s of San Cristobal Totonicapan—all K’iche’—alsoclaimed the disputed lands. Then there were the conflicts that emergedamong the Mam towns themselves. Cabrican challenged Cajola’s possessionof the parajes Xacana and Vixben, as well as Huitan.55 And from the earlyeighteenth century Chiquirichapa pushed royal officials to allow them tosplit their municipal lands from Ostuncalco’s, rather than maintaining themas a single common ejido.56 The most heated conflict between southernMam towns, however, was over the territorial boundaries of Ostuncalco andSan Pedro Sacatepequez to the west. This dispute frequently involved theother Mam communities as well, because both Ostuncalco and San Pedropresumed to dominate the smaller indigenous towns that had emerged ontheir respective peripheries.57

Following independence, the costa del sur also became a major theater inthe struggle over land that marked Mam Quezaltenango. The battle lines thathad been drawn between Mam communities and ladino invaders in the tierrasfrıas over the course of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries nowbegan to extend to the piedmont and coastal plains that stretched south fromSan Martın Sacatepequez. Throughout the late colonial and independenceperiods the highland Mam had increased their reliance on the coast in orderto meet their subsistence needs. By 1836 even Cabrican, the northern-mostMam town in the district of Ostuncalco, was involved to such an extent thatit could not respond to an inquiry from the departmental governor becauseits officials were “on the coast out of necessity.”58 San Martın’s municipalitycomplained on several occasions about the residents of neighboring com-munities who were using its coastal lands without permission and, worseyet, challenging the town’s legal claims. The latter problem was attributedin particular to the ladinos of Ostuncalco who had begun to establish cattleranches and sugar trapiches on costa lands with increasing frequency in thelast decade of colonial rule.59

Ladino penetration of San Martın Sacatepequez’s coastal territory duringthis period occurred within the context of a general move by ladinos from theQuezaltenango-San Marcos highland zone into the western Pacific lowlandsas the colonial era came to a close.60 The region between the Rıo Naranjoand the Rıo Samala—which included San Martın’s ejido—was subject to aspate of denunciations from the 1780s onward.61 The pace merely quick-ened following independence. In the area just described, at least twenty-fivedenunciations were filed in the decade preceding 1837 alone.62 This figure

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culaha to Independence 31

is almost certainly incomplete, and probably vastly underrepresents the truenumber of denunciations that occurred by the late 1830s.

During its initial phase, the increase in ladino denunciations of coastallands probably resulted from three interrelated trends. The first of these wasthe expansion of Quezaltenango’s regional economy—centered in the city ofQuezaltenango itself—throughout the second half of the eighteenth century.Although unimportant in terms of exports to Spain, the southwestern high-lands became a significant supplier of food stuffs, especially wheat, as well ascotton and woolen textiles, to the rest of the isthmus, and in particular, to theenclaves that produced dyes and other items for interoceanic trade. By the1790s Quezaltenango was arguably the most important textile center in allof Guatemala.63 Ostuncalco and the surrounding Mam towns appear to haveparticipated in the expansion by supplying wheat, lamb, wool, and cotton andwoolen thread and weavings to Quezaltenango’s Corregidor as part of theirtribute and repartimiento obligations. Community residents also sold thesegoods directly in the markets of Quezaltenango. Among Ostuncalco’s ladinoresidents, an 1811 census revealed that over 50 percent of the economicallyactive males were engaged in the production of wool or woolen textiles.

Regional economic expansion coincided with an influx of ladinos fromthe environs of Guatemala’s capital, Santiago de los Caballeros. Their num-bers grew especially quickly following the earthquakes that devastatedSantiago in 1773, and the establishment of a new capital, Guatemala City,in 1776.64 Aside from the city of Quezaltenango itself, the incipient ladinocommunities of Salcaja, San Carlos Sija, and San Marcos also experiencedrapid growth. It is during this period, as well, that Ostuncalco’s ladino popu-lation increased from a little more than a dozen, to nearly three hundred, andthat the ladino settlement of San Antonio Bobos emerged in the intersticesof Ostuncalco’s northern indigenous towns.65

A third trend that paralleled regional economic expansion and significantladino immigration was the growth of aguardiente production. The city ofQuezaltenango, for example, experienced a rapid proliferation of aguardi-ente producers and vendors during the second half of the eighteenth century,despite crown restrictions on alcohol distillation and sales. Their ranks in-cluded ladinos and indıgenas, women and men, subaltern and elite, and asthey increased in number, so did the demand for raw sugar, the main ingre-dient of aguardiente.66 Although Ostuncalco’s aguardiente industry does notappear to have flourished as early as Quezaltenango’s, there is evidence of itsexistence by the end of the colonial period.67

These three trends—a growing local market for alcohol, substantial ladinoimmigration, and regional economic expansion—impelled increasing num-bers of ladinos to seek their fortunes on the coast. Both sugar and cot-ton, inputs of aguardiente and textile manufacturing, respectively, required a

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tropical environment for their cultivation. Cattle, although not restricted tothe coast by climatic factors, could be pastured there most profitably becauseof the vast tracts of lush vegetation, relatively unbroken either by a dry sea-son, or by cultivated areas or settlements. Fodder was never a problem, andlabor costs were kept to a minimum, because herds grazed and roamed freely.In sum, by the end of the eighteenth century, more and more ladinos laidclaim to coastal lands with the intention of supplying the nearby highlandpopulation centers with sugar, cotton, and cattle.68

The appearance in Guatemala of low-priced cotton textiles from Britainat the end of the 1790s signaled the beginning of a gradual slowdown forQuezaltenango’s regional economy. During the first decades of the nine-teenth century, stagnation replaced economic expansion. Highland spinnersand weavers who specialized in cotton were hardest hit, though woolen tex-tiles also suffered.69 Nevertheless, this economic slowdown does not seemto have dampened the ladino appetite for coastal land. Denunciations per-sisted and, in the immediate aftermath of independence, even increased. Theevidence from Ostuncalco suggests that the region’s ladino population con-tinued to grow apace, as did local demand for aguardiente, and this may helpto explain why, despite a wounded textile industry, ladino interest in thecoast did not abate. Although many of Ostuncalco’s ladinos persisted in rais-ing sheep and producing wool through at least the 1830s, and probably untilthe midcentury, they increasingly also turned their attention to cultivatingand milling sugar on the coast.70

The Struggle over Indigenous Community Landand the Definition of “Ejido”

Another important factor that probably helped to elevate the number of landclaims on the coast, despite the decline of Quezaltenango’s regional textileindustry, is the changes that were made to the laws governing land tenurebetween 1813 and 1835. The Cadiz Cortes and, following independence,Liberal reformers, attempted to promote land privatization by repeatedlyexhorting regional and local authorities to sell off all untitled areas thatdid not pertain explicitly to a particular community’s ejido. Individuals orcorporations—such as municipalities or cofradıas—that had settled, or other-wise utilized, so-called terrenos baldıos without obtaining a proper title wouldbe subject to confiscation and eviction. Underlying these measures was aminimalist definition of the term “ejido” that had serious implications forindigenous community landholding because it denied the equivalence thatindigenous authorities assigned to municipal and ejido boundaries. In addi-tion, reformers dramatically lowered land prices from approximately thirteenpesos per caballerıa to a maximum price of four in order to promote privateacquisitions.71

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culaha to Independence 33

For most of the colonial period, ambiguities in crown law had providedgrounds for widely divergent views of the community ejido. On paper,statutes described the ejido as an area that comprised one square league, orapproximately thirty eight caballerıas.72 Indigenous authorities, however,generally ignored the one-square-league definition employed by the crown.Instead, they insisted that their ejido comprised all of the land within thetown’s administrative boundaries. Although some portions were reservedfor communal use, and others were allotted for individual or family use,ultimately all of the town’s territory was considered to be the exclusive pat-rimony of the community and its residents. This discrepancy between theletter of the law and on-the-ground practices was possible because the crownalso guaranteed each community the right to whatever subsistence lands wereneeded in addition to the ejido itself. Where municipal authorities tendedto see a single “ejido,” royal officials perceived a combination of ejido andother lands used by community residents for subsistence purposes. In eithercase, the entire territory qualified for protection against outside purchase orusurpation.73

The problem that emerged, however, was how to determine a partic-ular community’s subsistence needs. Indigenous representatives argued thathistorical use and occupation were sufficient to prove “need.” Local royalofficials, on the other hand, intent on pushing through composiciones, partic-ularly those of family members, friends, and business associates, attempted toclaim that much of the land over and above one square league was excessiveand unnecessary for community subsistence.

Despite these problems of interpretation, however, and the potential forfavoritism and corruption on the part of royal officials, crown law did atleast offer a modicum of protection for extraejido community territory,and this was what the legal reforms of the Cadiz Cortes, and succeedingrepublican governments, aimed to eliminate. By withdrawing official supportfor untitled community territory in excess of the ejido proper, reformershoped to make it easier for private individuals to title land in indigenouscommunities, be they residents or outsiders. In fact, however, the post-1813legislation merely displaced the point of contention from the question ofhow to define a community ejido, to what constituted legal title. Manycommunities had taken advantage of the colonial-era statutes that allowedthem to title nonejido subsistence lands. Indeed, many communities hadtitled more or less their entire municipal territory. Were these titles still validafter 1813, even though they had been granted at a time when communitieswere allowed to claim legal right to territory that had not been “composed”or purchased outright?

The complexities of this situation are illustrated by the case of the jointlytitled ejido of Ostuncalco, Chiquirichapa, Siguila, and Cajola. In 1744 thefour towns titled an ejido of 259 caballerıas. Upon remeasurement in 1816,

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the circumscribed area actually was found to contain 513 caballerıas.74 Asone crown official remarked, even if all four towns were granted an ejido ofone square league, for a combined total of approximately 155 caballerıas, thiswould remain well below the hundreds of caballerıas that had been titled.Yet it did not appear that the excess had ever been paid for or otherwise“composed,” despite the fact that a title did, indeed, exist.75

Aside from failing to resolve the ambiguities inherent in colonial-era landlaws, the post-1813 legislation posed its own particular difficulties. Considerthe statutes of the early 1830s that established a “contribucion territorial” orland tax to replace the church-run diezmo. Under the new tax regulations,all properties, including those held by communities, had to be registered.Property-holders were called on to present their titles, measurements, orwhatever documentation they possessed, to demonstrate legal ownershipand to establish the amount of land in question. As a check against noncom-pliance, the statutes proclaimed that all unregistered properties would revertto state control as “terrenos baldıos.” The problem, however, was that compli-ance could mean a heavy tax burden, particularly on municipalities that hadtitled large areas. Although an exemption was allowed for ejidos, provideda community could demonstrate financial hardship, the law specifically lim-ited an ejido to one square league, or approximately thirty eight caballerıas.76

Indigenous communities, then, were stuck between a rock and a hard place:if they divulged the full extent of their territory they would be saddled withan astronomical tax burden. Ostuncalco and the three other Mam towns,for example, would have been liable for paying the “contribucion territo-rial” on at least 358 caballerıas, at an annual cost of 179 pesos. The otheroption, however, was no better: to risk that titled community land would bereclassified as terreno baldıo. Records from 1834 and 1835 suggest that this isprecisely what most indigenous towns probably did. In the departments ofQuezaltenango, Totonicapan, and Solola, for example, 93 of the 126 townsdid not register their land as mandated by the new tax laws.77

Some of the ambiguities in the late-colonial and early-republican legisla-tion were cleared up in 1836 with two new laws that simply ended the ban onselling ejido land. The new laws authorized municipal governments to selloff portions of their ejido as a means to raise funds for public works projects.In addition, and probably even more upsetting to indigenous communities,anyone who currently rented ejido land could now purchase it, regardless oftheir ethnicity or place of residence.78 This latter stipulation built on earlierstatutes that permitted ejido usage by ladino newcomers, and authorizedcenso rental of ejido land to noncommunity members more generally.79 As aresult of these new laws the discrepancy between legal and indigenous con-ceptualizations of the community ejido lost much of its significance. Nowit no longer mattered if community land had been titled or not, or whether

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culaha to Independence 35

it legally could be construed to be an ejido, because this status had ceasedto afford legal protection against nonindıgenas. The result of the new laws,according to Quezaltenango’s departmental chief, was an impressive increasein land denunciations.80

In sum, then, the reform legislation of the late-colonial and early-republican periods fed ladino aspirations for land, even if it did not entirelysimplify the complex web of laws regarding land tenure. Colonial-era reg-ulations, although far from perfect, had offered indigenous communities atleast a modicum of legal protection. The dismantling of these regulationsincreased the potential for ladinos and noncommunity members to acquireproperty from municipal holdings. Nowhere is this potential made clearerthan in the Pacific piedmont and lowlands that lay to the south and west ofSan Martın Sacatepequez, a topic that will be explored in greater detail inchapter 2.

The Roots of Nineteenth-Century Land Conflict: Towardan Explanation

In this chapter I have outlined two interrelated trends in the political de-mography of the Mam region of highland Quezaltenango. The first isthe establishment of an increasing number of independent municipalities—indigenous and ladino—in the centuries following the Spanish conquest. Ihave suggested that all of the indigenous towns began as “estancias sujetas,” ifnot direct offshoots, of San Juan Ostuncalco. A second trend is the growingfrequency of land and boundary disputes between indigenous and ladino set-tlements, and among the indigenous municipalities themselves. By the earlynineteenth century these conflicts had become commonplace. Taken to-gether, these two trends indicate yet another: the sharp decline of vacant agri-cultural lands in the tierras frıas of Quezaltenango during the late colonial pe-riod. By independence the region’s internal frontier had largely disappeared.

The idea of a land shortage should come as no surprise to those familiarwith the historiography of Guatemala’s nineteenth century. The chronologythat I suggest for the onset of this shortage, however, may give rise to someskepticism. Much of the literature does not recognize that in the years prior to1871 indigenous communities suffered substantial territorial losses in frequentland disputes with ladinos, nor that increasing numbers of rural dwellerswere forced to undertake an ever-widening search for agricultural lands.Indeed, some authors propose the years 1800–1880 as a sort of heyday forthe indigenous community, cut short by Barrios’ agrarian legislation.81

Another reason for skepticism lies in the fact that for most of the nine-teenth century, if one views Guatemala as a whole, there still existed largeuncultivated expanses with very few people. This was the case, for example,

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with the Pacific piedmont and coast. How, then, can one speak of intenseland pressures in early nineteenth-century Guatemala? Differences in focusand scope explain this apparent contradiction. My argument in this chapteris restricted to the highlands, and, more specifically, to western Quezalte-nango. That is where indigenous and ladino settlements alike had expandedto fill what remained of the highland frontier. As I will demonstrate in thechapter that follows, the relatively open terrain of the boca costa or pied-mont and Pacific lowlands became the new agricultural frontier, partiallymitigating the problem of inadequate tierras frıas. In addition, however, thenew frontier also became a new locus of conflict over land, and it was herethat indigenous communities suffered some of their most devastating lossesduring the nineteenth century.

Finally there is the apparent objection posed by demographic studies thatconclude Guatemala’s population did not return to pre-Columbian levelsuntil the twentieth century.82 My own estimates for Ostuncalco suggest thatthe preconquest population of approximately 40,000 was attained slightlyearlier, probably by the 1860s.83 In 1821, by contrast, the area counted littlemore than 9,000 people. Given this relatively small number, why so manycomplaints of insufficient land? Why the myriad disputes? These questionsare themselves based on the premise that the preconquest populace, despiteits relatively large size, was able to reproduce itself under more favorableconditions. Such a claim is hard to substantiate and requires an in-depthcomparison of land use and agricultural productivity before and after theSpanish invasion. Studies of this kind are markedly absent from the histori-ography of Guatemala. Nevertheless, what little scholarly attention has beenfocused on this point indicates that pre-Columbian social organization andagricultural techniques may have been better suited for the reproduction ofa large population.

Murdo MacLeod is one of the few authors to approach this issue evenspeculatively. In his now classic Spanish Central America he suggests that pre-conquest agricultural techniques and settlement patterns were able to supporta large population. Irrigation, intensive and specialized crop planting, the ro-tation of cultivated areas through multiyear fallow periods, and a dispersedrather than nucleated populace combined to sustain Guatemala’s numer-ous peoples. Spanish interventions such as wheat and livestock, by contrast,lowered agricultural productivity. The policy of congregacion concentratedpeople away from their agricultural lands. Composicion discouraged commu-nities from leaving agricultural lands fallow, a necessary step in maintainingfertility and lessening erosion, and in general diminished community terri-tory by facilitating outside encroachment. These trends became especiallyproblematic during the late seventeenth century as Guatemala’s western high-land population began to grow intermittently. Some communities challenged

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culaha to Independence 37

ladino control of nearby areas in an attempt to satisfy their increasing sub-sistence requirements. As this route often ended in failure, however, theyfound themselves face-to-face with other communities in the scramble forsufficient agricultural lands.84

Geographer Thomas Veblen is probably the only scholar who has tack-led the question of population and agricultural subsistence in Guatemalain greater detail than MacLeod. His investigation of the area composingpresent-day Totonicapan points in the direction that future demographic/environmental studies should take.85 Veblen explores the social-ecologicalnexus of pre- and post-Colombian populations and reaches conclusions thatreinforce and extend MacLeod’s tentative findings. His research indicates,for example, that by the end of the eighteenth century land pressure inTotonicapan was high, manifesting itself as constant intercommunity bound-ary disputes. Perhaps even more importantly, however, Veblen gives a morethorough accounting of why such pressures existed even though the popu-lation was less than 50 percent of the preconquest level. He points to severalinterconnected factors. Like MacLeod, Veblen highlights the negative im-pact of wheat. Although wheat can be grown at slightly higher altitudesthan corn, allowing for a greater overall area of cultivation, its yield is muchsmaller. Furthermore, in practice, wheat was frequently planted not at thehigher, marginal elevations, but on fertile valley floors where it displaced themore productive indigenous milpas centered around corn. This was true ofthe Valleys of Totonicapan and Quezaltenango. Ladinos migrated to the areain ever-increasing numbers to pursue wheat cultivation on the ejido lands ofnearby indigenous communities. Indigenous communities themselves wereinduced to plant the grain by demands that tribute be paid in wheat.86

Veblen also provides a more detailed look at the problems associated withthe introduction of livestock. To begin with, livestock produces far fewercalories per unit of area than do food crops. In the case of Totonicapan, andGuatemala more generally, however, this was compounded by the fact thatmuch of the livestock was not being raised for food at all, but rather for wool.Production of wool was encouraged by tribute demands for woolen threadand weavings, and by the seventeenth century it had begun to replace cottonas a source of clothing fabric in the highlands. Note that cotton, unlike sheep,does not compete with highland crops for land because it derives entirelyfrom the coast. By 1740 every town in Totonicapan was engaged in raisingsheep. Like wheat, sheep also supplanted traditional milpa cultivation onTotonicapan’s fertile valley floor. Areas of Totonicapan outside the centralvalley that had once been noted for their fertility, despite more marginalsoils, suffered severe erosion from overgrazing during the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, and today are considered almost barren. In sum, writesVeblen, “It is evident that at the end of the colonial period, a population of

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only 30,000 to 40,000 in the Partido de Totonicapan did not find the landresources sufficiently ample to support itself.”87

Turning back, now, to the case of Ostuncalco, I will offer some tentativeobservations and hypotheses based largely on the political demographyprovided in the first half of this chapter. The evidence suggests thatOstuncalco was “reduced” to its present location sometime in the early- tomidsixteenth century.88 This shift of the population center, along with themassive disease-induced decline that accompanied the Spanish conquest, leftlarge areas of formerly settled and cultivated land to the north and west wideopen. Ostuncalco’s population reoccupied the area over the course of the latesixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. So too did ladino ranchers. Es-pecially in the later years, this reoccupation probably reflected the shift frompopulation decline to population growth among native peoples. It may havealso reflected, however, the deterioration in soil productivity engenderedby Spanish agricultural techniques and policies. Congregacion, for example,by grouping together dispersed settlements, created small pockets with arti-ficially high population densities. This may have discouraged the extensivesystem of agriculture based on rotating cultivation. Composicion, as MacLeodsuggests, could have given added impetus to such a tendency since lands leftfallow too long were sometimes swallowed up by ladino hacendados.89

Evidence of cattle raising in the Ostuncalco area dates from 1549.Encomendero Francisco de la Cueva employed fourteen indıgenas to carefor his livestock.90 Wheat cultivation and sheep herding were present at leastas early as 1690.91 All of these endeavors, as has already been discussed, arefar less efficient than traditional milpa agriculture. Moreover, their productswere sometimes destined for tribute payments rather than local consump-tion. The combined effects of soil damage from grazing and more intensiveagriculture, and less efficient food production due to wheat cultivation andlivestock husbandry, forced Ostuncalco’s residents to search farther and far-ther afield for suitable land despite a slow population recovery. As they did so,they ran into ladino cultivators and ranchers who had settled former Mamlands and established expansive haciendas. Boundary conflicts and propertydisputes became endemic, not just between Maya and ladino, but also be-tween Mam and K’iche’, and among and within the Mam communitiesthemselves. Thus Quezaltenango’s Mam people resorted in larger and largernumbers to an outlet that had proved reliable in earlier times of need: thePacific piedmont and coast. Yet as we shall see in the chapter that follows,their access to the coastal zone also became increasingly difficult with thepassage of time.

chapter2Disputing Property: National Politics and Local

Ethnic Conflict in the Formation of aGuatemalan Coffee Zone

the liberal revolution of 1871 has become synonymous with dramaticchanges in land tenure, labor relations, and agricultural production in muchof the literature on Guatemala’s nineteenth century. The leaders of the rev-olution, most notably Justo Rufino Barrios, are either credited or blamed,depending on the author’s perspective, for initiating the Reforma, a fifteen-year period of sweeping legal reforms that supposedly separated indigenouscommunities from their land, and then forced newly disenfranchised com-munity members to enter the coffee workforce. In brief, Barrios and hisfellow “revolutionaries” are believed to have established the conditions thatmade possible Guatemala’s transition to a coffee economy.1

But did they? By 1880 Quezaltenango’s Costa Cuca region had becomethe most productive coffee zone in all of Guatemala (see Table 2).2 Assuch, it epitomized the goals as well as the success of the Liberal Reforma.Yet as I will show over the course of this chapter, the transformation inland tenure and agriculture that allowed the Costa Cuca to achieve thesedramatic production levels had little to do with post-1870 Liberal reforms.Instead, the roots of this process trace back to the 1830s and 1840s, theyears of transition between the first generation of Liberal reformers and theirConservative-popular successors, and well before coffee had been introducedto Guatemala’s western Pacific piedmont. At that time almost the entiretyof the Costa Cuca—nearly 500 sq. km—constituted the ejido of San MartınSacatepequez, a Mam Maya town located in the political district of San JuanOstuncalco.3 The push to open this area to ladino agriculturists, and com-mercially oriented agriculture more generally, found its initial raison d’etre

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table 2. Coffee Production in Guatemala by Department, 1880 and 1887

Year 1880 Year 1887

Trees Coffee Harvested Trees Coffee HarvestedDepartment Planted (in quintales) Planted (in quintales)

Alta Verapaz – – 4,145,011 18,351.9Amatitlan 6,584,992 52,244 5,949,208 27,329.2Baja Verapaz 1,169,956 1,591 2,002,257 1,279.9Chimaltenango – – 3,713,200 24,968.5Chiquimula – – 989,545 3,982.4Escuintla 5,167,278 51,669 5,636,353 38,696.4Guatemala 781,203 4,287 760,598 3,011.7Huehuetenango 15,446 706 625,276 20,479.4Jalapa 87,855 420 30,246 147.4Jutiapa 141,380 620 140,000 104.5Peten 20,478 264 18,823 138.0Quezaltenango 6,913,294 68,798 8,229,542 155,537.8Quiche 6,575 – – –Retalhuleu 2,847,625 28,778 5,289,541 45,190.2Sacatepequez 3,277,943 49,284 4,915,300 38,051.0San Marcos 3,023,119 25,863 11,699,480 133,480.0Santa Rosa – – 4,667,790 3,382.0Solola 2,320,827 19,097 2,830,829 50,777.4Suchitepequez 4,077,719 39,124 5,054,389 89,357.0Zacapa 44,497 538 56,746 810.3

Sources: The information for 1880 is found in Augusto Cazali Avila, “El desarrollo del cultivodel cafe y su influencia en el regimen del trabajo agrıcola epoca de la Reforma Liberal (1871–1885),” Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos 2 (1975): 56–59, under the heading “Estadısticassobre la produccion del cafe (1880).” The information for 1887 comes from a document entitled“Produccion de cafe habida en cada Departamento de la Republica, durante el ano de 1887,”dated November 1888, and transcribed in Jorge Lujan Munoz, Economıa de Guatemala 1750–1940: antologıa de lecturas y materiales, 2 tomos (Guatemala: Universidad de San Carlos, 1980),1:207. Data from the two highest coffee producing departments in 1880 and 1887 have beenhighlighted. A quintal equals 100 lbs.

in sugar and cattle, and in sum, it predated both coffee and the Liberal Re-forma. As the case of Quezaltenango’s Costa Cuca will show, this push toappropriate indigenous land from the 1830s onward was aided by the con-flicts and rivalries that rent indigenous communities themselves. Althoughscholars have sometimes treated indigenous communities as unified, cohesiveentities unsullied by politics or the messiness of factional maneuvering, infact, internal divisions were common, and they could have dire consequencesfor a town’s ability to preserve its historical land base. This was certainly true

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conflict 41

for San Martın Sacatepequez. Although most sanmartineros eventually cameto oppose the presence of ladinos within the municipal territory, others weremore ambivalent, mindful that lucrative financial rewards might accrue tothe town’s impoverished coffers, as well as to their own pockets, if outsiderswere allowed to remain on community land. This ambivalence, coupled withpersistent and unremitting state support for commercial agriculture on in-digenous community land, is what finally brought San Martın into an uneasycoexistence with the ladino usurpers that the state euphemistically referredto as “tenants.”

This chapter will begin to address the paradox raised at the start of thebook: why did popular sectors react so differently to the two generationsof Liberal reformers, given the apparent similarity of their reform projects?Why was the first round of reforms crushed by a massive, sustained insurrec-tion, whereas the second round encountered only sporadic armed resistance?Again, the answer lies, at least in part, in the fact that the second, or post-1871, generation of Liberals did not initiate a revolutionary transformationin land tenure. Rather, the body of laws that comprised the Reforma was ade jure recognition of changes that had been legislated by the first generationof Liberal reformers in the 1830s, and implemented largely by Conservativeauthorities in the decades leading up to 1871. As historian David McCreeryhas noted, it was precisely the years of Conservative rule—the middle thirdof the nineteenth century—that experienced the greatest number of rebel-lions. By the time of the Reforma, popular resistance no longer manifesteditself as violent opposition with such frequency.4

In short, what I intend to demonstrate is that Conservative authorities,not Liberals, broke the indigenous hold on the fertile lands of Guatemala’swestern Pacific coast. Such an endeavor requires an understanding of com-munity claims to the coastal region, followed by a detailed examination ofhow those claims were subverted.

The Ejido of San Martın Sacatepequez on theEve of the Carrera Revolt

By the 1830s a substantial number of ladinos from Ostuncalco, Quezalte-nango, and other highland population centers had occupied, denounced,or otherwise begun to exploit lands located in the historically Mam regionof the costa del sur. Although those of modest means limited themselves toplanting corn and other food crops on a small scale, their wealthier cohortsestablished livestock ranches and sugar trapiches. Indeed, the first was oftenpredicated on the second, because sugar cultivation and production requireda number of draft animals to harvest and transport the cane and to run themill.5 Sometime around 1838 or 1839 Ostuncalco’s ladino municipality was

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obliged to establish an alcalde auxiliar for the area because so many of theladino townspeople resided there at least part of the year. The most impor-tant task of the new official, other than keeping order among a populacesupposedly prone to “excesses,” was to collect the national head tax fromamong the trapiches of the region.6

The stretch of costa land to which so many of Ostuncalco’s residents hadmigrated, however, and to which the new alcalde auxiliar had been givenadministrative responsibility, did not pertain to Ostuncalco at all. Only a verynarrow slice of the town even dipped toward the coast, and it was subjectto frequent challenges, legal and otherwise, from San Pedro Sacatepequez.Rather, the area under the new alcalde’s jurisdiction sat squarely within themunicipal boundaries of San Martın Sacatepequez, and it comprised the richpiedmont land that would come to be known as the Costa Cuca.

What was San Martın’s response to the growing number of ladino ranchesand trapiches that had been established within its territory? Did the town ob-ject to the administrative pretensions of Ostuncalco’s ladino municipalidad? Ordid it derive some sort of advantage from the ladino presence? In particular,for example, did San Martın have a history of generating income by rentingcommunity land to nonresidents? Based on the documentary evidence, theanswer to these last two questions appears to be “no.” That is, the influxof ladinos from Ostuncalco, Quezaltenango, and elsewhere, that began soonafter the turn of the century, was not initiated, nor was it viewed as a posi-tive development, by community leaders or residents. Rather, the influx wastolerated, at least until the late 1830s, because municipal officials lacked thedocumentation that they believed they needed to mount an effective courtchallenge to the intruders. “Unfortunately,” wrote the self-described “comunde Principales and other vecinos of the town of San Martin Sacatepequez”in early 1841, “our forefathers lost the title of the composed lands and ejidoof our town, and for many years we were without it. . . . During such time,there were created, with our permission, some farms, which we could notmake pay [a rental fee] because we lacked the documents that guaranteed us[our property rights].”7

Additional detail is provided by the brief that San Martın’s legal represen-tative or apoderado, Juan Bautista Flores, submitted to the central governmentin December 1841. According to Flores, “the comun [of San Martın], myclient, . . . declared the loss of its titles in a fire that occurred the year of 1811,”leaving behind only a notebook containing the original records of the mea-surement that agrimensor Juan Antonio del Bosque had conducted in 1744.It was in this context that “some ladinos from Ostuncalco, . . . taking advan-tage of the ignorance of the indıgenas, and of their negligence, introducedthemselves on the land [of San Martın] with no more title than their generalinclination to acquire land with little or no work.”8

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conflict 43

This last claim, in particular, is corroborated implicitly by the documentsgenerated by the ladino interlopers themselves. “In the area called Santa AnaPie de la Cuesta,” stated Maximo Castillo in a typical testimony, “locatedon the lands of the town of San Martın, I possess three trapiches . . . [that Iestablished] more than twelve years ago [ca. 1826], having cultivated the landsince then with the understanding that it was baldıo. Moreover, I have madeseveral denuncias, which have had no effect, in the first instance for lackof an agrimensor, and thereafter due to the opposition . . . of San Martın.”9

Neither Castillo nor any of the other ladinos claimed to have occupied theland that they exploited within San Martın’s municipal territory as part of arental agreement, at least not prior to 1839. Indeed, all of them denied thatthe land even had pertained to San Martın at the time that they initially hadoccupied it. Rather, the ladinos insisted that originally their possessions hadbeen so-called terrenos baldıos, and thus they had denounced them on oneor more occasions in an attempt to gain formal legal ownership, especiallyfollowing the spate of land reform laws that issued from the state beginningin the early-1830s. Not until 1839, when it became clear that San Martınreally did have a compelling legal claim to the area in question, did the ladinosquatters enter into rental agreements or other financial arrangements withSan Martın’s officials in exchange for permission to use the town’s land.10

In sum, then, because San Martın had lost its official land title in 1811,the town’s authorities feared bringing legal suit against, or even demandinga rental fee from, the ladinos who established trapiches and ranches withinthe community ejido over the course of the 1810s, 1820s, and early 1830s.By the mid-1830s, however, San Martın’s authorities began to reconsidertheir options. In 1834, and then again in 1835 and 1836, they issued a seriesof indirect challenges to the ladino usurpations. These included using therecently passed Liberal reform laws to denounce some of the sought-afterlands on the town’s behalf, as well as issuing complaints of crop damageagainst the intruders. Finally, in 1836, municipal authorities took the bull byits horns: they embarked on a campaign to restore the community’s officialtitle so that they might dispute the usurpations once and for all.11

Why did San Martın’s leaders and residents decide on this new course ofaction, particularly in light of their earlier fears? Several factors may explainthe town’s change of heart. At a very general level, the ladino populationof the western highlands was increasing dramatically throughout the earlynineteenth century. Ostuncalco’s ladinos, for example, jumped from approx-imately 400 in 1811 to 850 by 1840.12 And this increase was reflected in theirnumbers within San Martın’s ejido. By 1841 Quezaltenango’s Corregidorestimated that over 100 ladinos maintained possessions there.13 Thus, whatbegan as a slow, if annoying, trickle in the early years, threatened to becomean unmanageable torrent by the mid-1830s.

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To San Martın’s residents the growing presence of ladinos on communityland was alarming in and of itself. But of even greater consequence than theladinos’ simple presence was the fact that their expanding numbers had avery serious, and harmful, impact on the viability of indigenous agriculture.Ladinos, unlike indigenous cultivators, were much more likely to introducecattle into the area, either as part of a livestock ranch, or as beasts of burdennecessary for harvesting and milling sugar cane. And because most cattlewere allowed to roam freely, eating and trampling whatever lay in their path,the potential for livestock damage to indigenous crops increased with eachnew ladino enterprise. Keep in mind, as well, that the Mam population ofgreater Ostuncalco, and of San Martın in particular, also was expanding overthis same period, implying increased indigenous reliance on coastal milpas.14

Needless to say, complaints of crop damage on the coast emerged in the1830s and proliferated thereafter.15

The plethora of land reform legislation that marked the 1830s meant thatthe growing presence of ladinos within San Martın’s ejido had a secondnegative implication. Recall the earlier discussion of ladino petitions anddocuments that concerned coastal possessions. Like Maximo Castillo, mostladinos exhibited a ready willingness to denounce areas within San Martınunder the cover of these new reform laws. In this endeavor they were joinedby regional government officials, eager for their own slice of the pie, andwilling to engage in questionable practices to abet their own efforts, andthose of their associates, to expropriate land from San Martın.16

This second implication, in particular—the overt push to formally and ir-reversibly dismember San Martın’s ejido, property by property—underscoredfor community leaders the need to recover the town’s title. Each new Liberalland law moved the ladinos’ disingenuous assertions that they simply were oc-cupying terrenos baldıos another step closer to reality. Indeed, as the example ofCastillo demonstrates, many of the ladinos who occupied San Martın’s ejidorepeatedly denounced their informal possessions with each new round ofreform legislation. This trend culminated in the potentially devastating lawsof 1836, which provided a legal avenue for privatizing community ejidos.17

In response, San Martın decided to put aside its fears, and to embark onthe risky process of recovering the legal title to its territory. Municipalofficials began a community-wide collection and then, in early 1837,they sent a formal request to the state, asking for the revalidation of their losttitle. Surprisingly, in what can only be characterized as a dramatic reversal ofstate policy, Liberal officials responded by quickly issuing San Martın a newtitle in March of that same year.18

Why would a government so intent on promoting the privatization ofcommunity ejido land extend title to an indigenous municipality for over346 caballerıas? In answer, let us turn to the events that were unfolding

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conflict 45

simultaneously in early 1837. Less than two weeks before San Martın recov-ered its title, several thousand indigenous residents of Ostuncalco and thesurrounding Mam towns rebelled against the judge of Ostuncalco’s newlyestablished circuit court. The post had been created the previous year as partof the Livingston Codes, a major reorganization of the Guatemalan judicialsystem based on the ideas of Edward Livingston. Liberal reformers desired torid Guatemala of what they viewed to be the retrograde influence of Spanishcolonial rule, and the Livingston Codes represented the culmination of theirefforts.19

Felix Morales assumed the position of Ostuncalco’s circuit judge in lateJanuary 1837. As the first person to fill this post, he confronted the difficulttask of setting up the physical and organizational infrastructure that a circuitjudge would need to exercise his duties. In addition to a census of potentialjurors, something specifically called for by the Livingston Codes, Morales alsowas charged with establishing a circuit courthouse, complete with messengersand assistants; a circuit jail; and accommodations suitable for Quezaltenango’sdistrict court justices when they brought their tribunal to Ostuncalco threetimes a year. The only problem was that the state did not provide Morales withthe resources that he required to implement any of these projects. Instead,he was forced to enjoin the municipalities of his jurisdiction to supply thelabor and funds needed for the new facilities.20

Censuses and public works projects were delicate matters in nineteenthcentury Guatemala, even in communities long inured to the permanentpresence of higher-level state authorities, and the frequent demands thattheir presence implied. Ostuncalco, however, had never been in such closeproximity to a direct representative of the national state. For many of thetown’s residents, the sole fact that a circuit court justice had been placed intheir midst probably was cause for concern, never mind the alarming matterof a census, often linked to higher taxes, or the new courthouse and jailrequired by judge Morales. If the latter hoped to gain municipal supportfor embarking on these projects, he would have to proceed slowly, andwith extreme caution. Instead, almost from day one, Morales studiously setabout alienating local authorities, ladinos and indıgenas alike, with a constantbarrage of onerous demands delivered in an arrogant and abrasive manner.It should not be surprising that local residents decided to demonstrate theirdissatisfaction with the policies of the Liberal Galvez regime against such anobvious and provocative target.21

Of particular concern to the Mam towns were the legislative changes thathad removed barriers to the expropriation of the community ejido. Theypaid close attention to the conflicts that were developing in San Martınand elsewhere. The state’s own agrimensor, Valerio Ignacio Rivas, appearsto have been instrumental in alerting indigenous leaders to the danger they

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faced from unscrupulous authorities and wealthy ladinos. In particular, Rivassingled out Macario Rodas, Felix Morales’ superior in Quezaltenango, as akey force behind the unscrupulous takeover of areas within San Martın’sejido. When Morales ordered Ostuncalco to sell a piece of community landthat abutted the church in order to pay for the construction of the new courthouse, he set off the rebellion. Unbeknownst to the judge, this very samearea had been the subject of controversy for almost fifteen years. Throughoutthe early 1820s the town’s indigenous leaders had fought to prevent its sale,at one point even amassing hundreds of residents to block the transaction.22

In sum, the circuit judge’s order was the proverbial spark that set the tinderbox ablaze, and on March 8, 1837, the Mam towns of western Quezaltenangoerupted in conflagration. Less than two weeks later, on March 21—still threedays before the Ostuncalco rebellion was definitively crushed—the state is-sued a new title for San Martın Sacatepequez’s 346-caballerıa ejido.23 Was thetiming of the new title mere coincidence, or had the fear of popular insurrec-tion impelled Liberal authorities to swallow their objections to communityland ownership in a hurry? In contrast to Ostuncalco, Cajola, Siguila, andChiquirichapa, no direct evidence implicated San Martın’s authorities in therebellion. One state official speculated that perhaps the town had not par-ticipated precisely because it wished to avoid jeopardizing its petition for anew title.24 Regardless of whether or not sanmartineros involved themselvesdirectly in the Ostuncalco rebellion, it is clear that the Liberal state couldbe forced to bend under the weight of public pressure. Following the eventsin Ostuncalco, dozens of other communities rebelled against various aspectsof the Liberal reform project in what would come to be called the CarreraRevolt, and before the year was out the Galvez administration had begunto backpedal on many key issues.25 Perhaps most importantly, the Liberalregime restored the ban on privatizing community ejidos.26

Whether because of the Ostuncalco rebellion, or a forthright commitmentto the pursuit of justice, Liberal authorities reissued a title to San Martın inlate March 1837. The next step for community leaders was to remeasure thetown’s boundaries and to reestablish deteriorated or vandalized markers. Forthis purpose they hired agrimensor Valerio Ignacio Rivas, as well as a legalrepresentative, or apoderado, Jose Marıa Colomo.27

Despite this promising start, the town was unable to place an agrimensor inthe field for a full two years. The most formidable obstacle was the oppositionof the ladinos who occupied parcels of land within the community ejido.This group was led by Macario Rodas, the jefe polıtico of Quezaltenangoduring the mid-1830s, and subsequently, under the secessionist state of LosAltos, of Totonicapan.28 According to agrimensor Rivas, the sanmartinerosclaimed that “Rodas . . . tried to intimidate [the townspeople] by making useof third parties to tell them that the remeasurement would do nothing but

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conflict 47

incur expenses and cause disputes with the new [ladino] possessors.”29 Atthe same time, Rodas and his cohorts also resorted to more heavy-handedtactics. In the fall of 1837, for example, Quezaltenango notable GertrudisRobles threatened the town’s coastal milpas with a large herd of cattle justas the crops were nearing harvest. When various residents blocked the pas-sage of Robles’ cattle, he denounced San Martın’s “revolutionary character”before Quezaltenango’s magistrado ejecutor.30 As a result, the town’s alcalde,as well as municipal secretary Miguel Ralda, a ladino from Ostuncalco, andOstuncalco’s ladino juez de paz, Perfecto Galindo, were jailed for several daysbefore the case was thrown out for lack of evidence.31

Although such intimidation did not cause San Martın to retract its callfor a remeasurement, it did help delay the process significantly. Rivas himselfwas a party to these delays, fearful of the wrath of Quezaltenango’s impor-tant ladinos. Early on, he resigned his commission with San Martın whenladino opposition to the remeasurement became manifest. Only persistent,energetic pleas from the apoderado, Jose Marıa Colomo, as well as communityleaders, convinced the agrimensor to reverse his decision. Nevertheless, Rivasstill held off on commencing the remeasurement until things died down inthe wake of the Robles affair. When he finally made his way to San Martınin early March 1838, Quezaltenango already had seceded from Guatemalaas the capital of the new state of Los Altos. Shortly after entering town, theagrimensor received an urgent message from Los Altos authorities orderinghim to appear in Quezaltenango. San Martın’s leaders protested vigorously,fearing a ruse, and at one point they even prevented Rivas from leaving. Inthe end, however, the agrimensor was given safe passage out of town. Butjust as the sanmartineros had suspected, once in Quezaltenango, Rivas waspromptly tossed into jail under the charge of having collaborated with rebelleader Rafael Carrera. He remained in prison for over a month before beingbanished from Los Altos altogether.32

Macario Rodas, meanwhile, reported to Los Altos authorities that a re-bellion was imminent in San Martın. Four hundred troops were organizedimmediately, and placed under the command of Gertrudis Robles and JoseMarıa Galvez. By the time that the punitive expedition reached Ostuncalco,however, San Martın’s officials already had released the agrimensor. Rivas as-sured Robles and Galvez, as he passed them in Ostuncalco, that the situationhad been resolved, and that the town was nowhere near rebellion. This didnot stop Robles, however, from insisting that the troops continue on anyway“to intimidate the indıgenas . . . so that [they] would not try again to measuretheir ejido.”33

Apparently Robles’ tactic did have a chilling effect, even if it did notbury San Martın’s desire for a remeasurement once and for all. Communityleaders refrained from pressing for another agrimensor until May 1839, more

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than a year later.34 This delay also may have been due to the fact that thetown’s apoderado, Jose Marıa Colomo, was forced to go into hiding for anunspecified period of time following the so-called rebellion in San Martın.35

Nevertheless, in the interim period, community leaders continued to planfor the eventuality of a remeasurement, which, they promised, finally wouldallow them to remove the ladinos from the town’s coastal territory. Beginningsometime in 1838, and through part of 1839, a second collection was levied topay for the expenses that were anticipated for the project. In its latter stages,the collection was overseen by San Martın’s first alcalde, Pedro Vasquez Ysara.All told, each of the town’s households contributed twenty-one reales.36

Any number of reasons might explain why San Martın returned to petitionfor the remeasurement of its ejido in May 1839. Perhaps the passage of timehad damped the flames of ladino antagonism. Perhaps the Los Altos regimeno longer considered apoderado Colomo persona non grata. Or perhaps, witha burgeoning war chest, community leaders simply felt emboldened to riskthe ire of the ladino interlopers once again. In any case, regardless of the actualreason, San Martın submitted its request for remeasurement on May 13, andthis time Los Altos authorities responded with haste rather than obstacles.They immediately assigned the commission to Manuel Vargas, an agrimensoraccused by Rivas of corruption and favoritism toward his wealthy ladinopatrons.37 Vargas, however, refused to play along on this occasion. He rejectedthe appointment, thus upsetting official expectations for an “acceptable”outcome. Instead, the commission passed to agrimensor Lorenzo Meza.38

Meza entered the field in mid-June, but his activities soon were haltedby none other than Gertrudis Robles. Presenting land titles that had beenissued to him by the Liberal Galvez administration in March and April of1837 (the same time at which Galvez retitled San Martın’s territory), Roblesconvinced Los Altos officials to suspend the remeasurement until judicialauthorities could sort out the conflicting claims. In response, San Martın’sapoderado, Jose Marıa Colomo, rushed to Quezaltenango and struck a dealwith Robles. San Martın would refrain from challenging Robles’ possessions,under pain of a 500 peso fine, apparently in exchange for the latter allowingthe remeasurement to resume immediately.39 State officials then reversedtheir earlier call for a suspension, and instructed Meza to push on. They alsoadvised Robles, and any other ladinos who believed themselves affected bythe remeasurement, that their respective possessions would not be prejudiceduntil each case had been reviewed on an individual basis.

Over the next several weeks, a number of additional ladino claimants ap-peared before the Los Altos state to demand protection for their possessions.40

As agrimensor Meza’s survey progressed, however, demonstrating clearly thatSan Martın’s ejido encompassed the entirety of the disputed area, theclaimants also negotiated separate accords with community officials. They

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conflict 49

agreed to supplement the town’s coffers with rental fees and ad hoc pay-ments as long as San Martın refrained from challenging their possessions. Itis unclear whether the initial impetus for these accords emanated from withinladino or indigenous ranks, or how many indigenous leaders, or commoners,for that matter, knew that a modus vivendi had been reached, and on whatterms, with the ladino interlopers. San Martın’s governor, Andres Paz, andthe town’s apoderado, Jose Marıa Colomo, are named most frequently in theagreements, although municipal secretary Miguel Ralda—a ladino—also ismentioned, as are the municipalidad and alcaldes of 1839, in generic terms,and one or two additional individuals, presumably principales.41

The example of Manuel Orellana, although not necessarily representative,sheds light on the process by which the indigenous–ladino accords werereached. Orellana inherited a sugar trapiche from Ostuncalco’s parish priest,Jose Marıa Orellana, ca. 1835.42 Named El Aguacate, the trapiche was locatedwithin the coastal territory of San Martın Sacatepequez, and appears to havebeen established during the early 1810s. Orellana continued to operate thetrapiche following Padre Jose Marıa’s death, during the period when cropdamage from ladino-owned cattle such as his prompted San Martın to pursuethe retitling and remeasurement of its ejido described above. Sometime in late1839, probably December, Orellana approached the town’s governor, AndresPaz, when the latter happened by El Aguacate in the company of municipalsecretary Miguel Ralda and interpreter Francisco Peres. He asked Paz if “healone had the authority to delineate . . . the properties that the ladinos heldin the lands of the town of San Martın,” and if not, “would he please convey[Orellana’s request] to the Municipalidad . . . so that they might delineatehis property [in exchange for] an annual rent,” or for Orellana’s promise tocontribute financially to community-wide collections “like any other son ofthe town. [E]very year the municipal officials change,” Orellana concluded,“and I do not want to be in conflict with each Municipalidad over the land.”43

Paz responded, according to Orellana, that “the town was quite happywith what he had suggested, and that they would consider him like a cri-ado [dependent] of San Martın, and that he would be able to possess theproperty called El Aguacate without being harmed . . . since he would berespected by all the town. . . .” Moreover, Paz assured Orellana, as governor,he alone could “demarcate the boundaries of the property . . . without needof the Municipalidad.”44 Evidently, Orellana remained skeptical of this lastclaim, because he continued to press Paz to involve the latter body. At thispoint secretary Ralda interjected that “in the name of said Municipalidad,”Orellana indeed was recognized as a “criado of San Martın,” and all he hadto do at the moment was fork over one peso for church repairs.45

Sometime later, although again, Orellana does not specify the date, “thealcaldes, accompanied by many individuals of the town of San Martın,”

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arrived at El Aguacate to collect an additional ten pesos. Presumably, theirintention was to cement the deal worked out earlier between governor Pazand Orellana. Finding the latter absent, however, they informed Orellana’swife that he should pay ten pesos to apoderado Colomo as soon as possible tosecure the status of El Aguacate. This Orellana did on January 2, 1840.46

Community Land under Conservative Rule (Or, How SanMartın Lost Its Ejido)

Agrimensor Meza finished his remeasurement in late October 1839. He foundthat Juan Antonio del Bosque had made many errors when he calculatedthe size of San Martın’s territory in 1744. Although this should not besurprising, the cumulative magnitude of the errors defies imagination. Meza’sfinal tally of 1,085 caballerıas is over three times del Bosque’s original estimate.Nevertheless, the agrimensor concluded that San Martın held legal title to theentire area despite the fact that its true size had never been known. He turnedin his report to the Los Altos government, where it was placed before theofficial revisor or inspector, Juan Jose Flores, to be checked for accuracy. Florescompleted his review by early February 1840, and San Martın retrieved itsland title and accompanying documents sometime thereafter.47

The fortunes of the state of Los Altos, meanwhile, went from bad tononexistent. Rafael Carrera’s successful conquest of Guatemala City in early1839, far from diminishing the threat posed by the secessionist state’s formersuzerain, merely reinforced the likelihood of a future invasion. At the sametime, Los Altos authorities found it more difficult, with each passing day,to maintain control over the indigenous communities that fell within theirown, self-proclaimed, national boundaries. Indeed, it is not clear that Car-rera’s military victory over Los Altos troops at Solola on January 26, 1840was necessary to seal the secessionists’ downfall. Quezaltenango’s indigenousmunicipalidad, along with those of several surrounding communities, rose upagainst Los Altos officials, and proclaimed their support for Guatemala andthe rebel leader turned kingpin, almost as soon as the city’s defensive forceshad left to repel Carrera’s imminent invasion.48

Thus, by the time that San Martın could have begun acting on the resultsof Meza’s remeasurement, the town—and indeed, all of Guatemala—hadbeen reunited under Conservative authorities and the de facto rule of RafaelCarrera. What were the implications of this political turn of events—of thedefeat of Guatemalan Liberalism, as well as of the state of Los Altos—for theindigenous petitioners of San Martın? Had their situation improved simplyby virtue of Carrera’s victory? Almost all of the literature on Guatemala’snineteenth century would answer this question in the affirmative. By com-paring Liberal and Conservative policies, not only in terms of their own

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conflict 51

rhetoric, but more importantly, in light of their actual impact on partic-ular people and places, we can test the accuracy of this historiographicalclaim.

Recall that even before Carrera’s triumph, popular pressure had forcedthe Liberal state to backpedal in its efforts to reform land tenure legislation.The law of November 1837 restored official protection to the communityejido, and explicitly restricted baldıos—areas eligible for denunciation andprivatization—to the former category of realengos, or crown lands that hadnever pertained to a community, corporation, or individual. In addition,the law no longer sought to specify how communities had to administertheir ejido. For example, communities no longer were obliged to rent ejidoland to noncommunity members.49 Carrera evidently found the intent ofthe November 1837 law sufficiently supportive of community land rights,because he never altered it significantly at any time during his rule.50

Given this new, apparently sympathetic climate, how did San Martın planto proceed? What would it do about the recurrent crop damage inflicted byladino-owned livestock? More to the point, how would the town reconcilethe existence of ladino possessions within its municipal borders? Part of theproblem in answering these questions lies with how we conceptualize SanMartın itself. In contrast, perhaps, to the image projected by Eric Wolf ’s“closed corporate peasant community,” San Martın was not a unified, or-ganic whole that acted with singular purpose or reflexive cohesion.51 Rather,it was a municipality of some two to three thousand people whose cohe-siveness, when operative at all, was the end result of political struggles thatsubmerged and repressed dissent while building alliances from disparate, andfrequently antagonistic, factions. Thus, although the shared culture, ethnic-ity, and history of San Martın’s inhabitants might lull state administrators andvisiting anthropologists alike into believing that they acted with an inherentor natural unanimity, the very elements that bound the community togetheralso provided the foundation and the weapons for tearing it apart.52

In answer to the questions posed above, then, not all sanmartinerosagreed on what to do next, now that the town had recovered its lost landtitle, and remeasured and demarcated its territorial boundaries. Despiteearlier promises to use the new documentation to remove outsiders fromcommunity land, governor Paz and a handful of involved or allied principales,including former first alcalde Pedro Vasquez Ysara, appear to have beensatisfied with doing nothing at all apart from adhering to the vague statusquo that they had negotiated with the ladino squatters. The latter wouldbe allowed to remain in exchange for financial contributions and, as before,crop damage would be investigated on an ad hoc basis, particularly if thepublic demanded it. Paz and his associates had no intention of challengingthe continued presence of ladino benefactors who had paid several hundred

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pesos toward remeasuring the community’s territory and, conversely,insuring themselves against eviction.53

Throughout the remainder of 1840, in the wake of Carrera’s rise to power,and the fall of Los Altos, San Martın remained outwardly calm. Perhaps asubstantial portion of the town’s inhabitants abided their governor’s deci-sion to do nothing with the recovered land title and the results of Meza’sremeasurement. Or perhaps, as some evidence suggests, they simply werenever informed about his change of heart. Instead, they waited, wonder-ing when would the governor begin the process of kicking out the ladinointruders? As 1840 turned into 1841, patience began to wear thin. Severalinterrelated factors spurred growing frustration with the governor’s inaction.First, ladino-owned livestock continued to damage indigenous milpas, butnow Paz no longer exhibited much enthusiasm for investigating the charges.Among the most insensitive and flagrant violators were some of the verymen with whom he and the municipal officers of 1839 had made financialarrangements. These ladinos brushed aside demands to fence their cattle orprovide restitution by arguing that the destroyed crops had been planted onland that they had purchased from San Martın’s governor and municipal of-ficials. In other words, it was not the ranchers and trapicheros who were atfault, but rather the indigenous cultivators, for establishing their milpas onladino-owned land, within easy reach of foraging cattle.54

The problem with this line of reasoning, however, was that instead ofexculpating the guilty parties, it placed them squarely at the center of asecond, related, controversy by exposing their behind-the-scenes negotia-tions with the governor and his associates. Worse still, the ladinos’ ineptdefense was based on the inflammatory claim that Paz et al had sold themcommunity land outright. Although this claim does not appear to have anybasis in the documentary evidence, a significant number of sanmartinerosfound it credible. Even among those who did not, however, the governor’sless-than-open manner of conducting town business—exemplified by hisfailure to consult the wider community before making financial deals withthe ladino squatters—had become unacceptable. In the words of principalAndres Vasquez,

unlike . . . [other governors, who] call together the principales and residents of thetown to consult with them about everything, [Paz] does not involve the town at all.[O]n the issue of [community] lands, he has not consulted with [us] about anything,nor has he informed the town about their status. [F]rom the rumors people knowthat the ladinos have given money, but the governor has not told anybody whetherit is loaned or on account of the lands.55

What bothered a growing segment of San Martın’s populace, then, was notjust that governor Paz had threatened the integrity of their ejido by treatingwith ladino squatters, but that in making this decision he had neglected to

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conflict 53

involve or even inform many of the town’s leaders as well as the communityas a whole. The sense of betrayal was reinforced by persistent rumors that Pazand company had skimmed off some of the monies that they had collected topay for the remeasurement and associated legal fees. Nor was it allayed by theincreasingly frequent binges of Paz and former first alcalde Pedro VasquezYsara, or the revealing recriminations that the two men showered uponone another as their intoxicated cheer degenerated into angry squabbling.According to principales Andres and Martın Vasquez, various townspeoplehad heard “the governor say to Pedro Vasquez that he is a thief [because]he has the town’s money, and Vasquez say to the governor that he, too, is athief, because he is asking for money from the ladinos for the land.” Afterlistening to the drunken pair shout “publicly that both have money that theycollected for the land remeasurement . . . the residents say no wonder nothinghas resulted from remeasuring the land, since their money . . . still may be inthe hands of the governor and Pedro Vasquez.”56

Crop damage, land sales, secret agreements, embezzlement, drunkendebauchery . . . by early 1841 there were ample reasons for community res-idents to be concerned, and to speculate, about why governor Paz did notchallenge the ladino squatters now that the town’s ejido had been retitledand remeasured. A number of dissident principales, led most forcefully byAntonio Peres, and including several past and even present elected munici-pal officers, openly questioned his failure to act.57 They proclaimed that theonly way truly to safeguard the community—against both crop damage andland usurpation—was to expel all ladinos from the town with the utmosthaste. Tensions mounted as more and more sanmartineros reached the sameconclusion. Finally, on April 7, the conflict came to a head. A large crowdsought out and threatened governor Paz and his like-minded companions.Although no physical harm actually came to them, the governor was shakennonetheless, particularly by the calls for his resignation.58

Both factions then petitioned the Corregidor of Quezaltenango, FranciscoCascara, to punish the other. The governor and his associates pressed Cascarato round up Antonio and Nicolas Peres, Diego Juares, and Martın Vasquezfor “having incited the uprising . . . [of] the greater part of the town” in or-der to achieve “our destruction. . . .” These “restless enemies of the publicgood . . . menace us with death if we do not comply with their petitions”to expel the ladino “renters of our lands, who annually satisfy their corre-sponding quotas without any fault whatsoever. . . . We cannot, nor shouldwe,” concluded the governor, “deprive the tenant of the [land] as long as hefulfills his obligation.”59

The “conspirators,” meanwhile, called on the Corregidor to relieve the town of thegovernor and his accomplices, because they . . . cannot govern . . . without commit-ting offenses and disturbances. . . . The drunkenness of the Governor and Principales

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who accompany him continues day and night . . . without doubt, with money thatthey request from the [ladino] agriculturists, an evil that we wish to avoid so that, inshort, no part of our land ends up being alienated without our knowledge. . . .

In addition, the petitioners continued, the “Governor and his companionsshould be ordered, along with the Apoderado and the Secretary, to renderbefore [the Corregidor] the accounts of income and expenses [related tothe land remeasurement], specifying which ladinos made a contribution, forhow much, and under what conditions.”60

Cascara immediately called on his lieutenant in Ostuncalco—encargadoMaximo Castillo Ocampo—to investigate the conflict. After questioningwitnesses for both factions, as well as at least one of the ladinos who wasinvolved in the case, the encargado returned his report to the Corregidor. Tobegin, Castillo wrote, “impartial witnesses cannot be found because it is thecomun itself that stands against the Governor and principal Pedro Vasquez.”Only four men—of whom three were lay religious officials—agreed to testifyon behalf of the governor.61 As for those who identified with the so-calledrebels, the encargado reiterated, “if all of these were questioned, there wouldbe no end because the entire comun is in agreement against the Governorand Vasquez. . . .”62

“With regard to [the charges that] the comun puts forward in its peti-tion,” Castillo continued, “the only exaggeration . . . is when they say that theGovernor is drunk day and night. This is not so, although it is true that he fre-quently gets drunk with Pedro Vasquez.” Otherwise, the encargado concluded,the opposition’s allegations “are all true.” The governor “does not keep pub-lic order,” and his intoxicated revelry with the former first alcalde only helpsto encourage “the introduction of contraband Aguardiente [into the town],something that the comun will not tolerate, and for which reason even thewomen stand against him.” In reference to the monies that the ladino agri-culturists paid to governor Paz and apoderado Colomo, “some have given thiswithout all of the comun being informed, and in the interest of perpetuatingtheir respective possessions without being challenged by the indıgenas. More-over, some of the [contributions] were not disclosed in the contracts” thatwere signed between the two parties. Finally, on the topic of crop damage, theencargado wrote, “some [ladino] agriculturists imprudently have not wanted topay the indıgenas for the injury that their livestock have caused them. . . .”63

As for the charges leveled against the “rebels” by the governor and hisassociates, Castillo found them baseless. “They are all false without a doubt,”he wrote, a conclusion amply supported not only by the testimony takenbetween April 20 and May 8, but also by the additional documentation thatboth preceded and followed the so-called uprising of early 1841. There wasno evidence of any rental agreement or financial quid pro quo between

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conflict 55

San Martın and the ladino interlopers until mid-1839, after agrimensor Mezaalready had commenced remeasuring the community’s ejido. And the ad hocpayments made between September 1839 and January 1840 hardly could beconstrued as “annual rental quotas.”64

Nevertheless, after completely rejecting the veracity of the governor’sclaims, Castillo ended his report with a series of recommendations that in-corporated the basic substance of the former’s argument, at least where itconcerned the ladino usurpers. “To oblige the ladinos to vacate [San Martın’s]lands would not be just,” he wrote the Corregidor, “because they have largefincas on them, which they established with the knowledge of the indıgenasmany year ago.” Thus, in addition to deposing governor Paz, as well as or-dering him, along with former first alcalde Vasquez and apoderado Colomo,to account for the money they had collected from ladinos and indıgenasalike, Castillo suggested that the Corregidor force the town to send its landdocuments to the capital for further scrutiny. If the Supreme Governmentdecided to accept the veracity of San Martın’s claims vis-a-vis the vast ter-ritory in question, then it also should oblige community officials to accept“an agreement with the [ladino] agriculturists, allowing them to continuecultivating their fincas for a just and moderate rent [and the promise] not tocause harm to the indıgenas.”65

Perhaps from the perspective of the ladinos involved, officials and nonoffi-cials alike, the encargado’s judgment appeared even-handed and reasonable. Heopenly acknowledged the veracity of the testimony given by sanmartinerosopposed to compromise with the ladino agriculturists. He accepted thatSan Martın’s governor, former municipal officials, and the apoderado hadmade questionable, behind-the-scenes deals with ladinos who wished toavoid as much public scrutiny as possible. He also accepted that some of theladino agriculturists had attempted to avoid paying for the damages that werecaused by their livestock. To remedy the situation, the encargado called on theCorregidor to force the embezzling officials to pay up, and to make sure thatin the future the ladino finqueros would pay an annual rent for the use of SanMartın’s land and that they would prevent their livestock from destroyingany more crops.

From the perspective of San Martın’s indigenous opposition, however,encargado Castillo’s findings simply reinforced the suspicion that local ladinoofficials were incapable of impartiality in disputes between ladinos andindıgenas. On the one hand, the encargado recognized the surreptitious man-ner in which ladino finqueros had attempted to maintain their possessions andthe callous disregard they had exhibited at the destruction caused by theirlivestock. On the other hand, his proposed remedy gave indigenous plaintiffslittle reason to believe that their problems would be resolved. The practicaldifficulties alone in enforcing annual rental payments and a moratorium on

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future crop damage by ladino-owned livestock rendered the encargado’s rec-ommendations unrealistic and naive at best. Add the fact that many ladinosstill denied any wrongdoing, and the historical record of ladino indifferencein the face of indigenous complaints, and the potential for a resolution alongthe lines envisioned by the encargado diminished to nil.

Indeed, it was precisely the historical framework that Castillo had to ig-nore, because it directly challenged the appropriateness of his recommenda-tions while simultaneously providing ample grounds to evict the ladinos fromSan Martın’s territory. Although it appears to have been true, for example,that some ladino possessions originally were established with the knowledgeof San Martın’s authorities, this had been contingent upon the latter’s fearthat any legal challenge would be difficult due to the destruction of thetown’s title by fire, and in lieu of the remeasurement and retitling that finallyoccurred between 1837 and 1839. In addition, whether established with SanMartin’s permission or not, ladino finqueros had engaged in various tacticsover the years to challenge the legal basis of San Martın’s territory and to ap-propriate it for themselves. In light of this historical precedence, it appearedobvious to San Martın’s indigenous plaintiffs that the continued presence ofladinos within their boundaries posed a danger to the integrity of the town’sterritory. Castillo, however, remained studiously oblivious.

Perhaps the encargado’s obliviousness was reinforced by his own ties to SanMartın’s coastal land. According to the indigenous opposition, the encargadohimself maintained four estates there. In sum, he could not acknowledgethat the combination of San Martın’s well-documented property rights tothe Costa Cuca, and the historical precedence of ladino attempts to abro-gate these rights, justified more dramatic state action—even eviction of theoffending ladinos—without risking the loss of his own possessions.66

Corregidor Cascara responded to encargado Castillo’s recommendationsby deposing San Martın’s governor and by ordering the municipalidad to re-turn a slate of new candidates from which he would choose a successor.67

Predictably, however, many residents were completely unsatisfied with thesemeasures. Public sentiment had gelled around the demand for the completeexpulsion of all ladinos. On May 24 leaders of the dissident faction sent off an-other petition, but this time they bypassed the Corregidor and went straightto the president. The petition repeated past grievances of crop damage andcorruption, but in addition a new charge was leveled: ladino squatters werenow attempting to use violence against individual community members whowere active in organizing the opposition. The only acceptable solution, thepetitioners concluded, was to order all ladinos off San Martın’s land. More-over, they added, although the Corregidor already had been informed oftheir demand, he had done nothing about it.68

San Martın’s petition never actually made it to the president. It was sentto the office of the Fiscal, and from there back to the Corregidor. The latter

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interviewed several additional ladino litigants, and filed a report in late June.Unfortunately for San Martın, the Corregidor’s interpretation of events wasbased even more firmly in ignorance, or a willful disregard for the facts, thanthe encargado’s. At least the encargado had recognized that because of the 1744measurement San Martın’s ejido predated the title issued by the Liberal statein 1837. The Corregidor, by contrast, repeated the assertions of the ladinousurpers. He stated that when the ladinos first began to utilize the coastallands they were considered terrenos baldıos. In the Corregidor’s view, SanMartın had not had control of the disputed area prior to 1837. Even afterthat date, he argued, the town only had rights to 346 caballerıas. There wasno way that San Martın could claim the additional 700 caballerıas measuredby Lorenzo Meza in 1839.69

After receiving the Corregidor’s report, the Fiscal agreed that San Martındid not have a legal right to the entire 1,085 caballerıas measured by Meza.Like the encargado, however, the Fiscal clearly believed that the 346 caballerıasretitled by San Martın in 1837 had constituted community territory from thetime of del Bosque’s 1744 measurement. As for the additional 700 caballerıas,that was another matter. The town would have to pay the state for the amountof land over the original 346 caballerıas in order to retain legal possession.If San Martın chose this route, the Fiscal warned, then it would be almostimpossible to force the town to part with any land at all. In either case, theFiscal predicted a difficult struggle, and he advised the Corregidor that itprobably would be far easier to convince the sanmartineros not to expel theladinos than to try to disabuse them of their belief that every one of the1,085 caballerıas measured in 1839 pertained to their community. Why didit matter if San Martın continued to count the disputed area as a part ofits municipal territory, the Fiscal asked, as long as the ladinos were allowedto remain? In conclusion, he suggested that the Corregidor propose thefollowing arrangement. San Martın would permit ladinos to use its land inexchange for formal recognition of the town’s legal claim, a rental contractspecifying the size and annual fee of each property, and a promise from eachtenant to fence their livestock where necessary.70

San Martın’s new apoderado, Juan Bautista Flores, delivered San Martın’s re-jection of the Fiscal’s proposal on August 2, 1841. Town authorities adamantlyopposed the continued presence of ladinos on community land, and theycontinued to appeal directly to Rafael Carrera and the president to inter-vene on their behalf. In December 1841 apoderado Flores addressed stateofficials with an especially clear and reasoned justification for the commu-nity’s demands. He began with Juan Antonio del Bosque’s 1744 measurementof San Martın’s ejido. The importance of this document, Flores wrote, wasnot the actual amount of land that had been measured, but rather that delBosque had established the validity of the town’s historical boundaries. Af-ter the restoration of its title in 1837, he continued, San Martın resolved to

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remeasure its territory to see which ladinos in fact were usurping its land.Using newer, more accurate techniques, agrimensor Lorenzo Meza counted1,085 caballerıas within the area that del Bosque originally had estimated at346. Although such a difference might seem difficult to believe, Meza’s notesmake clear that his survey did not deviate from the boundaries followed bydel Bosque in 1744. The only difference between the two measurementswas in how the area of the circumscribed territory had been calculated. Inother words, it was incorrect for the Corregidor and Fiscal to speak of 700excess caballerıas. These caballerıas had been present within San Martın’sboundaries all along. They simply had never been counted accurately.71

In response to Flores’ petition on behalf of the town, the Fiscal recom-mended that the government wash its hands of the case. If San Martın insistedon trying to expel the ladinos, he wrote in late January, it would have toappeal to the courts to determine the legality of abrogating the “contracts”that Governor Paz et al had signed with the ladino agriculturists. The Fiscal’sruling was forwarded to Quezaltenango’s Corregidor in a presidential decreedated April 18, 1842:

Given that it is not within the province of the Executive Power to make the deter-mination requested by the comun of the town of San Martın Sacatepequez, sincewhether or not the contracts are invalid or binding, or whether they are or are notrescindable, are points of justice that correspond to the Tribunals, the Government,in conformity with the recommendations of the Fiscal, agrees: that the comun of[San Martın] should appear . . . before the Court of First Instance of Quezaltenangoto determine its legal rights.

Cascara informed municipal officials and ladino squatters alike of the gov-ernment’s decision, and returned to each their respective documentation inanticipation of the legal battle to come.72

Quezaltenango’s Costa Cuca: From Indigenous Ejidoto Lucrative Coffee Zone

Unfortunately, this is where the official record of the dispute ends. Testimonypresented during a subsequent crop damage suit suggests that San Martın in-deed did pursue the case in Quezaltenango’s court of first instance, and thatthe court upheld the binding nature of at least some of the agreements thathad been negotiated between Paz and the ladino usurpers. Still, this evi-dence is far from definitive, and the exact details of how San Martın’s legalbattle concluded remain unclear.73 What is clear, however, is that ladinoexploitation of San Martın’s territory continued to grow over the next sev-eral decades. In 1841 Quezaltenango’s Corregidor had claimed that therewere upwards of one hundred ladinos cultivating sugar cane and raising

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livestock on the community’s land. By 1856 there were eighty two ladi-nos from Ostuncalco alone actually residing in San Martın.74 Unlike theCorregidor’s 1841 estimate, this figure did not include ladinos originatingoutside Ostuncalco, nor did it count seasonal migrants or the laborers andother employees who staffed the lowland trapiches and haciendas. The sig-nificant size of the latter group, in particular, is suggested by the attentionthat Ostuncalco’s Padre Martın Burbano de Lara paid to it as early as 1850.He feared for the “miserable and scandalous state” in which he believed thatthe trapiche workers lived, and he petitioned Ostuncalco’s ladino municipali-dad to order its alcaldes auxiliares on the coast to instill the lowland underclass“with the fear of god and respect for authority.”75 Two years later Burbanobegan tithe collections among coastal ladinos.76

Some of the ladinos with haciendas, trapiches, or residences on SanMartın’s land served with frequency in Ostuncalco’s ladino municipalidad.77

Even so, the latter body complained bitterly throughout the early 1850s abouttownspeople who had forsaken Ostuncalco for the coast. The municipalidad’schief complaint was that tax collection became much more burdensome andtime consuming. Evidently, many of the ladinos who moved to settle andfarm the vast expanse of San Martın’s community lands believed that theyhad left the law behind. As a result they simply refused to pay their taxes.Soldiers had to be sent on more than one occasion to establish the authorityof the alcaldes auxiliares to collect them.78 By 1863 fully 75 of Ostuncalco’s275 ladino taxpayers—male heads-of-household—lived on the coast.79

Ostuncalco’s ladino municipalidad was not the only government body thatencountered difficulties due to the large number of ladinos who had mi-grated to the coast. Complaints issued from other quarters as well. In early1863 the departmental military commander admonished his subordinate inOstuncalco for allowing over 100 members of the town’s militia unit tobe on the coast simultaneously. The local commander had failed to mustereven 25 percent of his forces for the last four weekly drills.80 The militiacommander of the ladino town San Antonio Bobos also encountered sim-ilar problems. His repeated attempts to force the return of militia memberspresently cultivating the coastal territory of San Martın were, in his words,“easily mocked.”81

Several administrative developments also indicate a burgeoning ladinopopulation within San Martın’s community land from the 1840s onward.First, the number of alcaldes auxiliares and regidores was increased from one totwo sometime in the mid-1840s, reflecting the creation of a new administra-tive subdistrict within the area. By the 1860s the number of administrativedistricts had increased to five, and each alcalde auxiliar was assigned not one,but two regidores to assist him. Whereas Ostuncalco’s ladino municipalidadhad named these officials in the past, now they were appointed directly by

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the sub-Corregidor.82 Some of the settlements mentioned in these districtsdeveloped into the coffee towns of Colomba, Flores Costa Cuca, Genova,and El Asintal.83

Another revealing administrative development was the initiation of main-tenance operations on the roads that connected San Martın’s coastal districtsto Ostuncalco, Coatepeque, and Retalhuleu. Ostuncalco’s ladino municipali-dad was instructed to name commissioners for all of the highland communi-ties, Mam and ladino alike, that corresponded to the district of Ostuncalco.84

Each commissioner was responsible for recruiting a work crew from his re-spective town to maintain a particular section of the roadway between coastand highlands. On the coast itself, hacienda and trapiche owners were orderedto maintain the roads that abutted their lands. Finally, in 1866, a constructionproject was undertaken to improve the road connecting Ostuncalco with Re-talhuleu by way of San Martın. Although slow to start, rotating crews wereat work before the end of the decade. Between March 1869 and May 1871,over 600 laborers passed through a week-long shift on the project.85

One final event helps to demonstrate the growth of a permanent popu-lation, both ladino and indigenous, within San Martın’s coastal territory. Inlate 1855 Governor Nicolas Peres, elected municipal officers, and more thana dozen principales authorized the formation of a new town on one squareleague of community land near the present-day site of Colomba, at a locationcalled San Jose Pie de la Cuesta.86 According to Quezaltenango’s Corregidor,the new town was needed because “more than 1,000 inhabitants of . . . SanMartın, Concepcion and Ostuncalco . . . live dispersed throughout the wildsof the southern slopes that descend toward the Pacific Ocean.” They commit“all the excesses consistent with the frontier lifestyle that they have adoptedin order to evade . . . the police and social order.” As a result, the Corregi-dor concluded, it was necessary to concentrate or “reduce” them to a singlepopulation center where they could be better administered and supervised.87

Ostuncalco’s parish priest Martın Burbano also gave crucial backing tothis idea because of his proclaimed concern for the state of moral decay inwhich coastal inhabitants were reputed to be living. Earlier in the year, inanticipation of the new town, he had solicited permission from Guatemala’sArchbishop Francisco de Paula Garcıa Pelaez to erect a church at the pro-jected locale. Another important supporter was San Martın’s own municipalsecretary Miguel Ralda, a ladino from Ostuncalco. Ralda had played a less-than wholesome role in the agreements of late 1839 and early 1840 that hadfacilitated ladino squatters in obtaining de facto control of community ter-ritory. This time around he apparently was instrumental in convincing SanMartın’s municipalidad to contribute land for the new town’s ejido.88

Nevertheless, opinion within San Martın as a whole was far from united.Although the governor supported the project, as did the elected officials of

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1855, and several additional principales, many others did not. And whetherby chance or by design, the proposal to establish a new municipality onland donated by San Martın, deep within community territory, coincidedwith a resurgence in frustration over the continued influx of outsiders ontotown land. During the previous year municipal officials had complained tothe Corregidor on more than one occasion about “the advances of ladinoagriculturists onto the lands of [the] town, occupying them with their cropswithout obtaining the consent and permission of [the] Municipality andcomun. . . . ”89 In addition, evidence surfaced that governor Peres and sec-retary Ralda had authorized a number of K’iche’ Maya from San Sebastianto cultivate community territory. When the governor and municipalidad pro-posed regularizing the continuing invasions with formal rental contracts, theopposition went public. Peres wrote Ostuncalco’s juez preventivo on June 22that he and the municipal officers had suspected a conspiracy against themfor some time, and that the previous evening Manuel Ramıres and “severalcompaneros” had attempted “to assemble the town in order to take away[their] staffs of office.” Ramıres, for his part, called Peres et al “thieves,” andcharged them with “selling the lands of the Costa.”90

Although the case against Ramıres eventually was dropped, the oppositionto governor Peres continued, and he resigned his post in October 1856. Hisreplacement, Francisco Gusman, immediately embarked on an energeticcampaign to rid San Martın of sansebastianos, and, subsequently, to crushthe still-embryonic town of San Jose Pie de la Cuesta.91 Petitioning PresidentRafael Carrera in March 1857, Gusman and the elected municipalidad statedthat although it is true that their predecessors had agreed to the formationof a new town within community territory, due to their “ignorance andrusticity” they had failed to recognize all of the ramifications of such aproject. “[D]espite our opposition, and that of the town of Chiquirichapa,”the authors wrote, the project continues to be pushed forward by the likesof Padre Burbano and the “ladinos of Sija, [San Marcos], and other towns,”who have established themselves on our land in an effort to rob it from us.“Our resistance is not unfounded or capricious,” but based on the reasonablesuspicion “that once established there, said [town] will go on expanding,and in time the new inhabitants will take control of all of the land that nowpertains to us.”92

After unsuccessfully attempting to reconvince San Martın’s authorities ofthe project’s utility, the Corregidor reluctantly conceded defeat. In this in-stance San Martın won a small victory. Nevertheless, the Fiscal’s subsequentreport to the Minister of the Interior reveals much about the Conservativestate’s position vis-a-vis San Martın’s efforts, and those of the indigenouspopulace more generally, to retain control of community land. Although theFiscal advised the minister to forget about a new town for the time being,

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he did not believe that the idea deserved to be abandoned altogether. Ac-cording to Padre Burbano, the Fiscal wrote, “the retraction of [San Martın’s]Municipal officials is due to the present Governor of the town. . . .” Thus,he concluded, the Corregidor should be instructed to watch for some futuremoment when the project might be implemented with less resistance.93

In sum, the decades following San Martın’s initial attempts to rid its ter-ritory of ladino usurpers were marked, instead, by the latter’s continued de-mographic growth. Neither the Conservative state nor Rafael Carrera sidedwith the town despite a supposed desire to protect indigenous communityinterests. Although Conservative authorities did not revoke San Martın’s ti-tle, they essentially disregarded its legal significance. Thus, instead of backingthe title with the force of law, Conservative authorities bestowed de factoproperty rights on the land claims of the ladino “squatters” who had surrep-titiously invaded the town’s ejido. State sanction allowed the “squatters” totreat their claims as virtual private property, buying and selling them at will,and passing them down to their children when they died.94 Certainly thesequasi-property owners would have preferred outright legal title. In practicalterms, however, legal title was not nearly as important to the sanctity of theirpossessions as the implicit commitment made by the state when it refused toenforce San Martın’s property rights.

The only way that San Martın’s historic and legal rights to its communityterritory were recognized at all was in the annual rental payments that theladino squatters apparently were supposed to pay the municipalidad. This stip-ulation had been part of the Fiscal’s proposal in 1841. All available evidence,however, suggests that at best these payments were made on an infrequent,piecemeal basis. At worst, they were not made at all, or they degenerated intothe occasional bribery of municipal officials. Thus even this partial acknowl-edgment of the legality with which San Martın possessed its community landswas little more than a half-hearted attempt by the government to placate thetown’s disgruntled populace.95

What conclusions can be drawn from the experiences of San Martın, andGreater Ostuncalco more generally, in the pre-Reforma years of the nine-teenth century? First, Liberal policy and legislation prior to 1837 was viewednegatively by many indigenous communities and did engender uprisings andother forms of resistance. The rebellion in Ostuncalco, and those that fol-lowed around the country, forced Liberal authorities to revoke some of themost hated laws even before Rafael Carrera’s first invasion of Guatemala Cityin February 1838. The statutes that had broadly dismantled the protection ofcommunity lands, for example, were essentially reversed in November 1837.

Second, despite these legislative changes, and despite Carrera’s definitivevictory over Liberal forces, and his defeat of the state of Los Altos, ladino in-vasions that focused on indigenous coastal lands still went largely unchecked,

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and in fact continued apace. Without the conspicuous banner of blanket leg-islation, the new regime was more successful than its Liberal predecessor atallowing ladino agriculturists to appropriate key agricultural lands from par-ticular indigenous communities. Although towns with primarily highlandterritory may well have enjoyed full protection under the law, and perhapseven the benefit of the doubt from Conservative authorities, a two-tiered setof legal standards applied on the coast. Ladino holdings, despite their illegalorigins, and despite their location on lands to which indigenous commu-nities held legal title, were essentially inalienable. Indigenous properties, bycontrast, whether legally documented or not, were unprotected by the stateand could be appropriated by others.

In sum, then, well before the Liberal Revolution of 1871, or the death ofRafael Carrera in 1865, or even the introduction of coffee into the westernpiedmont in the 1850s, the Conservative state had dealt a decisive blow toindigenous control of the fertile south coast—Guatemala’s prime agriculturalregion. As the case of San Martın demonstrates, however, Carrera and hisConservative allies could not have succeeded so easily without the internalpolitical struggles that split indigenous communities from within. Althoughmany of San Martın’s residents and leaders eventually opposed the presenceof outsiders within municipal territory, others were lured by the financialrewards that promised to accrue to the town, and to themselves personally,if the outsiders were allowed to remain. This cleavage, coupled with unre-lenting state support for the ladino agriculturists, is what finally brought SanMartın into an uneasy modus vivendi with its newfound renters.

San Martın in Comparative Context: The Exampleof San Felipe and Western Suchitepequez

In terms of land area, San Martın’s nearly 500 sq. km territory represented asignificant segment of Guatemala’s Pacific coast. In terms of the economy andsociety, the town’s massive ejido became the site of Quezaltenango’s CostaCuca, one of Guatemala’s most productive coffee regions. In sum, San Martıncertainly serves as an important example of how Guatemala’s indigenouscommunities fared during the nineteenth century. By itself, however, thissingle example may provide a misleading basis from which to generalizeabout the whole of Guatemala. To explore the extent to which San Martın’sexperiences under the Conservative state were anomalous, or, conversely,representative of broader trends, let us turn to the four indigenous towns dueeast of the Costa Cuca: San Felipe, San Martın Zapotitlan, San Sebastian, andEl Palmar. Although I will focus primarily on the first—San Felipe, the threeother towns will emerge as important players in the events and developmentsthat marked the region during the midnineteenth century.

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Presently San Felipe, San Martın Zapotitlan, and San Sebastian are locatedin the department of Retalhuleu, but for most of the nineteenth centurythey belonged to Suchitepequez.96 Indigenous tıtulos written in the decadesfollowing the Spanish invasion indicate that all three towns fell within theboundaries of what was once the K’iche’ empire, although only San Felipeand San Martın are mentioned by name as having preconquest roots.97 In-deed, San Felipe in particular probably developed as an “estancia” of theK’iche’ settlement corresponding to present-day Quezaltenango.98 As wastrue of many coastal communities, however, San Felipe and San Martın bothdecreased in population throughout the colonial period. According to his-torian Adrian Van Oss, the two towns were empty of people by 1776 and1806, respectively.99 Sometime thereafter indigenous residents of the high-land K’iche’ community Zunil began to repopulate the sites. In the case ofSan Felipe, they titled an ejido of about thirty-eight caballerıas and used itfor their milpas and for grazing livestock, much as the highland Mam townsaround Ostuncalco used the ejido of San Martın Sacatepequez.100

In contrast to the above-mentioned three communities, El Palmar per-tains to the department of Quezaltenango. During the nineteenth centurythere was some confusion regarding this point because the site was origi-nally settled by indigenous residents of Momostenango, Totonicapan, and itcontinued to rely on the latter town’s municipal authorities until the 1860s.Nevertheless, by 1864 Quezaltenango’s Corregidor insisted that the com-munity fell within his jurisdiction.101 Unlike San Felipe and San MartınZapotitlan, there is no evidence of El Palmar in the preconquest period,nor is there much to suggest that it existed prior to the early-nineteenthcentury. Although residents of Momostenango claimed that they had beencultivating and seasonally inhabiting the location “since time immemorial,”the first documents to mention the site date from the 1830s. These indicatethat Momostenango requested title to the area as early as 1832, suggestingthat it may have been settled, if only on a temporary basis, sometime in thepreceding two or three decades.102

Returning to the example of San Felipe, ladinos from San AntonioSuchitepequez, and possibly other towns, began to occupy community landsover the course of the mid-nineteenth century, and perhaps as early as the1830s. Like the ladinos of Ostuncalco and elsewhere who were invading SanMartın Sacatepequez’s coastal ejido, they probably engaged in sugar pro-duction and cattle ranching. Unlike the former, however, their numbersremained small until 1853, when a decree issued by the Carrera governmentauthorized bounties for coffee cultivation and production. Planters were of-fered a one-time bonus of twenty-five pesos for each 1,000 trees planted. Inaddition, they were promised two pesos for each quintal of coffee exportedannually.103 As a result of this decree, the ladino presence in San Felipeincreased dramatically, and so too did the conflict over land.104

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The problem confronted by the newly arrived, aspiring coffee planterswas how to gain access to land that already belonged to the indigenouscommunity. Although the details are somewhat unclear, it appears that theypursued two avenues toward this end. The indigenous municipalidad wasnot entirely adverse to permitting the ladino newcomers a small portionof community ejido on which to establish subsistence milpas, and, initiallyat least, they authorized a number of such plots. The ladinos returned thefavor, however, by clandestinely cultivating coffee trees among their foodcrops. They also conspired to form their own municipalidad, perhaps becausethe plots that they were offered were smaller than they desired, or becauseindigenous officials, upon discovering the duplicity of their new neighbors,refused to turn over any more land in this manner. Regardless, the ladinocouncil, once formed, proceeded to appropriate large areas of communityland for the incipient coffee planters despite the fact that its very existencehad not yet been ratified, and thus, that it lacked all legal right to engage inany activity whatsoever.105

San Felipe’s K’iche’ residents were outraged at these attempts to usurptheir territory and the political authority of their own municipalidad. As earlyas 1858 they responded to illegal encroachments by destroying coffee trees.They also petitioned the government for protection on numerous occasions,although before long they came to view the Corregidor himself as part ofthe problem. They complained that not only were the ladinos concedingcommunity land illegally, but that they also were taking control of suchareas of municipal administration as the jail and tax collection. Finally, thepetitioners lamented, hardly any of the ladinos who received concessions ofejido land paid their rent.106

At around the same time San Martın Zapotitlan also began to complainof outside encroachment. Since the late 1850s, if not before, ladinos hadbeen soliciting the Corregidor for permission to cultivate the town’s ejidovia rental contract. Although it does not appear that permission was evergranted, this did not stop the ladino influx. San Martın’s officials wrote thatladino coffee plantations were proliferating and that the community’s ownsubsistence milpas were being devastated by the latter’s unfenced cattle. Theyrequested state sanction to remove the offending livestock, destroy the coffeetrees, and expel all ladinos from their community.107

Unfortunately, the government’s response to these petitions was equivocalat best. The Corregidor, for his part, did not address the issue; rather, heattributed the conflict to agitators from Momostenango and El Palmar who,he claimed, were stirring up trouble throughout the indigenous towns of thecoast. Even so, he hardly deserves all the blame for the fact that little was doneto protect the legal rights of the region’s indigenous residents. Regarding SanFelipe’s complaints, state officials at all levels recognized the illegitimacy ofthe ladino’s municipalidad as well as the surreptitious manner in which they

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had acquired town land. In addition, officials acknowledged that almost to aperson the ladinos were not paying the annual rental fee required of them.Nevertheless, nothing was done to return community land, and efforts toenforce ejido rental laws were little more than cosmetic. As a rule, althoughindigenous authorities were forced to replace coffee trees they destroyed inself-defense, the ladinos continued their illegal appropriations with no fearof state reprisal whatsoever.108

The point of no return on the road to a violent showdown was passedas 1862 came to a close. Under the auspices of the Corregidor, San Felipe’sindigenous officials agreed to allow the town’s ladinos to retain the land thatthey had acquired so far, as long as they complied with the following stipula-tions. First, each ladino who possessed community land had to declare theirpossession before the indigenous municipalidad, and promise to pay the rentalassessed given the size of the area in question. Second, no land held underthese terms could be sold without prior permission from said municipalidad.Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there could be no expansion of coffeecultivation, nor could new plantations be established, without the expresspermission of indigenous authorities.109

The accord was signed by representatives of both municipalidades onDecember 19, 1862. In less than a week, however, the ladinos were alreadychafing at the restriction on coffee expansion. The ladino alcalde complainedto the Corregidor that indigenous officials had not approved any new coffeeplanting in the short time already elapsed. This was well within the termsof the accord, however, and he was forced to admit that the indıgenas haddone nothing to abridge any of the agreed upon stipulations. Nevertheless,he urged the Corregidor to authorize new concessions for coffee cultivation.The Corregidor agreed.110

Given their complete abandonment by departmental and central govern-ment authorities, it is not surprising that San Felipe, along with the otherindigenous towns of the region, began to formulate plans for a widespreadrebellion. By August 1863 the Corregidor of Suchitepequez reported rumorsthat indıgenas from the nearby towns of El Palmar and San Sebastian wereconspiring to attack area ladinos. Shortly thereafter, a group of palmarenosdestroyed several coffee plantations in San Felipe.111 Even more alarming ru-mors surfaced in January 1864. Indıgenas from San Sebastian, El Palmar, SanFelipe, San Martın Zapotitlan, and a number of other towns were believedto be plotting against the ladinos of Retalhuleu. The Corregidor invadedSan Sebastian preemptively, and, after several tense days, the incipient rebel-lion stalled, but not without several fatalities and much damage. Indigenousleaders from most of the involved towns were implicated. Quezaltenango’sCorregidor, Narciso Pacheco, who had been sent to San Sebastian with re-inforcements, concluded that the main impetus behind the rebellion was

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indigenous resentment at the establishment of coffee plantations on com-munity land.112

Unfortunately for San Felipe and the other K’iche’ towns immediately tothe east of the Costa Cuca, the rebellion against ladino cafetaleros ended in fail-ure. In fact, however, it probably never had much of a chance anyway. Therewas little left that the uprising could have salvaged, even assuming a moresuccessful military campaign on the part of the rebels. As David McCreeryconcludes, “In fact, the communities had already lost and soon were in fullretreat. Some of the Indian officials themselves now seized the opportunityto acquire town land and become coffee producers, and the priest of SanFelipe was openly siding with ‘progress’.”113 Of all the towns involved, itwould appear that only El Palmar had acted somewhat preemptively. Thatis, although evidence from the other three, especially San Felipe, indicatesa significant ladino presence and a substantial land loss by the early 1860s,the documentation for El Palmar suggests that aside from a handful of casesthe community did not suffer such deprivations prior to the 1870s.114

Let us return to the question that began this section: do the cases ofSan Felipe, El Palmar, San Martın Zapotitlan, and San Sebastian help toresolve the problem of San Martın Sacatepequez’ representativeness, partic-ularly within the context of Guatemala’s Pacific coast? Clearly they do. First,they demonstrate that the experience of San Martın Sacatepequez underRafael Carrera and his Conservative cohorts was not anomalous. San Felipe,San Martın Zapotitlan, and San Sebastian all lost large quantities of land dur-ing Carrera’s reign. More importantly, state officials effectively challengedthe control that these indigenous communities had held over their respectiveterritories, whether legally titled or not. Indeed, it was this loss of the battlefor state support, rather than legal control over a particular parcel or quantityof land, that spelled defeat for the indigenous communities.

On the other hand, these examples demonstrate that San MartınSacatepequez was not entirely representative, either. Although many othertowns did lose land under Carrera, typically their battles postdated that of SanMartın by a decade or more, and were tied more directly to the entrance ofcoffee on Guatemala’s Pacific coast. In that sense, San Martın Sacatepequezwas a harbinger of the future. This suggests a second conclusion: some coastalcommunities lost land before others because ladino demand for their land,and community resistance to such demands, was uneven, not because thestate gave preferential treatment to one coastal community over another. Thatsaid, it also may be true that where ladino demand was low the state was morewilling to countenance the letter of the law and thus offer a modicum of pro-tection. El Palmar is a case in point. Without diminishing the community’sagency or the efficacy of its energetic resistance, available evidence suggeststhat it did not have to fend off anywhere near the onslaught experienced by

68 Chapter 2

the other towns considered here, at least not before the 1870s. Moreover,in the few cases of outside encroachment that were brought before the stateprior to 1871, it seems that the intruder was repulsed. Perhaps this reflected,at least in part, the fact that El Palmar’s authorities had already expelled theindividual, presenting state officials with a fait accompli.115

In sum, the examples discussed here demonstrate that at a minimum theConservative state was not nearly as protective of indigenous communitiesas most studies would have us believe. Furthermore, these examples, whichdocument state support for ladino appropriation of indigenous ejidos fromthe early 1840s through the 1860s, indicate that this phenomenon was notconfined to the rule of Vicente Cerna alone, nor to the last years of RafaelCarrera or even the period following the introduction of coffee to the Pacificcoast. Rather, state-backed ladino appropriation of indigenous communityland was present from the very beginning of the Conservative era.

The main difference between Liberals and Conservatives, then, was notfundamental beliefs but strategy. Conservative authorities simply viewed awholesale attack on community lands to be foolhardy. Instead they presidedover a slower, piecemeal, but ultimately much more effective, alienationof these same lands from the 1840s onward and with little deviation, atleast when it came to the fertile slopes of the Pacific coast. McCreery’scharacterization of the Reforma in fact applies equally well to the Conser-vative interlude. The greater potential an area had to produce agriculturalwealth, and the more important the ladino usurper was in the eyes of gov-ernment officials and the elite more generally, the less likely it was that thecommunity being despoiled would receive state support in expelling thetrespasser.116

In addition to avoiding the widespread scare that would have resultedfrom the pronouncement of a blanket expropriation of community lands,Conservative authorities also saw little to be gained by openly derogating theland titles of specific communities threatened by ladino encroachment. Asthe government Fiscal commented in 1841, did it really matter whether SanMartın Sacatepequez was allowed to maintain legal title to 1,085 caballerıas ifthe town was unable to bar ladinos from exploiting the area? Yet it is preciselythe continued existence of community titles that has led historians excessivelypreoccupied with the legal formalities of privatization and private propertymore generally to overlook the significance of untitled ladino appropriations.What did it matter if indigenous communities retained de jure claims to anarea when de facto control, including the right to improve, sell or bequeath,and retain all profits derived from said area, had passed to ladino outsiderswith the full knowledge and backing of the state? Indeed, at a time when theidea of private land ownership was not widely accepted by rural Guatemalans,was state sanction not more important than a piece of paper?117

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conflict 69

Guatemala’s Conservatives, despite the letter of the law, supported thevirtual privatization of indigenous lands by ladinos, where and when it oc-curred, from the very beginning of their rule. In fact, very little positiveaction was required of them to facilitate such an outcome. They simplyrefused to employ state power to prevent the usurpation of legally titledcommunity land; to enforce the rental contracts under which these usurpa-tions ostensibly occurred; to intervene when these illegally usurped landswere bought and sold without the permission of the community to whichthey officially pertained; and to stymie the explosive expansion of coffeecultivation undertaken during the 1850s and 1860s against the express wishesof the indigenous municipalidades. Moreover, when Conservative authoritiesdid use state power, they employed it to crush indigenous resistance and toprotect the ladino usurpers. In sum, the move to convert community landsinto commercially oriented production units began well before the Liberalsdeclared their apparently sweeping reforms in the 1870s, well before VicenteCerna took office in 1865, and even before coffee made its grand entrancein the mid-1850s.

Conclusions

The historiography of nineteenth-century Guatemala is marked by two per-sistent problems. The first concerns how scholars have conceptualized andjuxtaposed the Conservative and Liberal eras. When David McCreery writesthat “the Conservative state generally sustained the claims of communities,”he is well within the mainstream of current historical opinion. Conservative-era legislation made it difficult for individuals to title land in indigenouscommunities, the story goes, and thus the private appropriation of such landmust have been insignificant until after 1871.118

This problematic interpretation of Guatemala’s nineteenth century iscompounded by another: the historiographical emphasis on coffee as themotor force behind the transformation of rural society, and in particular,the conversion of community land to private property. Even Gudmundsonand Lindo-Fuentes, intent on “downgrad[ing] the significance of the reformmovement of the 1870s as a turning point in the economic, political, andsocial history of Central America,” nevertheless proclaim coffee’s “revolu-tionizing” role.119 And because coffee exports do not begin in earnest untilthe 1850s, or surpass cochineal until 1870, most scholars continue to believethat significant changes in land tenure were confined to the late nineteenthcentury, particularly to the years of Liberal rule.

The case of San Martın Sacatepequez, however, suggests that as early as1841—well before coffee reached the area—Conservative officials system-atically refused to enforce documented community claims to land that was

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utilized by ladinos for state-favored products such as sugar or cattle. True,Conservatives did not call for the blanket transformation of community landinto private property as had their Liberal predecessors; but that is becausethe Guatemalan state was too weak to defend itself from the popular back-lash against such a policy. Recall that it was the Liberals themselves, in late1837, who reversed their earlier land legislation in a last ditch effort at self-preservation. Instead, Conservative authorities simply turned a blind eye asladino after ladino invaded the coastal territory of indigenous towns, some-times, as the case of San Martın Sacatepequez demonstrates, with the sup-port, or at least collusion, of certain municipal officials. In effect, the stateleft the difficult task of transforming indigenous community land into com-mercial agricultural enterprises to the cumulative efforts of those individualsand sectors within civil society who desired the transformation in the firstplace. When, in response, affected towns sometimes threatened to take thelaw into their own hands, then, and only then, did the state resort to the useof coercion. I believe that this type of low-key policy would have been nec-essary regardless of which group—Liberals or Conservatives—had retainedcontrol of the state after the Carrera revolt.

In sum, the dramatic changes reflected by Reforma-era land legislationwere all too real. But if the examples of Quezaltenango’s Costa Cuca andwestern Suchitepequez are at all representative, then they were changes thathad largely taken place. The very communities believed to have suffered themost under the Liberal reforms—those within the prime agricultural zoneof the Pacific coast—did not, in fact, have much left to lose. In this sense thecase of El Palmar was the exception rather than the rule. It is the one townstudied here which does not appear to have lost a significant land area priorto the Reforma. Returning for a moment to the 1830s, one can understandwhy the first round of Liberal reforms appeared to be such a threat despite thechronic weakness of the state at that time. Before then, most towns had notfaced significant challenges to the very foundation of their territorial integrityeven if they had been involved in disputes with neighboring hacendados andother indigenous communities. A belief in the inviolability of communityland persisted unshaken. During the 1830s, however, ladino encroachmentinto coastal communities began in earnest. Within this context the intent andrhetoric of the new Liberal legislation represented an untenable escalationeven if the state’s ability to make good on its threat was only as great as thenumber of individual ladinos who were willing to carry it out.

Whether we focus on the Conservative interlude or the Reforma years,the highland territory of most indigenous communities probably fared betterthan its lowland counterpart precisely because the former was unsuitable forthe most lucrative agricultural commodities. Within the highland zone, forexample, indigenous communities as a whole, as well as individual residents,

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conflict 71

sometimes succeeded in using the new Reforma-era regulations to secure thevalidity of their own claims to community land.120 Nevertheless, there is nodoubt that even highland towns such as Ostuncalco and its Mam neighbors tothe north, which had few legal ties to the coast, found it increasingly difficultto rely on milpa agriculture for their subsistence as the Costa Cuca becameless and less accessible to them. The highland frontier had closed long ago,and San Martın’s inability to slow the influx of ladinos or the expansion ofcommercial agriculture meant that the coastal frontier, too, would soon bea thing of the past. As I will demonstrate in Chapter 3, the outlet to whichresidents of the highland Mam towns turned in increasing numbers was wageemployment on the coastal plantations. Indeed, it was no coincidence thata growing demand for labor within an expanding commercial agriculturalsector paralleled the slow closure of the coastal frontier. This demand forlabor somewhat softened the blow caused by the transformation of coastallands from milpas into fincas.

chapter3Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion

of Commercial Agriculture

excelentisimo senor president:

At nine o’clock this morning the indigenous municipalidad and principales of [Ostun-calco], together with the alcaldes auxiliares and comun of Pie de la Cuesta de la Laja[an aldea of Ostuncalco], presented themselves before me, stating that for the pastthree years they have been working on opening the road from Quezaltenango to[the coast] and that they are tired of continuing with the project, of sending 160 menevery 2 months. . . . They and their families have suffered many problems on accountof the weekly labor rotation that each head of household is required to fulfill, leavingbehind wives and children to suffer from hunger, such that they have acquired largedebts and have been made homeless, renting their fields and houses to others; or theyhave had to sell the labor of their children to pay for the family’s necessities whiletheir fathers work on the aforementioned road project. . . .1

The Reforma-as-revolution perspective rests on a belief that, for better orworse, the Liberals who took state power in 1871 imposed sweeping changeson Guatemalan society and engendered a dramatic break with the colonial-era institutions and elite sensibilities that had dominated the previous three-and-a-half decades. Two developments frequently attributed to Barrios andhis cohorts are the widespread expropriation of indigenous community landsand the rapid expansion of coffee production. Both of these topics were ad-dressed in the preceding chapter. Here I will focus on a third developmentthought to have resulted from the policies initiated during the 1870s: a qual-itative increase in coercive labor relations.

Many authors, spanning several decades, have proposed that the forciblerecruitment of workers through debt contracts or other extraeconomicmechanisms flourished under Liberal tutelage after 1871. Prior to that point,

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by contrast, during the period of Conservative rule, Guatemala’s rural pooris believed to have been largely unencumbered by coercive labor practices.David McCreery’s recent and favorable comments on Oliver LaFarge’s 1940“Sequence of Cultures” article illustrate the strength and longevity of suchan interpretation. According to McCreery, “LaFarge argued that the yearsbetween 1800 and 1880 constituted something of a golden age for the in-digenous communities of highland Guatemala” because “of the weakenedcondition of the late colonial and independence states and of a stagnant cashand export economy that had little need of the land or labor of most of theIndian communities.”2 A similar appraisal, also based partly on LaFarge, isgiven by historical geographer W. George Lovell. The Conservative regimesof the midcentury, writes Lovell, “particularly when headed by peasant pop-ulist Jose Rafael Carrera, effectively undid the reforms carried out by thepreceding Liberal administration of Mariano Galvez and created a stable,paternalist state founded on restored Hispanic institutions.” The subsequentpolicies of Justo Rufino Barrios, by contrast, “entailed both an attack onnative land and an assault on native labor. . . . For the Maya of Guatemala,the [post-1871] Liberal Reforms were the equivalent of what the events lead-ing up to the Caste War became for the Maya of Yucatan—both initiated asecond cycle of conquest.”3

Keeping in mind the scholarly consensus on Guatemala’s nineteenth cen-tury, consider the passage that began this chapter. It comes from a petition thatOstuncalco’s indigenous gobernador addressed to the president of Guatemalaon behalf of the community. As one might expect, the petition ended with aplea to relieve the town’s indigenous residents of the onerous burden of theroad project. In particular, the gobernador went on to request that the pres-ident order a three-year suspension. Although he probably exaggerated thedirect link between forced participation in the road project, and the variousills ascribed to it, he was not exaggerating the hardships that the Mam peopleof western Quezaltenango faced in their daily lives. Aside from the rotatinglabor drafts, it was all too common for a family’s immediate subsistence needsto require that they exchange the use of their milpa, or the labor of theirchildren, for a few bushels of wheat or corn. What may come as somethingof a surprise to the reader, however, is the fact that this petition was submit-ted on February 26, 1861, and described conditions existing well over tenyears before the Liberal returned to power, and almost twenty years beforethe Liberals imposed regulations specifying the use of forced labor drafts.4

In presenting this example my aim is not to completely reject the schol-arly consensus described earlier. There is no doubt that Justo Rufino Barriosintended a dramatic harnessing of indigenous labor for commercial agricul-ture, and it cannot be denied that the web of labor coercion grew to entanglemore people, in both absolute and relative terms, in the decades after 1871.

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Nevertheless, as I will make abundantly clear, both debt peonage and forcedlabor drafts were common, and increasing in importance, well before theLiberal resurgence. In western Quezaltenango, for example, debt peonagewas widespread by the midcentury, and forced labor drafts or mandamientosoccurred with increasing frequency during the tenure of both Carrera andhis successor, Vicente Cerna.

In addition, intent does not automatically translate into reality, andBarrios’ revamping of existing labor relations took several years to imple-ment. Even then, as McCreery has shown, his coercive measures were notnearly as effective or starkly repressive as they appeared on paper.5 The statewas simply too weak, and the possibilities for noncompliance too great. Insum, debt operated during the 1870s and 1880s much as it had in the twoor three decades preceding 1871: primarily as an inducement in a highlycompetitive labor environment, rather than as a method of entrapment inan efficiently operating police state. Forced labor expanded under Liberaltutelage, but it had been expanding since the 1850s at least.

To suggest that the post-1871 labor regime was not as harsh as someauthors have implied is not to deny that such measures were fundamentallyunjust or that their goal was to facilitate the exploitation of one social class forthe benefit of another. But just as the Conservative state found it difficult toenforce debt contracts with much regularity, so too did its Liberal successor.The Liberal’s overhaul of the legal codes surrounding labor and debt were notwatertight. Although the state certainly was stronger under their tutelage,the demands on its repressive apparatus were also greater as the number ofindebted workers increased. On one hand, if a planter, or the state, or both,desired to single out a recalcitrant laborer, they clearly had the potential tomake life miserable. Some people simply could not escape the nexus of debtand planter–state repression even when they so desired. On the other hand,as long as the labor supply did not overwhelm the demand, and as long as thestate was stretched too thin to do more than target a small number of non-compliant debtors, the space existed for people to negotiate the conditionsunder which they toiled. The fact that greater and greater numbers entereddebt-for-labor contracts is not so much due to the success of extraeconomiccoercion as the decreasing ability of highland milpa agriculture to provideexclusively for a rural family’s subsistence. Growing numbers of indigenouspeople were entering the debt cycle for purely economic reasons, yet thisdid not preclude fleeing a particularly severe patron, nor spending less timeon the finca than the patron desired. A general inability to escape peonagealtogether, however, reflected subsistence requirements rather than the longarm of the law.

A central goal of this chapter, then, is to recontextualize the history oflabor in Guatemala’s nineteenth century so that 1871 no longer bursts forthas a great historical rupture, but rather emerges as part of an established

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 75

continuum. Aside from providing a useful corrective to the Reforma-as-revolution perspective, this recontextualization will also contribute to a bet-ter understanding of why resistance to the second generation of Liberalreforms did not develop along the lines of the Carrera revolt. First of all,the growing turn toward wage labor among highland residents roughly par-alleled increased planter demand. A large number of those who migratedto the coastal coffee fincas did so out of necessity, not because they hadbeen tricked or roped into an unending cycle of debt peonage. Secondly,the post-1871 labor statutes did not represent the qualitative shift in ex-ploitation and repression that they implied on paper. Popular sectors stillretained the space within which to resist planter and state claims on theirlabor and to effect an outcome more amenable to their own necessities.Finally, the new regulations and bureaucratic linkages that evolved as thestate attempted to further develop its organizational and coercive capacityvis-a-vis an expanding labor force provided lucrative possibilities for local of-ficials and those involved in municipal governing apparatuses. This was trueof indigenous as well as ladino municipalidades. Ultimately, whether planterswanted state help in recruiting labor, or enforcing debt contracts, they hadto purchase such assistance from representatives at the local level. Frequentlythere was no other way to mobilize the state apparatus than by paying for itoneself.

The Relationship between Debt and Labor before 1871

The first step toward an explanation of why the Liberal reforms of the 1870sdid not signify a watershed in nineteenth century labor relations is to placethem within the context of the preceding decades. Was the unfree laborregime that we have come to associate with the Reforma really a Liberalinvention, a reformulation of colonial-era practices with little precedence inthe nineteenth century? Or, conversely, did the efforts of Barrios and hiscohorts to step up the enforcement of labor contracts and to expand theoverall labor force signify a continuation of already established practices? Inthis section I will demonstrate the latter. Debt peonage flourished prior to1871, and forced labor drafts, or mandamientos, grew in importance after themidcentury even though Conservative authorities usually did not employthem as widely as their Liberal successors. Viewed from this perspective,the Reforma neither initiated labor coercion nor qualitatively transformed itsconditions. Rather, it helped to speed an expansion of existing labor relationsthat was already underway.

debt and the rural economy

Regardless of whether one focuses on Guatemala’s nineteenth centurybefore or after 1871, the practice of paying labor in advance of the work was

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widespread. Simply put, most people who worked for pay did so to compen-sate for wages, or goods, already received. Perhaps this helps to explain whycoercion and work seem inextricably linked in Guatemalan history. Becauselabor was paid in advance, economic necessity did not always serve to imposeworkforce discipline, at least not in the short-run. And where necessity failed,employers and the state often attempted to substitute violence in its stead.The fact that worker resistance remained ubiquitous, however, suggests thatecological and social factors favored labor with certain advantages vis-a-viscapital. It also suggests that the continuing practice of pay advances may havebeen a reflection of labor’s relative advantage rather than its submission toplanter control.6

This custom of working to pay off money or goods received probably hadits roots in the repartimientos of the colonial period. McCreery notes, withregard to the repartimientos de brazos or colonial-era forced labor drafts,that they generally were preceded by a pay advance for each of the workers.7

The effect of the repartimientos de mercancıas, which were used by colonialofficials to enrich themselves as well as force indigenous communities to paytheir tribute to the Crown, was quite similar. Quezaltenango’s Corregidor,for example, distributed bales of cotton, hoes, bolts of rough cloth, andmoney to each indigenous community of his jurisdiction when they cameto make their biannual tribute payments. Six months later, at the time thenext payment was due, the community delivered the cotton as spun threadand thereby discharged its tribute obligation in addition to the cost of thehoes and rough cloth that had been received previously.

As for the money that had been distributed, it was repaid in some combi-nation of woolen thread, sheep, or wheat. In effect, the Corregidor in-debted indigenous laborers by forcing cash on community officials, andthrough them, on community residents, who thus were obligated to sup-ply items that derived from their labor: sheep from the flocks they tended;woolen thread from their sheep; and wheat from their fields. The Corregidorthen converted these goods into money. Because the market value of sheep,woolen thread, and wheat was much greater than the amount for which theCorregidor credited the community, he was able to line his own pocketswith the surplus.8

To better understand the relationship between debt and labor that pre-vailed in the nineteenth century it is helpful to first understand how debtfunctioned in the rural community—its importance in daily life—during thisperiod. The municipal archive of San Juan Ostuncalco contains informationon several hundred debt agreements made over the course of the nineteenthcentury. Unfortunately, however, the details are too inconsistent to supporta rigorous analysis of debt from one year to the next. Such an analysis wouldnot be very representative anyway because most agreements, especially those

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 77

that involved small amounts of money and exclusively indigenous parties,were probably dealt with by the indigenous municipalidad and never made itinto the records of the town’s ladino officials unless a dispute arose whichthe former could not resolve. Keeping these qualifications in mind, I willnevertheless suggest some tentative observations, based on the extant docu-mentation, about how debt operated in the Mam region of Quezaltenangoin the years leading up to 1871.9

Transactions in which goods, services, or money, were offered on creditwere common in the Ostuncalco area from the very first decades of the nine-teenth century. Most debts, by far, whether the borrower was indigenous orladino, were associated with wheat or corn. Sometimes the debtor acceptedmoney or goods against the future delivery of wheat or corn to the creditorbased on an anticipated harvest. On other occasions the debtor simply pur-chased said grains on credit. Additional reasons for assuming debt that werementioned with some regularity include buying other agricultural com-modities, such as rice, panela, cotton, or coffee, or paying for church-relatedexactions, marriage expenses, health care, or release from the town jail.

Most debts were assumed in the months of March through July, and thisno doubt reflected the agricultural cycle on which the local economy wasbased.10 Typically, corn and wheat are harvested as early as September and aslate as February in Guatemala’s western highlands. Woodward’s reconstruc-tion of commodity prices for Guatemala City during the midnineteenthcentury shows that corn and wheat prices rose substantially in May and re-mained high through September.11 If this same pattern held for the westernpart of the country, then perhaps the increased debt levels from March toJuly indicated the efforts of debtors to stockpile grain ahead of the pricecurve, whether for internal consumption, seed, or resale at a later date at ahigher price. Conversely, the higher debt observed during these months alsomay have reflected the activity of creditors who desired to secure cultivators’future harvests at below-market prices.

Three parties were normally involved in a debt contract: the creditor,the borrower, and the borrower’s fiador or guarantor. A breakdown of theseparties by gender and ethnicity suggests some interesting, if tentative, con-clusions. First, women made up a significant segment of creditors, as well asdebtors, although they were nearly absent from the category of fiador. Forexample, of the debt agreements recorded by Ostuncalco’s ladino alcalde,women accounted for almost 29% of the creditors whose gender could bedetermined.12 As I will show in Chapter 4, this may have been the casebecause they filled such a pivotal role in the commercial life of the com-munity. Women frequently worked as store keepers and market vendors,and, moreover, they were far and above the biggest sellers of aguardiente.By contrast, their absence from the category of fiador might reflect a social

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bias against having women serve in such a legal capacity. It also might haveresulted because the position of fiador was sometimes used to accumulate theloans of other creditors as a form of investment, and apparently this sort offinancial dealing was strictly a male province. Whatever the reason, fiadoreswere almost exclusively men.13

A second observation that stems from the perusal of debt contract signa-tories is that Ostuncalco’s Mam residents, far from remaining “outside” themarket economy, were integrally involved. On one hand, they compriseda majority of debtors, even in the record books of the ladino alcaldes, andnot simply for reasons of immediate personal consumption. The commercialfocus of their transactions is suggested by the number of debts that involvedwheat, an item which generally is not consumed in Mayan households evento this day. In some cases debt reflected the market orientation of indige-nous wheat producers who accepted advances against future harvests. Inother cases debt resulted when an indigenous trader purchased wheat withthe aim of subsequently reselling it, perhaps in a distant market. Both ofthese practices had roots in the colonial period. With regard to the first, theeighteenth century repartimientos imposed by Quezaltenango’s Corregidorincluded monies advanced to the corregimiento’s indigenous communitiesin exchange for their extorted promise to turn over wheat harvests at below-market values.14 With regard to the second, historian Chris Lutz, in his studyof Santiago de Guatemala, concludes that indigenous producers and mer-chants were among the most important suppliers of wheat to the capital citythroughout the colonial period. Aside from Santiago’s immediate vicinity,many hailed from the regions of Quezaltenango and Totonicapan, where,according to Lutz, “[t]he cultivation of wheat . . . appears to have been evenmore common than in the vicinity of Santiago.” By transporting grain to thecapital, they hoped to obtain the best price.15

On the other hand, the market orientation of Ostuncalco’s Mam residentsalso is indicated by their roles as creditors and fiadores. In a large majority ofthe cases where ethnicity could be determined, indigenous fiadores backedindigenous debtors. Often the two parties were linked by family ties. Thefact that some fiadores reappeared time and again, however, may indicate thattheir interest in guaranteeing debt was remunerative as well as familial. Asidefrom their ability to extract additional concessions from the debtor, they alsoprovided a service to the creditor. This was particularly true if the creditorwas ladino and, therefore, unable to capitalize on ethnic or kinship ties toensure the successful recovery of a loan. Perhaps this helps account for theprevalence of indigenous fiadores. They could make a lucrative enterprise outof a ladino creditor’s difficulties.

Within the record books of the ladino alcalde indigenous creditors weregreatly outnumbered by their ladino counterparts. Nevertheless, even in this

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 79

source, prone as it was to underrepresenting indigenous activity, morethan one out of every five creditors of identifiable ethnicity was Mayan.Other documents indicate that indigenous cofradıas were a significant lend-ing source.16 The same was true of the ladino cofradıas, sometimes calledhermandades.17 Evidence suggests that several members or “brothers” woulddivide up the cofradıas’ capital, agreeing to generate a specified return ontheir respective portion, e.g., one real per peso annually, or about twelvepercent.18 Generally this appears to have been done by loaning the moneyout. After paying the cofradıa its annual return, members were allowed tokeep the remainder of whatever they had collected on the loans. Frequently,however, the brothers ended up indebting themselves to the cofradıa. Eitherthey could not generate the expected return, or they ended up spendingsome of the principal with which they had been entrusted.19

Under normal circumstances, i.e., when debt default was not impending,a debtor would repay the creditor in one of several ways. If the latter was theproducer or vender of the item exchanged for debt, then monetary or in-kindpayment usually sufficed. For example, if a person purchased three fanegasof wheat on credit, they probably could pay it back with three fanegas pluswhatever additional amount was required as interest. Sometimes, however,debt agreements stipulated that repayment should take another form. Thisfrequently occurred when a creditor desired to ensure the future delivery ofsome commodity or service. For instance, advance payment might be offeredto secure a portion of an upcoming wheat or coffee crop.20 Likewise, cash orgrain might be extended on credit for the promise of labor at some later date.

The exchange of money or goods for a pledge of future work was endemicto the nineteenth century from at least the end of the colonial period. Simplystated, laborers were almost always paid in advance for their services. Dailywages were calculated at anywhere from a third of a real to two reales in thedecades prior to the 1870s.21 By the early 1860s a daily wage of 1.5 reales wastypical.22 The time allotted to work off a particular debt or advance variedaccording to the amount of money involved and the worker’s daily wage.Although it usually did not exceed two years, even this figure is somewhatmisleading because it was not uncommon for employers to be obliged toadvance additional monies to their workers despite the fact that previousadvances had not yet been repaid. In other words, whatever time frame hadbeen stipulated at the outset of a debt agreement often became irrelevant.23

During the first three decades of the nineteenth century indebted workersappear to have been employed primarily in highland enterprises that focusedon wheat and livestock.24 The coast, by contrast, does not seem to havebeen important in terms of the demand for labor at this time, despite thepresence there of both livestock and sugar.25 By the 1830s, however, sugarbegan to wax, and available evidence suggests that it involved ever increasing

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numbers of workers through the 1840s and 1850s.26 Coffee’s introductionca. 1858 built on this trend. As a result, the following decade witnessed aneven more dramatic growth in the size of the wage labor force.27 Indeed, itis possible that during the 1860s the coastal endeavors of sugar and coffeemay have surpassed their highland counterparts as a source of employmentfor the indebted workers of western Quezaltenango.

the enforcement of debt agreements

C. Father Priest Jose Marıa Orellana:

Mateo Gomes, resident of the town of San Juan Ostuncalco, prostrate at the feet of mySenor Parish Priest, I ask and beg you to please see fit to attend to my short petition.It regards a debt that my father Manuel Gomes owes to C. Jose Pascual Monroyof twenty seven pesos. Of this quantity, fourteen pesos have already been paid to[Monroy] and thirteen remain outstanding. . . . My father has suffered imprisonmentfor the past two and a half months . . . and he was put there without any hearingat all. Now my wife has been captured pending the repayment of the remaining[amount]. I am not the one who accepted this debt, and yet now I am being forcedto pay for my father. I will not be able to do this very quickly because, in the firstplace, I hold a position within the cofradıa, and also because I am poor and I mustsupport my family. That is why I ask and beg my Senor Priest to see fit . . . [to helpme gain] . . . some extra time in which to pay the above-mentioned quantity to theSenor 1st Alcalde. . . . This is what I beg the benign heart of my Senor Priest to dofor one of his poor parishioners who has nowhere to turn for help except God andYour Grace. . . .”28

As I have illustrated, debts could be repaid with money, in goods, such asgrain, or with the promise of future labor. If, however, a debtor was delin-quent, or defaulted altogether, creditors had several options at their disposal.As the document quoted immediately above illustrates, they could requestthat municipal officials incarcerate the debtor to force payment of the balancedue. They could even go so far as to have members of the debtor’s extendedfamily imprisoned. In the case of Manuel Gomes, local authorities jailedhis daughter-in-law. More commonly, however, this punishment was visitedupon the debtor’s wife, as happened to Catarina Bail in 1856. Bail’s husband,Sebastian Dıas, had died of “viruela” the previous year, leaving an outstand-ing debt with his erstwhile employer, Francisco Acaval of neighboring SanMateo. Acaval confiscated several acres of grain that Dıas had planted priorto his death, and then had Bail jailed to force her to pay the remainder. Afterbeing released, Bail returned home only to find that she “had to beg posadafrom her neighbors because Acaval had thrown her out of her house.”29

In addition to jailing a debtor’s relatives, creditors might also requestthat local authorities employ corporal punishment against the recalcitrantborrower. Alejandro Cabrera recounted his disturbing story to the Gefe

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Departamental of Quezaltenango in 1824. A resident of Chiquirichapa,Cabrera owed five pesos to Juan Romero of Ostuncalco. In an effort tohelp the latter recover the debt, Ostuncalco’s alcaldes imprisoned Cabrerafor six days and whipped him 25 times. Next they imprisoned his sisterMagdalena for nine days. When that did not produce the desired outcomethey imprisoned Cabrera’s brother, Nicolas, who was still in jail at the timethe complaint was made.30

These examples, and there are many others, show that one need not fo-cus on the stereotypical ladino coffee planter of the 1870s, 1880s or 1890s toencounter the abuses highlighted by David McCreery’s work on debt peon-age. The practice of requiring one family member to pay off another’s debt,for instance, was clearly typical of the entire nineteenth century.31 Credi-tors, whether ladino or indigenous, individual or collective (e.g., a cofradıa),could often count on the ruthless collaboration of local officials as they at-tempted to recover their due. Interestingly, however, although incarcerationand corporal punishment were commonly used to recover delinquent debt,the legality of these methods was somewhat dubious.32 Conservative andLiberal authorities alike frequently admonished municipal officials for jailinga debtor’s relatives. This practice does not appear to have been legal at anytime during the nineteenth century. Even the debtors themselves were notsupposed to be jailed unless fraud could be proven. If that were the case, theycould still be held only for a maximum of thirty two hours unless an arrestwarrant was issued by the Court of First Instance in Quezaltenango. Yet asMcCreery notes for the post-1870 period, the fact that these practices wereprohibited by law did not prevent local authorities from employing them.33

debt and community land

In addition to incarceration and corporal punishment, property fore-closure was also a frequent means used to recover a delinquent debt. In-deed, Lorenzo Mendoza complained that after borrowing ten pesos fromthe Cofradıa del Rosario it had sold his two houses and the surroundingland while he was out of town.34 Cases like that of Mendoza were all toocommon. Debtors and fiadores frequently pledged their houses, land, or otherproperty to secure a credit agreement, and when they could not repay fore-closure was often the result. The implications of this for our understanding ofindigenous community land use are important. The fact that the alienationof land was a normal consequence of debt default reinforces the idea that in-digenous communities did not conceptualize their ejido as a predominantlycommon space. Although many communities reserved a portion of theirejido for common use, especially grazing and natural resource gathering, thebulk of it was held by individual families or extended family units and wouldhave appeared to the present-day observer as virtual private property. As the

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example of Mendoza and many others makes clear, these holdings were notonly inheritable, they were also alienable.

Thus, I would suggest that the ejido was conceived of in historicallypatrimonial and political terms. It was the geographic space that had beenoccupied by the community’s ancestors and administered by the community’srecognized authorities, whether Mayan nobles or postconquest principales.Indeed, this area usually had some relation to the remembered preconquestterritory, even if the link was tenuous due to the warfare and dislocationassociated with the Spanish invasion and early colonial-era policies such ascongregacion. The only corporate element of this conceptualization was thatcommunity territory belonged to community members as a people—it wastheir patrimony—much in the way that national territory “belongs” to aparticular citizenry.

Overt threats to the ejido’s integrity, such as boundary contestations or thedenunciation of land by outsiders, as I have demonstrated in earlier chapters,met with vociferous, unremitting opposition. This was true whether theoutsiders were indigenous or ladino. The transfer of land via debt foreclo-sure, however, was another matter. Indeed, the role of debt was quite likelycrucial in explaining how Ostuncalco’s ladinos ever acquired land in any ofthe Mam towns of the region. Borrower default, in the case of indigenousdebtors and ladino creditors, allowed the latter to gain access to the very ejidolands from which they were ostensibly barred as they entered the region ofwestern Quezaltenango in increasing numbers from the late-eighteenth cen-tury onward. Certainly there was still opposition. However, it appears thatchallenges generally did not arise unless the site being transferred was locatedin a paraje that had had little prior contact with ladinos, and as long as theladino in question was not viewed with particular hostility.35

Several considerations may explain why interethnic land transfers via debtwere allowed to proceed even though outright purchases were rejected. First,the way in which ladinos traditionally attempted to acquire land was usuallya direct challenge to a community’s territorial claims and often involved anextensive area. Prospective buyers, rather than searching for a willing selleror settling for a small plot, tended to denounce large swathes of land asterreno baldıo even though they were, in fact, under use and might entailthe displacement of dozens of indigenous cultivators. Clearly, such attemptswere seen as an affront to the entire community and they were energeticallyresisted. Debt foreclosure, by contrast, proceeded one small plot at a time,and only the defaulting debtor was dispossessed. The validity of communityclaims to the area in question were not overtly challenged. Second, eventhough indigenous land owners consistently might balk at the very notionof selling their land outright, regardless of how dire the straits in which theylived, they were apparently more willing to take the gamble implied by debt.

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They did not plan on the possibility of foreclosure. Finally, indigenous societywas probably just too dependent on credit, both internally and as a link tothings ladino, to ban outright all property transfers that resulted when a debtwas not repaid. Precisely because indigenous community members vieweddebt as a legitimate transaction, a normal part of life within Mayan societyitself, they may well have placed much of the responsibility for propertyforeclosures with the defaulting debtors themselves.

debt and unfree labor

Debt was clearly an important part of community life in western Quezal-tenango throughout the nineteenth century. Like money, debt traced a webof exchange relations that tied together various aspects of the rural economy.Unlike money, however, debt implied a transaction in which the obliga-tion of one party, the debtor, was not satisfied immediately. Indeed, debtintroduced the risk that the debtor’s obligation might not be satisfied at all,and that the transaction would remain incomplete. Normally, of course, thereverse was true. Ethnic and family ties often bound creditor and debtorin a way that made noncompliance difficult. The threat of property fore-closure, at least for those who had claims to property, was probably quiteeffective at discouraging delinquency and default. Furthermore, communityand higher-level state authorities were not adverse to applying force whenthey believed it would help a creditor recover a bad debt.36 They employedvarious coercive measures toward this end, including the incarceration andcorporal punishment described in detail earlier.

Given the prevalence with which debt was used to hire workers, whatwere the ramifications of debt-associated coercion on labor conditions over-all? If Guatemalan labor was horribly exploited, was this directly attributableto the influence of debt? Did the sum of debt and labor equal bondage, orsome other form of unfree labor? Was debt the bait that allowed an em-ployer to hook an employee into a lifetime of inescapable servitude, or wasit simply a means to recruit workers at a time when demand for labor washigh? The answers to these questions have important implications for ourunderstanding of Guatemalan history. For if debt did facilitate extreme laborexploitation, then the expansion of indebted labor over the course of thenineteenth century may well have contributed to a concomitant deteriora-tion of living conditions during the same period. If, on the other hand, debtwas the consequence of a weak state and an ineffective coercive apparatusin the face of high demand for labor, then perhaps the fact that more andmore people became indebted was less a sign of their further immiserationthan a calculated decision to pursue wage employment for a proportion oftheir subsistence needs. Indeed, plantation wages may have provided a rela-tively decent income during a century when new areas for highland milpa

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agriculture were increasingly scarce in regions like western Quezaltenango,and when the coastal frontier, although still far from closed, became increas-ingly dominated by ladino planters. The wages that land-poor communityresidents earned on coastal plantations, although meager, may have been animprovement when viewed in this context. Such a possibility is suggested byseveral authors who observed Guatemala first-hand in the early part of thetwentieth century. According to anthropologist Morris Siegel, for example,writing on the northern Cuchumatan region of Huehuetenango, “becauseof the growth of coffee cultivation in these parts, the means of attainingself-sufficiency has increased: a few seasons’ work on a plantation providesfunds to buy ground and build a house.”37

The relationship between debt and labor, and the associated issue of ex-traeconomic coercion, have important implications for debates, past andpresent, over labor recruitment, Latin American development, and the na-ture of capitalism more generally. Dependentistas have suggested that five cen-turies of capitalism are to blame for Latin America’s contemporary poverty.Others argue that the problem is a deeply rooted precapitalist past, the ves-tiges of which—including various forms of coerced labor—continued to“articulate” with capitalism as late as the twentieth century.38 A key pointof disagreement that emerges from this intellectual sparring is over how todefine capitalism in the first place. Should a free wage labor market be con-sidered the litmus test for capitalist relations of production?39 This question,in turn, has generated subsequent discussion over what, exactly, constitutesfree wage labor.40

Alan Knight’s 1986 essay on peonage in Mexico, in which he proposes atripartite division of indebted labor, is a good example of the direction takenby the debate. Rather than accepting that all indebted labor was equallyunfree, and hence tantamount to the existence of noncapitalist relations ofproduction, Knight distinguishes three categories of debt peonage: “prole-tarian peonage,” “‘traditional’ peonage,” and “classic debt servitude.” “Pro-letarian peonage” is characterized by Knight as “free wage labour linked tothe payment of cash advances (a system associated with the creation of anincipient proletariat).”41 He points to the example of the Peruvian enganche,in which indigenous highlanders normally uninterested by the prospect ofwage labor nevertheless agreed to work when presented with a lump-sumcash advance. Although this system sometimes involved extraeconomic coer-cion at its inception, “voluntarist” participation usually predominated beforelong.

“ ‘Traditional’ peonage” represented the form in which workers oftenresided on a single hacienda for most of their entire lives. It was the mostcommon and longest lasting variety of peonage, and Knight locates its hey-day, at least for Mexico, in the colonial period. Labor immobility usually was

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for lack of a better alternative rather than extraeconomic coercion, and debtcontinued to function more “as a perk rather than a bond.”42

“Classic debt servitude,” states Knight, “was unmistakably servile andcoercive, representing a new and calculating response to enhanced marketdemand in the later nineteenth century, and reproducing aspects of chattelslavery despite the prior, formal abolition of slavery.” This form of debtpeonage was the classic or stereotypical variety that US authors such as JohnKenneth Turner wrote about to horrified home audiences. Once involved,a worker had little chance of escaping regardless of his/her desires, the realor imagined level of debt, or the legality of the situation.43

The underlying point of Knight’s typography is to make clear that not allpeonage was based entirely or even primarily on extraeconomic coercion.Economic inducements were often crucial to its functioning, and indebtedlabor often had a significant degree of mobility. Simply put, some formsof peonage were not inherently anticapitalist, but may indeed have beenprecursors to capitalist proletarianization.44

Within the context of Knight’s typography, how should the role of debtin western Quezaltenango be interpreted? Was it simply a tool used byemployers to decrease labor mobility, contributing to unfree relations ofproduction? Or was debt a costly tradition to which employers were forcedto adhere if they desired to lure workers in a tight labor environment? In otherwords, was debt imposed on workers, or did they impose it on employers as acondition of their employment? Were the two positions mutually exclusive?Moreover, how did the passage of time and changing circumstances affectthe debt–labor equation? Before beginning to tackle questions such as theseit should be pointed out that life was not easy for Guatemala’s rural populaceduring the nineteenth century. If the Mam communities in the district ofOstuncalco are at all representative, most inhabitants looked forward to alife of unrelenting manual—primarily agricultural—labor.45 Poorer and less-fortunate residents increasingly were unable to acquire productive milpa landsufficient for their livelihood. Even families still in possession of adequatearable land found that injury, illness, and unfavorable weather held potentiallylife-threatening consequences.46 Community members turned to debt tosurvive disaster, to tide them over from one harvest to the next, and to rentor buy milpa lands that they could not afford outright. They also turned towage labor in growing numbers as an alternate, if far from ideal, means ofmeeting their subsistence needs. Expanding coastal agricultural enterprises,mainly sugar trapiches and cattle ranches, employed a growing number ofhighland residents from the 1830s onward. This expansion became evenmore dramatic with the introduction of coffee cultivation to the area inthe late 1850s. In sum, the number of people engaged in wage labor grewsubstantially from the beginning of the century, and debt—that is, advances

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on wages—remained at the center of the relationship between worker andemployer.

For the first half of the nineteenth century debt’s ubiquity seems to indicatethat both workers and employers desired to make arrangements predicatedon the advance payment of wages. This may have reflected longstandingcustom, or perhaps the perception by both parties that such an exchange wasto their advantage. Labor was less likely to go unpaid, and employers gaineda modicum of certainty that their workforce would remain for the periodspecified. On the other hand, the real effectiveness of debt in limiting labormobility during this period is open to question. Except situations whereemployer and employee were linked by kinship, allowing for an additionaldegree of unfreedom to be imposed, debt in general does not appear tohave initiated a lifetime of entrapment.47 Data from the 1830 census suggestthat a significant number of indigenous men worked as day laborers onlyfor those years corresponding to early adulthood. Day laborers, or jornaleros,were on average almost eight years younger than labradores, or peasant pro-ducers, and they included a much greater number of unmarried men andmen who still lived with their parents (see Table 3).48 When considered byfamily position, for example, jornaleros were more likely to be dependentsons than heads-of-household (43 to 40 percent). Conversely, among theranks of labradores, dependent sons were greatly outnumbered by householdheads (15 vs. 71 percent). In terms of marital status, a surprising number of

table 3. Occupations of Indigenous Men by Family Position and MaritalStatus, ca. 1830

All JobTypes % Jornaleros % Labradores % Laneros %

Totals 934 100 320 34 607 65 5 1

Breakdown by family positionHeads of household 567 61 128 40 433 71 4 80Sons 227 24 136 43 91 15 0 0All others 140 15 56 18 83 14 1 20

Breakdown by marital statusMarried 732 78 186 58 540 89 5 100Single 133 14 98 31 35 6 0 0Widowed 60 6 30 9 29 5 0 0All others 9 1 6 2 3 0 0 0

Sources: AMSJO, “Padron General. Departamento de Quesaltenango. Municipalidad deOstuncalco,” 1 agosto 1830.

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jornaleros were single (31 percent), and most were between 15 and 20 yearsof age. Labradores, by contrast, were overwhelmingly married (89 percent),and much older (37 years) even than their jornalero counterparts (30.6 years).These figures probably reflected the lifecycle of young indigenous males at atime of growing land insufficiency. Prior to acquiring their father’s holdingsthey were forced to work for pay to contribute toward the family’s or theirown subsistence. What needs to be stressed, however, is that regardless ofdebt, many men remained jornaleros only temporarily. Upon inheritance asignificant number of them entered the ranks of labradores.49

There is also ample anecdotal evidence to indicate that workers often lefttheir employers even before the agreed-upon period of employment hadelapsed.50 Interestingly, the expansion of commercially oriented agricultureon the coast, beginning in the 1830s and picking up steam in the 1850s, seemsto have furthered, rather than diminished, this trend. Complaints againstdelinquent workers increased during these decades, and most originatedfrom the newly established coastal enterprises.51 The relatively large distancebetween highland and lowland zones probably facilitated worker resistancein several ways. Creditors who resided on the coast, or who did not hailfrom Ostuncalco at all, encountered added difficulties in pressing their casewith local authorities. The coast was after all a frontier, and ladino municipalauthority reached it only with great difficulty. Even in cases where indigenousfiadores had been procured, family and ethnic bonds lost a degree of theimmediacy that made them so compelling when stretched between highlandand coast.52

Another factor that workers used with increasing efficacy to evade debtcontracts was the growing competition among coastal employers to attractand maintain a labor force. Workers hopped from patron to patron, searchingfor more favorable working conditions and terms of remuneration. Evenwhen they came with bad recommendations, other employers accepted themreadily, agreeing to pay for their previously accumulated debts. In this wayworkers were able to forestall debt repayment, to bid up pay advances, and,to a degree, preserve their mobility.53

I would suggest, in hindsight, that relative to employers, labor had a verysignificant role in imposing, and maintaining, the custom of pay advances inthe pre-1871 period. The demand for workers was great from the beginningof the century, and it apparently increased with each passing decade. Thiswould seem to indicate that labor had an initial advantage in its relationswith employers. Yet even if the ramifications of this advantage are hardto gauge, several additional factors highlight labor’s role in establishing andperpetuating the debt-for-labor system. First, workers had ample reason todemand up-front pay. As I noted earlier, advance wages were a ubiquitous

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element of wage labor agreements. Nevertheless, there were occasions whenworkers continued to work past the point stipulated by the initial contract. Inthe very few cases of this I encountered, the employer inevitably attemptedto underpay the employee.54

Second, the expansion of employment opportunities among coastal en-terprises was paralleled by a concomitant expansion in the number of com-plaints against mozos fugos. Workers apparently were challenging the terms oftheir debt agreements with growing frequency and success. Conversely, em-ployer efforts to enforce these agreements were increasingly ineffective. Yetrather than minimize their losses, employers responded by offering largerand larger advances in an attempt to lure and preserve their workforce. Theextent to which employers were forced into what amounted to a biddingwar amongst themselves is illustrated by the especially revealing example ofthe workers of finca Desamparagos, ca. 1869. Although they were alreadyindebted to the finca, they returned to their homes in San Miguel Siguila andrefused to come back until they were offered an additional advance. Whatis more, they apparently were supported in their demand by the town’s mu-nicipal officials who viewed it as normal part of the “system.”55

In sum, then, despite the coercive mechanisms associated with debt, la-bor mobility was never in danger of being eliminated in the pre-1871 pe-riod. Planters were still forced to offer ever larger inducements to recruit aworkforce, even if the actual daily wage they paid remained relatively un-changed. If we reconsider Knight’s typology, neither “proletarian peonage”nor “traditional peonage” are satisfactory in describing the situation thatprevailed in the highlands of western Guatemala. Instead, labor practicesin the region combined aspects of both categories. Like “traditional peon-age,” which Knight associates with the colonial hacienda, indebted labor inwestern Guatemala emerged well before independence, and cash advancesoperated as “more of an inducement that a bond. . . .”56 Yet unlike “tradi-tional peonage,” the hacienda was not its raison d’etre. As David McCreerynotes, when compared against Latin America as a whole, few of Guatemala’shaciendas would have been considered large, and the majority of themwere located in the east of the country, nowhere near Quezaltenango. Mostof the agricultural units bordering Ostuncalco and its environs that mighthave qualified as haciendas had either developed into ladino settlements ordevolved into a state of abandonment by the nineteenth century. Instead,small farms proliferated regardless of whether the proprietor was ladino orindigenous.57

In keeping with Knight’s more “proletarian” version of peonage, mostfarms in the western highlands appear to have relied on temporary laborers,although some did employ resident peones. Debt usually did not initiate a life-long or even multiyear cycle of servitude—whether of a more “voluntarist”

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or coerced nature—and workers pursued subsequent paid labor, once theircontract had been fulfilled, as the exigencies of their lives demanded. UnlikeKnight’s “proletarian peonage,” however, the practice of labor advances thatexisted in western Guatemala does not appear to have been an interim stepin the march to proletarianization.

The 1840s marked a transition in labor organization as the rise of coastalenterprises, beginning in the previous decade, initiated important changesin the proletarian/traditional amalgam just described. In general terms thetransformation moved production relations away from traditional toward pro-letarian peonage. Nevertheless, this shift did not signal an attempt on the partof capital to encourage the proletarianization of the workforce. Far from it.Planters simply desired to utilize the debt peonage system of the highlands fortheir coastal operations. As I already have tried to show, however, this openedup additional space for resistance on the part of labor. Workers insisted ontheir mobility, and in so doing forced employers to compete fiercely amongstthemselves for an adequate, stable workforce. It was labor, not capital, thatpushed production relations more fully toward the proletarian peonage vari-ant from the 1840s onward.

mandamientos in the conservative period

Of final consideration, before moving on to the post-1870 Liberalreforms, are the mandamientos, or forced labor drafts, implemented by Con-servative officials beginning in the late 1850s. It should be noted that Conser-vative regulations had authorized forced labor from the start. The compre-hensive law of October 2,1839, which treated everything from indigenousgovernors to departmental administration, directed Corregidors to acceptsolicitations for workers from agricultural enterprises in their respective ju-risdiction. Requests were to be filled with known vagrants and anyone elsewho could not prove gainful employment.58 Whether or not these or anyother forced labor provisions were enforced anywhere in Guatemala prior tothe midcentury remains unclear. Evidence from the district of Ostuncalcosuggests that they were not.

As the 1850s drew to a close, however, forced labor drafts went frombeing anomalous to commonplace. Between 1859 and 1870 mandamientoswere instituted in the departments of Verapaz (1859), Sacatepequez (1864),Suchitepequez (1864), and San Marcos (1870) to supply labor to agriculturalenterprises, primarily coffee plantations.59 In Ostuncalco and vicinity, bycontrast, mandamientos were initiated for another, although related, purpose.Beginning in 1858 they were employed to provide labor for the constructionof a cart road connecting Quezaltenango to the rich agricultural lands ofthe Pacific coast. Mandamiento contingents from the Mam towns toiled onthis project through 1869, after which point they were reassigned to the task

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of building another “camino carretero” between Ostuncalco and the CostaCuca.60

Although these mandamientos did not involve workers in agricultural pro-duction directly, the hardships they entailed were felt just as keenly. Thepetition which opens this chapter makes that point abundantly clear, and itwas but one of several complaints and myriad acts of passive resistance thatcontinued through to the very end of Conservative rule in June 1871.61 Inthe face of this continued noncompliance government officials tried time andagain to convince the affected communities that the roads, once completed,would contribute immeasurably to the common good. Indigenous leadersand residents remained unpersuaded. Referring to the Costa Cuca project,San Martın’s indigenous officials wrote the President that “they could not beobliged to build a road in which there was the risk that community residentswould die. . . . The men who have fincas on the Coast want the road to bebuilt . . . to help them make money from their coffee plantations while we,the natives, waste our days and time.”62 Chiquirichapa’s leaders were equallyclear about the true nature of the road project. They rightly charged thatthe road would “only benefit the landowners who have coffee fincas in thearea. . . . We have no need for cart tracks or carts to transport our wretchedharvests. The capitalists of Quezaltenango are the only ones who will profitfrom this undertaking.”63

In the end Conservative authorities resorted to the threat, and use, offorce to obtain indigenous participation. Simply put, they were as com-mitted to the road project as any of their Liberal successors. For example,troops from Quezaltenango jailed Chiquirichapa’s officials both immediatelybefore and after they issued the manifesto quoted from above.64 What theConservative state could not prevent, however, were the continual shortfallsthat plagued the project’s workforce. As often as not the weekly mandamientocontingents sent by each town were either smaller, or they stayed for lesstime, than requested. Even so, I conservatively estimate that slightly morethan 17,000 weekly mandamiento positions were filled by the towns of the dis-trict of Ostuncalco between 1859 and 1870. This figure breaks down to onemandamiento contingent of about 26 men for every week of the twelve yearsunder consideration. Note, as well, that the Quezaltenango–Pacific coastroad project was also serviced by workers drawn from the rest of Quezalte-nango department, and even as far away as the department of Solola.65

Interestingly, in contrast to those who labored under debt contracts, man-damiento workers were not paid until after they had completed their service,at least during the Conservative period.66 As we shall see this was not the caseduring the subsequent decades of Liberal rule. The different times at whichindebted and mandamiento labor were paid may be explained by the fact thatthere was little negotiation involved in the recruitment of mandamiento labor

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given the Conservative state’s readiness to use violence against municipal of-ficials who were unwilling to offer up their residents for service. The threatof military force, translated through community leaders, obligated individ-uals to perform a week of work on the road project prior to receiving theircustomary pay advance. Surprisingly, in spite of the repression, resistanceon the part of the Mam towns was instrumental in convincing the state topropose a threefold increase in mandamiento wages in 1861, from one-half toone-and-a-half reales per day.67

In conclusion, the Conservative state was moving toward mandamiento la-bor well before the Liberal reforms of the post-1870 era. Although debt didnot become a part of the mandamiento recruitment process under Conserva-tive rule, at least not in the department of Quezaltenango, the Conservativemandamiento presaged later Liberal policies in important ways and servedas the foundation on which the Liberals raised their own version of theforced labor draft. Meanwhile, at the very time that Conservative authoritiesushered in this extreme form of labor recruitment, indebted labor was un-dergoing a subtle transformation toward less coerced relations of production.Perhaps the fact that these developments paralleled one another was no co-incidence. Indeed, the infamous Liberal labor code of 1877, which includeda new and refurbished mandamiento, responded to planter complaints of anill-disciplined workforce.68

Post-1870 Labor Relations in Broader Historical Context

To explain why the Liberal reforms of 1871 did not meet with thegroundswell of violent resistance that emerged in the wake of earlier Liberalreforms, it is useful to go beyond legal discourse and to examine concreteexamples of the impact of these reforms within the context of the social re-lations that preceded them. That is why I have attempted to reconstruct andoutline some of the prominent trends that marked the first several decadesof the nineteenth century. With regard to production relations, I have triedto demonstrate that debt peonage, a phenomenon that most investigatorsbelieve was largely absent from the pre-1871 years and which they normallyattribute to Barrios and the Liberals, was in fact well-established from evenbefore independence.69 Mandamiento labor, too, was employed with increas-ing frequency by the late 1850s, well before the death of Rafael Carrera andthe subsequent crumbling of the Conservative regime. When viewed along-side the preceding several decades, then, post-1870 Liberal reforms and theproduction relations they encouraged do not represent nearly the sea-changethat has been presumed.

The remainder of my explanation, now that the historical context hasbeen established, rests on an examination of the reforms themselves. It is my

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contention that these apparently draconian statutes, upon closer inspection,were not so draconian after all. This was not for lack of intent on the part oftheir Liberal authors. The shift in the latter half of the Conservative periodtoward “proletarian peonage,” to borrow Knight’s terminology, was viewedas a serious problem among planters, and officials of the newly establishedLiberal state were keenly aware of it. They endeavored to limit labor’s mo-bility by revamping the enforcement of debt contracts and, eventually, byissuing decree 177. In other words, the Liberals attempted to roll back themovement toward a free labor market by heightening the level of coercion.Happily, they were not entirely successful, at least not for most of the re-mainder of the nineteenth century. Subaltern resistance continued to prevailagainst the Liberals’ best laid plans. In sum, the post-1870 reforms did notgreatly intensify the burden of an already burdened working populace.

revamping the enforcement of debt contracts

Planter complaints of labor recalcitrance grew especially frequent as theConservative era came to a close. Most of these complaints were generated bythe sugar and coffee enterprises of the coast. Although any number of reasonsmight explain why labor was better able to challenge planter dominancefrom the midcentury onward, I earlier identified two factors that I believewere largely responsible for the trend. The first factor is the relatively largedistances that now separated the location of employment from the socialand cultural milieu of the worker. Municipal government and kin units alikeprobably found it increasingly difficult to exercise their authority when it wasstretched across the rocky precipices of the Pacific piedmont. The secondfactor is the increasing competition that emerged among planters in theirefforts to obtain and hold a workforce.

Conservative authorities responded to these complaints with several ini-tiatives. As I outlined in Chapter 2, they reorganized municipal and re-gional administrative and judicial apparatuses several times in an attempt tostrengthen state control over the burgeoning population of the Costa Cuca,as well as to effect greater compliance with existing laws more generally. Bythe end of the Conservative period, for example, the growing number ofalcaldes auxiliares that were established on the coast appears to have beendevoting a large portion of their time jailing and fining area residents fordebt default and theft.70

In addition, Conservative authorities also considered rewriting the statutesthat encompassed debt contracts. Although efforts at the national level werestymied by differences of opinion among the participants, and eventually bythe Liberal insurgency, piecemeal efforts bore fruit in some of the depart-ments. Woodward notes, for example, that the Corregidor of San Marcosimposed a new labor code in December 1870. Among the articles contained

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therein were stipulations imposing a virtual passbook system on workers. Be-fore being hired by any planter they had to provide documentation from pre-vious employers or from their municipal alcalde attesting to their solvency.71

Interestingly, early Liberal efforts proceeded along much the same lines.The labor code issued by Barrios in 1874, which resulted from the com-plaints of south coast planters, reiterated the proof-of-solvency requirement.In addition, in an apparent effort to limit competition among employers, itthreatened fines of up to 100 pesos on anyone who hired workers withoutfollowing the proof-of-solvency guidelines.72

The first nation-wide provisions for mandamientos were issued in late 1876,only five months before the infamous decree 177. Jefes departamentales wereordered to assist planters in overcoming “the negligence of the indigenousclass, . . . with its propensity for deception,” by commanding indigenous com-munity officials to supply labor to agriculturists in their vicinities.73 Individ-ual enterprises were authorized to receive as many as fifty or even 100 workersif the size of their operations warranted such a workforce. The duration ofeach contingent was two weeks, and pay was provided at the start. Planterscould request subsequent contingents if the task remained incomplete. Fi-nally, jefes departamentales were directed to throw the full weight of the lawagainst any individual who did not cooperate fully with these provisions.74

Decree 177 was a culmination of the two approaches discussed above: themandamiento and debt peonage. As such it combined the core elements ofthe 1876 mandamiento circular with the debt-enforcement aspects of earlierlabor codes, albeit with some important modifications and additions. Forstarters, the decree made outright reference to passbooks or libretos. Everyworker was obliged to carry one to prove their solvency or conversely theirindebtedness. To combat competition for laborers among agricultural en-terprises both planters and workers were admonished not to offer or acceptpay advances unless previous contracts had been satisfied. Indebted workerscould not travel freely during the period in which they were supposed to beworking without written permission. Solvent workers, on the other hand,were subject to the mandamiento. Planters could request mandamiento contin-gents of up to sixty men for periods of one, two, or four weeks, but theyhad to provide one-half of each worker’s salary in advance.75

resistance revisited

How did the new labor legislation affect workforce discipline? Was labormobility hobbled once and for all? Despite the effective-sounding provisionsof these Liberal reforms, the documentary evidence indicates that workersstill moved about with apparent ease, disregarding their contracts and playingone patron off another to gain the best outcome for themselves. Planterscontinued to ignore the stipulations against hiring already-indebted labor and

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they continued to pay out larger and larger sums to keep the workers theyhad. As long as the demand for labor outpaced the supply, as it seems it didfor most of the nineteenth century, Liberal efforts went largely unrewarded.

The municipal archive of San Juan Ostuncalco contains numerous com-plaints of fugitive workers or mozos fugos dating from 1871 to 1897. Planterstypically wrote to request the help of municipal officials in capturing one orseveral workers who had either fled the finca before fulfilling the terms oftheir debt contract or who had accepted a pay advance but never appearedat the finca to pay it off.76 Some workers received permission for a short-term absence only to flee under its temporary cover, whereas others, sent toinvestigate the whereabouts of mozos fugos, would themselves disappear.77 Inaddition, labor mobility is suggested by a review of the finca workforce liststhat exist in the Archivo de Gobernacion de Quezaltenango for the early1890s. Five of the several dozen fincas that submitted such lists did so both in1892 and 1894, allowing their workforces to be compared over time. Theirturnover rates for the two-year period ranged from 27 to 62 percent of theentire workforce. When considered together, only about one out of everytwo workers present in 1892 remained in 1894.78

In the face of revamped legal codes aimed at imposing discipline on thelabor force, resistance and flight continued with even greater frequency. Ap-parently the two factors discussed earlier that facilitated worker mobility—thedisjuncture between labor’s place of residence and place of production, andinterfinca labor competition—were hardly affected by the new regulations.

Relatively large distances still diminished the effectiveness of kin andpolitical–administrative linkages. Aside from reforming labor statutes, Lib-eral officials attempted to deal with the problem of geographic separationby reorganizing administrative jurisdictions. They began their efforts wheretheir Conservative predecessors had left off. Before the end of 1871 theCosta Cuca was given its own political commissioner or comisionado polıtico.Shortly thereafter the numerous alcaldes auxiliares who peppered the coastalzone were placed under his direct authority, and by 1874 the area had beencompletely removed from Ostuncalco’s jurisdiction.79 Nevertheless, a com-plaint by several dozen planters in 1879 indicates that the new position haddone little to deal with the perceived problem of an undisciplined laborforce. According to the planters, the great distance that still separated themfrom the comisionado polıtico of the Costa Cuca meant that “his actions areineffectual the majority of the time. When a mozo flees or commits a crimeit almost always goes unpunished because . . . [the comisionado] is located oneday’s journey from our fincas. . . .”80

Another tack pursued by Liberal officials to impose discipline on labor, andthe Costa Cuca’s resident population more generally, was the establishment ofa ladino-dominated municipalidad in the heart of the piedmont. Conservative

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authorities had attempted a similar project for much the same reasons nearlytwo decades earlier at San Jose Pie de la Cuesta. At that time, however,San Martın’s claim to the area could not be ignored completely, and, inany case, the town unwaveringly resisted the idea.81 Although Liberal effortswere more successful, they too were hampered for several years by variouslogistical problems and by the complaints of ladinos who feared that the newtown would jeopardize their possessions. Not until 1889, fully fifteen yearsafter the first call had been issued, and well over three decades since theConservative state had come up with the idea, was a new town—ColombaFlorida—formed in the Costa Cuca.82

Meanwhile, competition among planters to recruit and retain a sufficientworkforce was impelled to new heights by the evergrowing demand for labor.Despite the oft-repeated provisions against hiring already indebted workers,planters did so indiscriminately.83 Employers who were not content to letfugitives come to them set about encouraging worker flight by sending re-cruiters to lure away other finca’s laborers with tempting pay advances.84

Several planters complained that the state’s own agents, recruiting for thesouth coast railroad project, entered their fincas offering lucrative pay ad-vances and salaries well above the prevailing daily wage to all who wouldaccompany them.85 No potential worker was undesirable, no matter whathe or she had done to avoid complying with an earlier employer’s demandsor the general legal framework governing indebted labor contracts. Fin-cas routinely bailed out imprisoned workers, going so far as to hire thosewho had been remanded to jail by their previous patrones.86 Even attack-ing the mayordomo did not place a worker beyond the pale. Just a few daysafter Nicolas Salas, Pedro Lopes, and Juan Gimenes were imprisoned forcornering Joaquın Ocheyta, manager of finca San Ysidro, with an ax anda machete, Ostuncalco’s municipal officials received a note from FranciscoRobles Lopez requesting permission to remove said workers from the townjail to his plantation.87

As a result of these practices, the cumulative debt of many individualsrose to a level that would have been difficult to repay even in a lifetime. An1894 survey of 1,691 workers at seventy fincas in Quezaltenango’s piedmontshowed an average debt of 91.59 pesos. By 1897 the eleven fincas in LasBarrancas, a narrow strip of hotland within Ostuncalco’s municipal territory,recorded an average debt of 135.83 pesos among their 210 workers. Bothsurveys recorded debts of over 200 pesos with frequency, and some reachedbeyond 1000. To give an idea of what these debt amounts represented, the1894 average of 91.59 pesos would have required over 224 days of unbrokenwork to be repaid. Add in nonwork days for fiestas, ferias, and illness, theadditional debt accrued for living and other expenses during the 224 days ofwork, and the fact that many workers were only seasonal, and the result was

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that several years would have been required to repay even the average debtin 1894.88

Perhaps debt repayment was not foremost on the minds of Quezalte-nango’s agricultural laborers. According to the Ministro de Fomento, writingto Quezaltenango’s jefe polıtico, the residents of many indigenous towns ac-cepted one pay advance after another. They would work off part of the mostrecent advance although ignoring earlier ones and although continuing toaccept additional monies from other sources.89 Viewed from this perspective,burgeoning debts were not a manifestation of capital’s success in tying downlabor for life, but rather of labor’s ability to subvert the designs of capital toimprove an otherwise difficult existence. To the extent that labor did not payback a significant portion of its accumulated debt, the balance was, in essence,part of its wage.90 Thus although Woodward notes that formal salaries stayedabout even with corn prices for the second half of the nineteenth century,debt levels appear to have risen during this period.91 Although definitivenumbers are hard to come by for the pre-1871 years, worker debts rarelyexceeded twenty pesos whereas daily wages ranged from about one and a halfto two reales. Considered in terms of days worked, a debt of twenty pesoswould have required about 107 days to be repaid, assuming the smaller dailywage of one and a half reales. This is less than half the 224 days required topay off the average debt in 1894, at a wage of three reales. In sum, althougha worker’s formal salary did not purchase any more corn in the 1890s thanit had in the 1860s, the amount of credit at a worker’s disposal more thandoubled, an increase corresponding to over one hundred days’ wage.92

the impact of the liberal mandamiento

The Liberal mandamiento, unlike its Conservative precursor, directly aug-mented the agricultural labor force of Quezaltenango’s Costa Cuca. As such,its impact on the labor force, and debt peonage, must be scrutinized. Did itserve to propel indigenous small-holders into the ranks of indebted laborersbecause proof of debt offered the possibility of exemption from mandamientoservice? Did it impose a degree of unfreedom that had been unknown dur-ing earlier decades of Conservative rule? Or was the mandamiento, like manyof the other supposedly Liberal innovations, no more than an extension ofalready existing practices?

An answer to these questions must begin with an explanation of how theLiberal mandamiento operated. Decree 177 directed a planter who desired amandamiento to place a request with the department’s jefe polıtico. Assumingthat the request was granted, the jefe polıtico would designate a communityfrom which the mandamiento was to be drawn as well as the size of thecontingent (not to exceed sixty men). Before receiving the mandamiento, theplanter was expected to pay the municipalidad of the designated community a

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 97

fee for each worker plus one half of each worker’s salary for the entire periodof the mandamiento (one to four weeks). The latter amount was distributedto various municipal officials, usually alcaldes auxiliares or their assistants, fordisbursement to the male population at large in the form of an habilitacionor pay advance. Although the auxiliares preferred to find willing takers, theyfrequently had to use considerable coercion to force the habilitaciones upontheir recipients.93

The Liberal state officially introduced the mandamiento to Quezaltenangowith its circular of early November 1876, and then again, with decree 177in April 1877. Nevertheless, it seems that the mandamiento did not becomefully operational for several years. In October 1877 the Ministro de Fomentodirected all jefes polıticos to disregard the mandamiento provisions of decree 177because some employers were abusing them. This suspension was slated tolast until the abuses were investigated fully. A little over one year later Barriospersonally reiterated the ban on mandamientos to the jefe polıtico of Quezal-tenango, indicating that the matter apparently still had not been resolved.94

Evidence from the Mam towns suggests that barring a brief period in 1879,the mandamiento was not introduced with consistency until 1883, and that itbecame heavier toward the end of the decade and into the early 1890s. Thisconclusion is roughly corroborated by documents found in the Archivo Mu-nicipal de Momostenango that concern the named town as well as San BartoloAguas Calientes. There too, the mandamiento did not begin with any consis-tency until late 1882/early 1883, and requests grew more frequent from 1888onward.95

Unfortunately, a comparison of Liberal and Conservative mandamientos isno easy matter due to the difficulty of determining how many men wereactually affected. Contingents rarely comprised the number of individualsrequested, and it was not uncommon for requests to go unfilled altogether.96

For this reason the best that can be accomplished is a comparison of short timeperiods selected because of the apparent completeness of the correspondingdocumentation. Moreover, unless otherwise indicated by the evidence, thenumber of individuals requested must be taken at face value. With this inmind I have identified October 1888 and September 1892 for comparisonwith the monthly average for 1859. Ostuncalco received mandamiento requeststotaling 125 and 75 men, respectively, for the two months specified. Thefirst value, however, should be reduced by fifty because one of the fifty-person contingents solicited was not sent. Thus seventy-five individuals fromOstuncalco are assumed to have served in mandamientos during each month.In 1859, by contrast, the monthly average for Ostuncalco was approximatelyforty-seven workers.97

The next step is to relate these values to their respective populations. Onceagain, however, numerous problems prevent a straightforward comparison.98

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The best estimate for this endeavor is probably Horst’s figure of 26,000 for theentire population of Mam Quezaltenango in 1859.99 By extrapolating fromthe censuses of 1880 and 1893, the same area held approximately 50,000residents in 1890. Taking up the mandamiento figures derived above, thismeans that the percentage of the population involved in mandamientos actuallymay have been less in the 1888/1892 period (0.15%) than in 1859 (0.18%).100

If the sweep of the Liberal mandamiento does not seem to have been anygreater than its Conservative precursor, at least in per capita terms, whatwas its effect on agricultural production? Did mandamiento labor representa substantial boost to coastal planters? Certainly it did not hurt. Yet evi-dence from the municipal archives of Ostuncalco and Momostenango, andthe departmental archive of Quezaltenango, indicates that government of-ficials, not planters in general, may have been among the most consistentbeneficiaries of the mandamiento. Of the 217 mandamiento requests I locatedin these archives for the years 1882 through 1893, at least fifty-eight were toservice plantations owned by Liberal authorities or members of their closefamily.101 Moreover, a comparison of the size of these requests reveals aneven more startling outcome. The size of 199 of the 217 requested contin-gents was listed, with a sum total of 7813 workers. Fully 62 percent, or 4844of these workers, were directed to official-owned fincas or those of theirrelatives.

Resistance to the Liberal mandamientos was rampant. Municipal officialsoften did not, or could not, recruit the number of individuals requestedfor a particular contingent. Occasionally they simply ignored mandamientorequests altogether.102 Workers, on the other hand, were adept at falsifyinglibretos for the purpose of avoiding mandamientos, if the complaints of Liberalofficials are to be believed. Ostuncalco’s ladino alcalde maintained that thismay have been why it was increasingly difficult to fill all of the mandamientossolicited.103 Another practice, with parallels to the realm of debt peonage,was the acceptance of mandamiento habilitaciones by workers who were alreadyindebted, sometimes to the very finca that issued the mandamiento request.104

In the end, a good measure of the effectiveness of this resistance was itsimpact on the actual amounts paid to mandamiento workers. Evidence fromOstuncalco and Momostenango indicates that after several years in whichworker remuneration remained relatively stable, the early 1890s experiencedincreases of two varieties. First, the daily wage paid to mandamiento labor rosefrom two to three, and sometimes four, reales. Second, the travel allowancepaid to each worker increased from one to two pesos. Interestingly, the doc-umentation suggests that municipal governments were important in callingfor these increases. Chiquirichapa’s municipalidad, for example, wrote the jefepolıtico in 1892 of its intention to reject a mandamiento request from a planterwho refused to pay the prevailing rate of three reales per day.105

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Conclusions

In his 1986 article on Mexican peonage, Alan Knight characterizesGuatemalan labor relations during the second half of the nineteenth cen-tury as “highly coercive.” With regard to the peonage typology put forthin said article, Knight considers Guatemala an example of the “classic debtservitude” variant from which there was little chance of escape.106 What Ihope to have demonstrated in this chapter is that such a description is atbest only marginally accurate. During the last two decades of Conservativerule labor began to move toward a strictly “proletarian” peonage in whichsubsistence, rather than extraeconomic coercion, was the primary motivat-ing factor. The growth of coastal plantation agriculture—first sugar and thencoffee—facilitated, rather than diminished, labor mobility. The state’s capac-ity to administer “frontier” areas such as the Costa Cuca was minimal andinterfinca competition for workers only exacerbated an already tight laborenvironment. Conservative authorities and their Liberal successors attemptedto counteract this trend by injecting production relations with a strong doseof coercion. Among other things they revamped the enforcement of debtcontracts and resurrected the mandamiento. Had these measures functionedin the manner described by the legal discourse perhaps Knight’s characteri-zation would not be so far off base. In fact, however, the evidence suggestsquite the contrary. The tendency toward increased mobility on the part ofindebted workers was not significantly hampered.

The reason for this divergence of opinion does not derive from irrec-oncilable approaches, but rather from our respective sources. As a work ofsynthesis Knight’s piece necessarily relies on a secondary reading of otherscholars’ research. Specifically, Knight draws on historian David McCreery’searly interpretation of Guatemalan labor relations, the most rigorous andinformative published source on the topic at that time.107 Given its pioneer-ing nature, however, McCreery’s work was understandably captivated by theextreme coercion that appeared endemic if one coupled the discourse ofGuatemalan legal statutes with the numerous examples of abuse extant inarchival sources. Although McCreery simultaneously hinted at the perva-siveness of subaltern resistance, it is not until much more recently that hisinterpretation of Guatemalan labor gives such resistance the weight that itdeserves. In contrast to his earlier work, McCreery writes in 1994 that “In-debted labor was common, but the power of the state and the hacendados wasinsufficient to qualify this as debt peonage. More properly it should be seen asa form of competition among employers from which the workers sometimesbenefited.”108 This is a far cry from Knight’s perception that Guatemalan pro-duction relations typified the “classical debt servitude” category of peonage,one reminiscent of “chattel slavery.”109

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Returning to the central paradox of this book—how to explain the successof a post-1870 Liberal project so apparently at odds with popular aspirations—the problem with previous interpretations of Guatemala’s nineteenth centuryis twofold. In an attempt to differentiate between the Conservative and Lib-eral regimes the existing literature simultaneously exaggerates the former’spaternalism and the latter’s ruthless efficiency. Thus, for example, RafaelCarrera is credited with protecting indigenous community land when, at leastin the case of towns with territory in the Pacific piedmont, he did nothing ofthe sort. Likewise, the claim that he resisted the expansion of indebted laboris flatly contradicted by the evidence from western Quezaltenango where alllabor was of the indebted variety. The expansion of labor in general, both be-fore and after 1871, necessarily implied an expansion of debt and indebted la-borers. Even the mandamiento, which exemplifies the more extreme varietyof labor coercion, was employed with increasing frequency during Carrera’slater years. Although it may be true that Carrera did not champion these ef-forts with the rhetoric of his Liberal successors, he did not thwart them either.

With regard to the post-1870 period, most authors believe that the Re-forma marked a dramatic departure from the preceding decades. The Liberalsare typically lauded or blamed for the wholesale disenfranchisement of in-digenous communities and for promoting the spread of indebted and forcedlabor like wild fire across the highlands. Clearly, however, this view is some-thing less than accurate if many indigenous communities had already losttheir land and if the custom of pay advances and the use of mandamientos al-ready proliferated under Conservative rule. McCreery’s work buttresses sucha conclusion by emphasizing the pragmatism of Liberal leaders and by illumi-nating how popular resistance persisted despite Liberal efforts to quash it. Justas Barrios and his cohorts did not attempt a blanket appropriation of existingindigenous community land, legal discourse notwithstanding, McCreery alsodemonstrates that workers continued to evade their debt contracts during theReforma, often with virtual impunity. In terms of the mandamiento, my re-search indicates that forced labor—in the form of the mandamientos—actuallymay have declined after 1871 as a percentage of the overall population. More-over, I show that the Liberal state evinced a marked preference for employinglabor drafts to work the fincas of government officials and their relatives andclose associates, rather than for the benefit of coffee planters or the coffeeeconomy generally. In this sense, then, the Reforma represented not theculmination of an enlightened or modernizing liberalism, but a disguisedreinvention of the spoils system and patronage politics.

In sum, if indigenous communities did not resist second-generation lib-eralism with the same energy and fury with which they participated in theCarrera revolt, this was at least partly because the new regime did not imposea significantly different project from its predecessor. Like the Conservatives,

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the Liberals were most interested in privatizing community lands with thegreatest potential for commercial activity. As the Costa Cuca demonstrates,such lands already had been detached from particular communities and werewell on their way to wholesale privatization by 1871. Like the Conservatives,the Liberals attempted to use coercion to reimpose labor discipline with littleadditional success, at least not during the nineteenth century. Labor mobilitypersisted and worker pay, if salary and debt are considered together, continuedto rise in comparison to corn prices.

Yet this is only part of the story. An additional reason many indigenoustowns did not help to reenact the Carrera revolt is that they were able tocarve out a more or less acceptable alternative to highland milpa agricul-ture over the course of the nineteenth century. Even before independenceQuezaltenango’s Mam residents had been utilizing coastal land as well as debtcontracts of one form or another, including credit-for-labor arrangements,to support their families. Although the expansion of commercially orientedagriculture placed increasing pressure on the arable regions of the coast, italso brought about new opportunities for wage employment. Indeed, theconstant labor shortage that appears to have marked most of the nineteenthcentury suggests that the demand for labor consistently outpaced the numberof people for whom milpa production, whether of the highland or lowlandvariety, was no longer a viable or satisfactory means of subsistence. By the endof the Conservative period the interrelated and mutually reinforcing factorsof labor scarcity, subaltern resistance, and interfinca competition for workersallowed labor as a group to better the material rewards it received for itsefforts. This balance of forces persisted into the Liberal era despite frequentintimidation and abuse and a decade-long, concerted effort by planters andtheir promoters within the Conservative and Liberal states to ensure a servilelabor force by eliminating worker mobility.

One last example illustrates the extent to which indigenous communitieswere able to find advantage in a system ostensibly designed to ensure theirsubjugation. As should be clear by now, workers continually abrogated theterms of their debt contracts with little fear that some other planter wouldrefuse to employ them at a later time. Despite repeated complaints to thiseffect, the state was too weak to provide the resources necessary for morerigorous enforcement. Indeed, the main burden of tracking down and pun-ishing fugitive or otherwise noncompliant workers often fell to municipalgovernments singularly ill-equipped for the task. Only a handful of localofficials received any sort of regular salary from the municipal treasury. Sowhere was the personnel to investigate the innumerable cases of mozos fugos,and how were they remunerated?

For the Mam region of Quezaltenango, the answer lies with the auxiliaryofficials and their assistants, both regidores and mayores, who were primarily

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indigenous. When planters asked the state for help to pursue fugitive workerstheir requests were forwarded to the auxiliares of the paraje or canton fromwhich the escapee was thought to originate. Moreover, when fugitives wereremanded to jail or back to the finca to which they were indebted, it was un-der the care of these authorities. The catch, however, was that such assistancedid not come free. Planters found themselves having to pay for the servicesof each auxiliary official who endeavored on their behalf. In essence, then,where the machinery to enforce debt contracts existed at all, it only func-tioned for those with the financial resources to lubricate it sufficiently. Andalthough it is hard to tell exactly how well the individuals who staffed thisapparatus were remunerated, in the case of Ostuncalco alone, their num-bers grew to well over one hundred by the late 1880s, all of whom weretemporarily exempt from repaying their debts or serving in mandamientos.In sum, then, some indigenous community members were able to use thecover of the Liberal’s own policies to carve out a space from which to stallplanter claims to their labor while simultaneously earning an income.110 Thisoutcome, unanticipated by Barrios and his fellow reformers, demonstratesonce again how everyday Guatemalans reshaped the contours of a systemdesigned to guarantee their immiseration.

chapter4Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and

Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule

there is no doubt that Rafael Carrera was distrusted by much of theGuatemalan elite, especially in the early years of his rule. It would not bedifficult to argue that their distrust was sometimes justified. His order toexecute the members of Quezaltenango’s ladino municipal government ormunicipalidad in March of 1841 comes to mind.1 Conversely, Guatemala’srural poor, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, tended to idealize the for-mer rebel leader. He consistently was met by plebeian throngs whereverhe traveled, and after his death even liberal rebels attempted to gain popu-lar support by invoking his name.2 Nevertheless, I believe that by the timeRafael Carrera died in 1865 he had lost much of the mass support previouslywon through his guerrilla-style campaign against the liberal injustices of the1830s. This is not to say that his image now sparked popular revulsion; quitethe contrary. Still, the insurgencies of the 1860s that challenged conservativedomination of the state did not reflect elite dissatisfaction alone. They alsoindicated growing popular rejection of the liberal-like trajectory taken byCarrera and his successors. If Carrera personally escaped much of the blame,his ministers and administrators did not. The conservative camarilla that sur-rounded him for most of his rule does not appear to have benefited from itsclose association with the popular figure. Indeed, Carrera’s hand-picked suc-cessor was ousted from power barely six years after the former rebel leader’sdeath, and there is little evidence of popular mobilization on his behalf.3

The fact that mass uprisings did not materialize before the prospect of animpending liberal victory does not mean that Guatemala’s subaltern majorityhad defected en masse to the new cause. Instead, widespread popular ambiva-lence was the key to conservative defeat and liberal triumph. As Chapters 2and 3 demonstrate, plebeian residents of rural communities had many reasons

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to doubt the intentions of Carrera and his conservative allies. Legalities aside,Carrera stood by while community lands were taken by outsiders, and, as thecases of San Martın Sacatepequez and San Felipe demonstrate, conservativebureaucrats went so far as to facilitate such illegal usurpation. With regard tolabor, the Carrera regime worked to enforce debt contracts and imposed aforced-labor regimen every bit as harsh as his liberal successors, if somewhatless far-reaching. In sum, the Maya cultivators and laborers who inhabitedthe densely populated mountain strip that formed the backbone of the coun-try and that paralleled the fertile agricultural lands of the Pacific piedmontand coast had little reason to put their lives in the balance as ConservativeVicente Cerna tottered on the brink of defeat in 1871.

Carrera’s land and labor policies aside, a third factor encouraging subalternresentment was his regime’s changing stance toward alcohol. It would bean understatement to say that the vast majority of Guatemalans hated thesystem of monopolies and licenses that governed alcohol production andsale throughout the nineteenth century, regardless of who was in power.During the first few years of Carrera’s rule, however, his monopoly systemactually was quite well received by some because it included a completeban on alcohol in indigenous communities. Although monopoly towns stillchafed at the restrictive policies just as they had in the past, residents ofthe indigenous “dry” towns generally supported the return to colonial-eraregulations that abolished alcohol in their communities. All of this changed,however, when the Conservative state began to expand the monopoly froma handful of provincial capitals and commercial centers to a greater andgreater number of formerly dry towns. With the incorporation of eachnew locale, a growing number of Maya joined Ladino in opposing alcoholregulations. Liberal rebels may well have gained grudging respect from bothsectors of the populace with their call to eliminate the alcohol monopoly. Tounderstand why requires a ground-level examination of the role of alcohol inthe economy of the western highlands, and in particular, of the specific waysthat alcohol production and sale meshed with the gendered division of laborto provide a significant source of income for many Guatemalan households.4

Women in the Rural Economy

On the evening of 22 October 1854, San Juan Ostuncalco’s Juez PreventivoManuel Larrave set out to capture fugitives Cayetano and Matilde Ralda formasterminding an uprising that had challenged his authority on July 31stof that year. In addition to three soldiers, Judge Larrave ordered along theranking councilmember, or regidor decano, of Ostuncalco’s ladino munici-pal government. Apparently, Larrave was not very familiar with the town,and thus he needed councilman Galindo to serve as his guide. To borrow

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 105

Galindo’s words, “the District Judge told me that I should show him thehouse of Cayetano Ralda, and that I should take him there by the easiestroute.” Instead, however, according to Larrave, the councilman then pro-ceeded to do just the opposite. “[I]nstead of leading me directly to the houseof the aforementioned Raldas,” the district judge wrote, “[Galindo] tookme on a meandering path full of ravines and gullies, surely in the hope thatit would come to [the Raldas] attention that I was making the rounds andgiving them time to escape, as occurred.”5

Needless to say, Judge Larrave was more than a little annoyed when he re-alized that his treacherous, nighttime journey over Ostuncalco’s twisted andunfamiliar footpaths had been for naught. Sometime around 11 p.m., stillsmarting after a particularly nasty fall, he recognized the regidor’s deception,and, “without thinking,” he drew his sword and struck Galindo with the flatof his blade. The regidor swiftly returned the gesture, “and because I did notexpect the [counter-] attack,” the judge stated, “he succeeded in landing thefirst [blow] on my left ear. . . .” After a brief duel, Galindo ran from the scene,but Larrave’s military escort quickly captured and disarmed the Councilman.He was led to jail, literally, at the point of Judge Larrave’s sword, which thelatter used to poke and prod the councilman as they made their way back tothe center of town. Although Larrave attempted to downplay his harsh treat-ment of Galindo, his written testimony was hardly reassuring. “I did not strike[the Councilman] except [with the flat of my blade],” the judge proclaimed,“because if I had used the edge, as he says [I did], he would be dead. . . .”6

Putting aside Judge Larrave’s bravado, and the highly charged images ofthe swordfight and the subsequent capture of councilman Galindo, a per-plexing question remains. Why did Ostuncalco’s regidor decano risk his repu-tation, his office, and possibly his life, to protect two fugitive rebels? Couldit be that he, and perhaps other municipal officials as well, simply resentedstate interference—embodied by the presence of the district judge—in local,community affairs? Or was the story more complicated than that?

Larrave included a number of additional details in his testimony that helpexplain the actions of Leandro Galindo. According to Larrave, Galindo wasby no means a disinterested party when it came to the Raldas. Describingfugitives Cayetano and Matilde Ralda, the judge wrote that “both offendersare very close relatives of Irinea Ralda, the concubine of Regidor Galindo.”Moreover, Galindo was the very same person, who, “finding himself in thehouse of the aforementioned concubine on the night before the uprising of[July 31st], drew his sword against the soldiers and alcohol police, preventingthem from taking [Irinea] Ralda to jail as a clandestinista,” or trafficker inillegal rum. It was Galindo’s armed standoff with the alcohol police, thedistrict judge concluded, “which gave rise to the [subsequent] uprising” ledby Cayetano and Matilde Ralda.7

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In sum, Larrave’s testimony revealed Councilman Galindo to be a promi-nent strand in the shadowy web of illicit relations and kinship ties thatbound together Ostuncalco’s gendered, informal, and to a significant de-gree underground, economy. It was no coincidence that Galindo resentedthe interference of the district judge in community affairs given his inti-macy with a notorious purveyor of illegal aguardiente or rum. And if theranking councilman’s sentiments were at all representative of Ostuncalco’sremaining municipal officeholders, then local authorities do not appear tohave viewed the offending beverage in quite the same light as their politicalsuperiors. Nor was it a coincidence that Cayetano and Matilde Ralda, aswell as scores of community residents, sympathized with Irinea as she waspursued by Conservative authorities, even putting their bodies on the lineto riot against the alcohol police and the district judge. This outpouring ofpublic sympathy probably reflected the degree to which other inhabitants ofthe town participated in or directly or indirectly benefited from the illicitmanufacture of alcohol.

Finally, it was not a coincidence that the sole “clandestinista” named byJudge Larrave was a woman—Irinea Ralda. State authorities at all levelscommented on women’s involvement in the alcohol trade precisely becauseof its clandestine nature. As a result, they generated a significant amount ofevidence documenting the disproportionate role that women played in pro-ducing and selling contraband rum. And even if this documentary evidenceoften appeared merely as an afterthought, as a backdrop to the swordfightsand uprisings, still, for the sake of posterity, it was better than no evidenceat all.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the documentation of women’slawful activities. The very state authorities who reported on women in thecontext of contraband alcohol studiously ignored their more licit endeavors.Indeed, almost across the board, the details of women’s lives are missingfrom the historical record, hidden behind a veil of official indifference thatlowered only in the face of extraordinary circumstances. To make mattersworse, the present-day researcher is often led astray by contemporary debatesthat mythologize a golden past of domesticated housewives, and by scholarlytheory that proposes a gendered division of society into private (female)and public (male) spheres. According to this schema, the private or domesticsphere is a woman’s domain, where she attends to the immediate needs of herfamily. The public sphere is a man’s domain, where production, commerce,and politics are carried out. Regardless of what women do in or outsideof the domestic sphere, their efforts are oriented primarily toward internalconsumption. Men’s endeavors, however, even if they are pursued withinthe confines of the home, tend to be directed toward external factors suchas the market.8

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By contrast, I intend to show that in the case of western Guatemalawomen were not constrained by the walls that surrounded their houses andpatios. They actively participated in various arenas of the so-called publicsphere, and indeed, quite often their very survival depended on it. Althoughit is true that most of the documents that I encountered over the courseof my research contain little overt information about women, nevertheless,sometimes the very absence of such information provides important cluesabout the nature of their lives.

The 1830 padron or census of San Juan Ostuncalco is one such document,and it is a useful place to begin when attempting to reconstruct how thewomen of highland Guatemala—both indigenous and ladino—lived in thenineteenth century.9 Aside from gross population figures, the census liststhe marital status and family position of each individual enumerated. It alsocounts Mayan and ladino populations separately, allowing for comparisons ofhousehold organization, marriage, and reproductive practices across ethnicboundaries. All told, 1,024 households or 5,293 people were included inthe census. Of the 143 ladino and 881 indigenous households, nearly threequarters were nuclear.10 Extended families of two to six related couples madeup an additional 16 percent of indigenous households, and nearly 30 percentof the indigenous population. Thus, although extended families were farless numerous than their nuclear counterparts, they averaged more than ninemembers, and this was the key to their relative weight in terms of overallpopulation.11 In addition, extended families were agnatic almost to the verylast one. That is, they were based on male descent, and married couples werelinked to the household by way of sons or brothers of the patriarch, ratherthan daughters, sisters, or relatives of the matriarch.12

Perhaps unsurprisingly, women led well over half of the consanguinealand non-family households, whether indigenous (51 vs. 37) or ladino (24vs. 8). This is reflected by their predominance among unmarried householdheads (solteras/os) and household heads whose spouses had died (widows/ers).Within the Mam segment of the populace, ninety-four households were ledby solteras and widows, compared to the fifty eight led by their male counter-parts. Among ladinos the disparity was even more pronounced. Soltera- andwidow-headed households (24) outnumbered soltero and widower house-holds (7) by over three to one. In total, then, 118 of Ostuncalco’s 1,024households were headed by women.

Like other documents of its time, the 1830 padron reflects contempo-rary biases and introduces problems of interpretation. Although the padronincludes occupational data for adult men, for example, it simultaneously ne-glects to describe the economic endeavors of women, seemingly confirmingthe public/private model of society outlined above. Perhaps the census-taker specified no particular occupational categories for women because they

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engaged in strictly domestic affairs. Yet if this gendered division of labor andsocial space held for Ostuncalco, then how did the 118 female-headed house-holds enumerated in the 1830 census subsist? Even excepting all of thosehouseholds that included a male relative fifteen years or older, thirty-sevenremain. That is, in 1830 Ostuncalco had thirty-seven households headedby women that did not include a single adult male. Twenty-eight of thesehouseholds were indigenous.

Could property ownership have accounted for the subsistence of thesefemale-headed households? Perhaps in some of the cases, particularly whenthe household was headed by a ladina. Various sources document theprevalence of land ownership among Ostuncalco’s ladinas.13 Anthropolo-gist Robert Carmack, writing on the nearby town of Momostenango in theeighteenth century, notes that “a high proportion of Spanish ranches . . . wereheaded by women. . . .”14 When it came to indigenous women, however, landinheritance and property claims were far less certain. Continuing on withMomostenango, Carmack states that as a general rule “[d]aughters were notexpected to inherit property. . . . Inheritance of land was patrilineal, and landproperty was divided equally among sons.”15 A similar pattern is describedby other anthropologists for the Cuchumatan towns of San Miguel Acatan,Santiago Chimaltenango, Santa Eulalia, and to a lesser extent, Jacaltenango,during the 1920s and 1930s.16 In other words, evidence from other parts ofGuatemala’s western highlands would seem to rule out the likelihood thatproperty ownership served as a significant source of income or subsistencefor Ostuncalco’s indigenous female-headed households.

At a demographic level the 1830 padron provides additional evidence forsuch a conclusion. It documents the near ubiquity of patrilocal residenceamong Ostuncalco’s households, a common characteristic of patrilineal in-heritance rules. Only one son-in-law or yerno is identified outright, althoughanother two dependent men appear to have been married to daughters ofhousehold heads. As for brothers-in-law, or cunados, again, the padron onlyspecifies one. Although several other dependent men may have qualified ascunados, in every case they were members of households headed by widows,and their connection to the family would have been through the widow’sdeceased husband.

At an anecdotal level, Mam women appear to have encountered at leasttwo obstacles that hampered their acquisition of property through inher-itance. First, it was accepted practice for indigenous fathers to bequeaththeir portion of the community ejido to their male children. Carmack’s de-scription of Momostenango seems to fit Quezaltenango’s Mam communitiesequally well. In the case of daughters, municipal authorities could and didintervene to block inheritance transfers and to repossess the land in ques-tion. According to Marıa Vasques, for example, writing Ostuncalco’s Juez

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Preventivo in 1864, San Martın’s officials had refused to sanction the inheri-tance of forty cuerdas that her deceased husband Miguel Peres had bequeathedto their daughter Juana, “because she is a woman, and the disqualification ofbeing a women is sufficient reason to lose all paternal inheritance.”17 Evenleaving aside the opposition of municipal authorities, however, land inheri-tance by daughters also was challenged by sons and other potential male heirs.Casimira Marroquın had hoped to inherit an equal share of her father’s nu-merous properties. Instead, her brother Francisco, “as a man, took everythingthere is.” Casimira, “for being a women,” ended up with “only five cuerdas ofland.” When she confronted Francisco, he responded that “as a woman, [she]had no legal right” to question how their father’s property had been divided.18

In sum, indigenous women could only hope to inherit significant property inthe absence of a potential male heir and if the property was not subject to theauthority of community officials—perhaps because it had been purchased.19

The most surprising thing about the petitions of Juana Peres and CasimiraMarroquın is that they even exist at all. The case of Casimira is particularlyintriguing because it begs the question why an indigenous woman would everharbor expectations of inheriting an equal portion of her father’s property.Perhaps the indigenous tradition of strict patrilineal inheritance was notas automatic or consensual as some of the sources—for example, the 1830padron—seem to imply. And while Mam women probably had never acceptedthis or any other manifestation of male privilege without resistance, it appearsthat their propensity and ability to challenge patrilineal inheritance increasedafter mid-century. The scant evidence of such resistance dates from the 1860sonward, as does the more plentiful evidence of indigenous female propertyownership generally. Although any number of completely unrelated factorsmight account for this chronology, including the idiosyncrasies of documentpreservation, nevertheless, I believe that three interrelated trends probablycontributed to the growth and success of efforts by Mam women to attainproperty rights as the nineteenth century matured.

From the 1750s forward the Mam region of Quezaltenango experienceda growing influx of ladinos. Some settled within Ostuncalco’s town proper,while others colonized the interstices of the Mam communities, and, even-tually, established towns of their own. Although Ostuncalco’s ladino residentsnumbered less than 300 at the start of the nineteenth century, their popula-tion climbed to nearly 2,000 by the end.20 Given that ladinas could, and did,inherit property, the general expansion of ladinos would have precipitated acorresponding proliferation of female-owned properties in Ostuncalco. Thisis the first factor that might help explain why indigenous women began tochallenge the rigid inheritance rules of Mam society when they did. In lightof growing ladina property ownership throughout the nineteenth century,Mam women may have increasingly questioned their own relative exclusion.

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Aside from serving as a point of comparison for indigenous women,Ostuncalco’s growing ladino population appears to have provided an actualmechanism by which patrilineal inheritance could be opposed. In 1806 thecrown authorized Ostuncalco’s ladino residents to form their own municipalgoverning body independent of the town’s existing indigenous officials.21

Then, beginning in the late-1830s, Ostuncalco was designated as a regionaljudicial seat.22 Given clear state preference for ladino authorities, each of thesedevelopments created a new venue in which dissatisfied Mam plaintiffs couldappeal and possibly preempt the decisions of their own municipalidad. Andwhen coupled with evidence that ladino authorities did not automaticallydisqualify indigenous women from inheriting property, particularly in theabsence of a testament that stated otherwise, the significance for gender andproperty rights among the Mam becomes clear. Marıa Vasques, for instance,expressed an acute awareness of how gender subordination had been used tojustify the disinheritance of her daughter when she petitioned Ostuncalco’sJuez Preventivo to overturn the decision of San Martın’s alcaldes. Interestingly,however, rather than reject such subordination outright, she sought to use herdaughter’s inferior status to gain the judge’s sympathy. “It is like this, SenorJuez. . . . [T]hose who live by plundering others would like to invalidate somethings that should be sacred, like the possessions, large and small, that ourparents leave to us. On the other hand, . . . I know that divine and human lawsadvocate on behalf of the weak.”23 Although the outcome of Marıa’s petitionis unclear, Casimira Marroquın’s brother Francisco voluntarily increased hissister’s share of their deceased father’s property from five to eight cuerdas plusseveral head of livestock when faced with the threat that ladino officials mightintervene.24 Apparently he feared that their intervention offered at least thepotential for Casimira to obtain a more favorable division of property.

Additional evidence for the claim that nineteenth century developmentsopened the door for Mam women to challenge patrilineal inheritance isfound in a third factor that appears to have aided and encouraged their efforts.Following the liberal resumption of power in 1871, Barrios and his cohortsimplemented several measures aimed at promoting and facilitating individualland titling. Mam women took advantage of these measures, though in muchsmaller numbers than ladinas. For example, they submitted ten of the twohundred tıtulos supletorios directed to Ostuncalco’s ladino municipalidad be-tween 1878 and 1889. Another forty-eight originated with ladinas.25 Otherevidence of land ownership among indigenous women under liberal rule isfound in the agricultural censuses that were carried out during the 1870s,1880s, and 1890s. These surveys indicate that indigenous women held numer-ous agricultural properties in the latter decades of the nineteenth century.26

In effect, Mam women were able to play the state off their own society’stradition of patrilineal inheritance. They took advantage of the nineteenth

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century expansion of ladino-controlled administrative and legal structuresthat culminated in the liberal reforms of the post-1870 years. That said, itis unlikely a significant number of indigenous female household heads heldproperty as early as 1830. The factors discussed above that appear to haveencouraged and facilitated their efforts were still relatively unimportant orhad yet to be established. Moreover, almost all of the evidence for propertyownership among Mam women dates from the 1860s and thereafter. Thequestion that remains, then, is how single women in households with noadult male relatives survived in lieu of property ownership. All answers pointto one fact: the women of Ostuncalco, single or married, engaged in muchmore than just producing for the immediate consumption of their ownhousehold, and in their efforts to sustain themselves and their family theyinhabited numerous public arenas.

Markets, for example, appear to have been the province of women. Evi-dence for Guatemala as a whole indicates that women made up the majorityof market vendors as well as buyers. British traveler Robert Dunlop, visitingGuatemala in the mid-1840s, observed that subaltern women, not men, trans-ported their family’s agricultural surplus to market, sold it, and in addition,made all necessary purchases. Similarly, J. W. Boddam-Whetham encoun-tered a steady stream of primarily indigenous “market-women” carrying allmanner of items to and from the commercial centers of Guatemala City andQuezaltenango during his circuit of the country ca. 1875–76. And HelenSanborn, on a visit to Guatemala City’s central market during the mid-1880s, wrote that it was “occupied by the Indian women, selling all sortsof provisions . . . and young market girls with baskets on their heads, whosebusiness it is to carry your purchases for you.” During a stay in Jacaltenangoin 1927 Oliver LaFarge noted that “[i]t is the women who sell goods in thelocal market, and often they, alone or accompanied by their men, who goto the neighboring fairs to trade.”27 Tax and Hinshaw, commenting on theindigenous communities of Guatemala’s mid-western highlands after yearsof experience there, claim that “in most communities the women do all theroutine purchasing of family needs and often do the selling of manufacturedgoods and produce as well.”28 Suffice it to say that even today a visitor toany one of Guatemala’s many markets will notice a preponderance of femalevendors and buyers.

In the case of Ostuncalco I found no documentation that directly andexplicitly confirmed the importance of women in the local marketplace. Idid, however, encounter overwhelming evidence that they were key playersin various commercial and productive enterprises. In 1851, for example,when the ladino municipalidad decided to auction off four spaces within thetown office building to be used as storefronts, three of the four successfulbidders were women—two ladinas and one indıgena.29 When it came to

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the production and sale of aguardiente,30 as well, women of both ethnicgroups played a key role. The abundance of documentation substantiatingtheir centrality to this activity is explained largely by the fact that becausemost aguardiente was illegal, it drew a good deal of attention from officialsat all levels of the state.31

Women were also a significant source of credit, as was described in Chap-ter 3. Although ladinas appear to have been more involved than indigenouswomen, this may reflect, at least partly, the ethnic bias of the sources. Therecord books of the ladino authorities were much more likely to includedebt transactions involving ladinos. Even so, it is clear that Mam women didlend money, and that they sometimes served as fiadoras to Mam debtors.32

Moreover, because credit transactions were often indicative of a primarytransaction—the purchase of wheat, sugar, or some other item—which wasfacilitated by the extension of credit, creditors—regardless of their gender orethnicity—frequently were also vendors.33

If the observations of the travel writers and anthropologists discussed aboveare at all representative, then indigenous women throughout Guatemala de-voted a large portion of their day to food preparation and clothes washing,directed both toward the home and toward the market.34 Although the evi-dence from Ostuncalco is limited to the occasional anecdote, it suggests thatMam women were no different.35 With regard to textiles, historical prece-dence makes clear that indigenous women were the primary producers ofcotton thread. Under the infamous repartimientos de mercancıas of the colonialperiod, the women of Ostuncalco received bales of cotton from the Corregi-dor of Quezaltenango that they then spun. The Corregidor credited themtwo reales per pound of thread, and this money was applied toward the com-munity’s tribute requirements as well as toward satisfying other items thatwere imposed on the community by way of the repartimiento. In addition,Ostuncalco’s female spinners sold some of their product in the markets ofQuezaltenango and beyond, a practice that continued into the nineteenthcentury.36

Aside from cotton thread, wool and woolen textiles were also producedin Ostuncalco. Unfortunately, however, little direct evidence distinguisheswhether this was primarily a female or male activity. From the 1830 padron it isclear that a large percentage of ladino men were involved. Yet this same doc-ument fails to likewise credit more than a small handful of indigenous men,despite the fact that various sources ascribed a brisk trade in wool, and woolenthread, cloth, and clothing to Ostuncalco’s Mam inhabitants. Is this becauseindigenous women, rather than men, were the source of this commerce?Perhaps in the case of wool and wool thread, but with regard to weaving,much of the anthropological literature attributes this strictly to men. Taxand Hinshaw take this position, as do McBryde and Carmack. Commenting

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on Momostenango, the Mam towns’ eastern neighbor, Carmack writes thatduring the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries K’iche’ women andchildren cleaned, carded, and spun the wool upon which the town’s famedindigenous wool and weaving enterprises were based. Men, however, werethe sole weavers.37

Other anthropologists provide a more contradictory view of how genderrelations and textile manufacturing intersected. LaFarge, for example, atteststo variations in the gendered division of textile production across geographicareas. He claims that in Jacaltenango and San Miguel Acatan, women woveboth cotton and wool, while men were not involved in either pursuit. InTodos Santos Cuchumatan and Santa Eulalia, by contrast, the so-called “tra-ditional” division of textile labor prevailed. Women concentrated their effortson cotton, and men worked solely with wool. More recent work by TracyEhlers demonstrates that labor divisions based on gender sometimes vary overtime as well as space. Ehlers found that in the case of San Antonio Palopo,weaving went from being a female-dominated field to a male-dominated fieldin the space of just a few years. Textile specialist Cherri Pancake also cautionsagainst accepting rigid divisions of labor based on gender. After investigatingseveral facets of textile production that were thought to have been segregatedalong gender lines, Pancake has found that some of these supposed divisionswere little more than inaccurate stereotypes.38 In sum, what can be said for thecase of Ostuncalco? Ample comparative evidence suggests that women prob-ably played a central role in wool and wool thread production, cleaning, card-ing, and spinning. Whether they wove the wool too is difficult to ascertain.

One additional activity that appears to have involved an increasing numberof Ostuncalco’s women, particularly indigenous women, from the late-1850sonward, is the harvesting and processing of coffee. Writing about Guatemalaas a whole, historian David McCreery describes women’s participation incoffee production this way:

From the earliest days of coffee growing in Guatemala, the fincas contracted womenand children, sometimes to handle special tasks and to compensate for labor shortages,and also because they could be paid lower wages. When the crop was first developing,landowners employed women from nearby villages as day laborers to pick and sortthe crop. . . . However, as the crop expanded and the demand for labor drew moremen into coffee labor, the situation of women changed. Women continued to dothe hand sorting required to extract the damaged or withered beans, but more ofthem now worked the harvest along with the men of their family, contributing tothe tasks credited to the man’s account.39

Records left by contemporary observers corroborate various elementsof McCreery’s sketch, but they also demonstrate that when consideredseparately, concrete examples could diverge in significant ways from his

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composite. Consider, for example, the observations of Helen Sanborn, avisitor to Guatemala during the mid-1880s. In keeping with McCreery’sassessment, Sanborn found that women and girls harvested and processedcoffee at half the daily wage earned by male agricultural workers. In contrastto McCreery, however, she also found that men were not involved in either ofthese two activities. Instead, they were employed exclusively for cultivation.The photographs of Eadweard Muybridge, who passed through Guatemalaseveral years before Sanborn, tell a slightly different story. His photographsconsistently show that among the fincas of the western piedmont, womendid the picking and men the cultivation. But they also reflect a predominanceof male labor in processing as well. This does not accord with Sanborn’s ob-servations. A third perspective is represented in J. W. Boddam-Whetham’saccount of his short stay at the finca Mercedes, in Quezaltenango’s CostaCuca, during the mid-1870s. He noted that not only did women and childrenharvest coffee, but they also performed tasks associated with its cultivation,for example, weeding and mulching.40

Despite the dissimilarities among each of these accounts, they all pointto the significant involvement of women in coffee production. And at leastwith regard to the harvest, they are all in agreement: women picked coffee.Apparently, depending on the finca, they also may have participated in pro-cessing the bean, and/or in cultivating the tree. Returning to the specificcase of Ostuncalco, Boddam–Whetham’s commentary is particularly helpfulbecause it provides evidence that the fincas of the Costa Cuca, the primarydestination for Ostuncalco’s coffee laborers, were no exception to the gen-eral pattern of women in coffee production. This perception is bolstered bya number of archival sources that document the presence of Mam womenfrom Ostuncalco and surrounding towns on the coffee plantations of theCosta Cuca. Some of the sources show that women held labor contractsindependent of men, for which they alone apparently were responsible.41

Other sources confirm McCreery’s claim that women, indeed, entire fami-lies, were often expected to contribute to the efforts of the male householdhead, and that they were included under the terms of his contract.42

Sometimes, however, planters desired to locate a male worker’s spouse orfamily on the finca simply because this was one more way to encourage labordiscipline. In other words, spouses and other family members were not al-ways viewed as potential laborers. Jorge Reed wrote Ostuncalco’s first alcaldefrom the finca Nueva Austria to request his assistance in making TiburciaPerez join her husband, Juan Romero, on the finca. Romero “cannot work,”stated Reed, “unless his wife comes to care for him.” Visiting one’s familywas among the most common reasons for which workers requested per-mission to leave the finca, and it was also a very common excuse given byfugitive workers for why they had failed to abide by their contract. Pressuringspouses to accompany their husbands was one way to avoid this “disruption”

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completely. If nothing else, at least the excuse “visiting family” was no longeravailable. In addition, on a more purely practical level, the presence of one’sfamily decreased mobility and made flight that much more difficult.43

So far our effort to uncover the economic activities of Ostuncalco’swomen has required no small amount of extrapolation and, to some degree,guesswork. The 1830 padron simply ignored women’s occupations altogether.What about the censos generales of 1880 and 1893? Surprisingly, these twosources indicate at least some of the endeavors in which women engaged inthe later part of the nineteenth century. The 1880 census lists several femaleoccupations, five of which included women from Ostuncalco: seventeencigar and cigarette rollers (cigarreras y pureras); twenty-one cooks (cocineras);twenty-two seamstresses (costureras); eighty-seven spinners (hilanderas); andfive tortilla makers (tortilleras).44

Unfortunately, changes in occupational categories in the 1893 censusmake a direct comparison with the 1880 data difficult. Only three of thefive occupations discussed above are still listed at this later date: cigarrerasy pureras climbed to eighty-four; seamstresses jumped from twenty-one toseventy-three; and tortilleras dropped to zero. Cooks were appended to theoccupational category of servants (sirvientes), making it impossible to ascertaintheir true number. Together, however, these two groups comprised twenty-nine individuals, most of whom probably were women. As for hilanderas orfemale spinners, they simply were eliminated as a category. Instead, the 1893census created a new grouping of hilanderos or male spinners, and weavers(tejedores).45 Additional female occupations included laundresses (nine), ashopkeeper, and a vegetable seller.

The information contained in these two censos, though helpful, still leavesus with a picture of women’s subsistence activities that is far from complete.To put this in perspective, let us reconsider the 1880 data. Altogether, fivefemale categories were listed. They included 152 women. Yet according tothe 1880 census, Ostuncalco counted 3905 females. Discounting those belowthe age of fifteen, the total of adult women remains approximately 1943.46

In other words, the two censos generales do not give us an idea of what thevast majority of women in Ostuncalco were doing. Moreover, if the maleoccupational data is at all indicative, then the tendency probably was to placeless emphasis on the activities of indigenous women than ladinas, particularlyif the former lived outside the town center and did not interact with ladinoson a regular basis.

Aguardiente in the Rural Economy

The women of Ostuncalco engaged in a wide variety of economic enter-prises as they strove to provide for themselves and their families: selling andtrading; textile production; clothes washing; food preparation; and wage

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labor, particularly on the piedmont coffee plantations. One of the most im-portant of these enterprises, in terms of the sheer number of individualsinvolved, was the production and sale of aguardiente. Although the earlierdiscussion only hinted at aguardiente’s significance, I believe that makingand selling this beverage, along with the associated input industries of canecultivation and sugar milling, comprised the motor force of Ostuncalco’seconomy from the 1840s to the 1860s. Even after 1870, the year that coffeeemerged as Guatemala’s single largest export earner, aguardiente remainedan important component of the local economy and continued to underwritea significant proportion of the national budget.47 Indeed, according to DavidMcCreery, Liberal rebels quickly were forced to renege on their promisedfree-trade policy toward alcohol precisely because it deprived the state ofmuch needed revenue.48 Within months of their victory in late June 1871,and the abolition of the hated monopoly system, Reforma-era Liberals at-tempted to recuperate the lost income by imposing a series of increasinglyharsh restrictions on aguardiente production and commerce reminiscent ofConservative rule.49

The central, overriding factor that must be kept in mind when consid-ering the development of Ostuncalco’s aguardiente industry over the courseof the nineteenth century is that most aguardiente was produced and soldillegally, regardless of who controlled Guatemala City.50 As I will explain inmore detail below, both the colonial and national states severely restrictedthe industry in an attempt to benefit from the revenues. Granting that theGuatemalan state was extremely weak for most of the nineteenth century, andthat community-level officials frequently sympathized with local producersand vendors, or were directly complicit themselves, still, there was only so farthat individual producers and vendors could grow.51 Given the illegal statusof the vast majority of participants, they could not afford to mimic the large-scale operations of government-sanctioned aguardiente monopolists becausethey risked losing everything if caught. Instead, aguardiente expanded inthe form of a dispersed cottage industry. Although it is impossible to comeby exact figures, the number of individuals and incidents recorded in thedocumentation indicates that Ostuncalco and the surrounding Mam townscounted dozens of illegal aguardiente entrepreneurs, involving hundreds ofpeople, by the second half of the nineteenth century.

Other investigators of Mesoamerica’s past have recognized the link be-tween women’s labor and alcohol. In Drinking, Homicide, and RebellionWilliam Taylor discusses several colonial-era restrictions on the sale of pulquein Mexico City that make clear the predominance of women among pulquevendors. According to Taylor, at the beginning of the seventeenth centuryroyal officials “ordered that only one respectable old woman be licensed tosell pulque for every one hundred Indians. . . .” Less than thirty years later

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additional statutes were issued due to the persistence of illegal pulque tradingand selling. These laws banned the transport of pulque except by daylight anddecreed “that only two Indian women were to be licensed [to sell pulque]for each of the four Indian residential areas in Mexico City and one womanfor each town within five leagues of the city.” Outside of Mexico City, inthe villages of central Mexico and Oaxaca as well, Taylor found that pulquetraders and vendors were usually women. Because most communities lacked“formal cantinas . . . pulque and other local drinks were dispensed from thedoorways of homes by a woman of the household.”52

Anthropologist Christine Eber seconds Taylor’s view of the link betweenalcohol and women’s work in central Mexico and Oaxaca in Women andAlcohol in a Highland Maya Town. Moreover, she extends the association tohighland Chiapas. Eber cites an early-nineteenth century document fromSan Cristobal which states that rising tobacco prices pushed local women toswitch from cigar making to the fermentation of chicha in order to providefor their families.53

With regard to aguardiente production, Eber asserts that it arose in Chiapasduring the colonial period due to the decreased demand for sugar. Localplanters needed another outlet for their product, and so they promotedaguardiente consumption among the nearby indigenous communities as analternative.54 A similar relationship between sugar and alcohol productionand consumption appears to have held for colonial Guatemala as early asthe mid-sixteenth century. In his study of Guatemala’s central valley JulioPinto Soria writes that alcoholic beverages based on sugar in its various formsprovided a lucrative outlet for area cane cultivators. Some of the ingenios andtrapiches even went so far as to pay their indigenous workers in sugar-basedalcohol.55 By the last several decades of the colonial period poor mestizos,castas, and Maya had joined Spaniards in cultivating cane and producing sugar,usually in its raw form (panela). Perhaps even more than before, particularlyin the case of the later generations of small-scale cultivators, much of thesugar produced was earmarked for the manufacture of illegal alcohol.56

Suffice it to say, then, that by the late-eighteenth century clandestinealcohol production based on sugarcane had become widespread. Pinto Soriadescribes the case of sixty indıgenas from Colotenango, Huehuetenango,who in 1780 used a hand-powered mill to convert their cane into homebrew.57 And whether a community was primarily indigenous or ladino, localofficials often were complicit. In the case of indigenous communities inparticular, David McCreery reports that cofradıas were central figures in theproduction of clandestine aguardiente.58

A similar narrative holds for Quezaltenango and vicinity. According tohistorian Jorge Gonzalez Alzate, as the eighteenth century came to a closelocal Spaniards began to establish trapiches in the piedmont zone south of

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the city in order to supply raw sugar to the growing number of aguardi-ente manufacturers in Quezaltenango. Much as was true for Guatemala asa whole, these manufacturers ran the gamut from the relatively well-off topoor mestizos and indıgenas. Indeed, the Crown’s imposition of monopolyrestrictions on aguardiente production in Quezaltenango in 1785 was metby fierce resistance from all sectors of the populace, up to and including theCorregidor himself. When rebellion broke out the following year it includednot only a large number of indigenous Quezaltecos but also members of theladino militia. Later on, as the city’s ladino elite agitated for independence,they were obliged to promise an end to the hated alcohol monopoly, amongother things, to gain Maya support for Iturbide’s Plan de Iguala.59

Evidence from Ostuncalco and the other Mam towns from the first severaldecades of the nineteenth century also points up the relationship betweensugarcane cultivation and aguardiente production. By the late colonial pe-riod the piedmont south of Ostuncalco, which pertained to the ejido ofSan Martın Sacatepequez—the area that came to be known as the CostaCuca—had become a magnet for those who desired to try their hand atsugar. Though most of the aspiring planters appear to have been ladinosfrom Ostuncalco and Quezaltenango, indigenous cane cultivators probablywere more numerous than the occasional off-hand reference suggests.60 Dur-ing the 1820s and 1830s the number of ladino trapicheros multiplied. As of1841 Quezaltenango’s Corregidor claimed that there were over one hundredladino cultivators in the area. Despite the fact that all of them were situatedon land belonging to San Martın, the 8,000 arrobas61 of raw sugar theyproduced in 1840 were attributed to Ostuncalco.62

In terms of how much land these trapiches cultivated, how much sugarthey produced, or their market value, none was large by any standards. Mostprobably cultivated less than the one-eighth caballerıa or approximately 150cuerdas ascribed by Pinto Soria to the typical trapiche of Guatemala’s hin-terland in the previous century.63 An 1841 inventory of Nicolas Castillo’strapiche, for example, listed only 134 cuerdas planted in sugarcane. Propertyvalues almost certainly never reached higher than several thousand pesos. Thetrapiche Santa Teresa el Asintal, with 24 cuerdas in cane, was valued at 917pesos, also in 1841. This represents a tiny sum, of course, when compared toFuentes y Guzman’s estimate of 600,000 pesos for some of the ingenios thatoperated in Guatemala’s central valley during the colonial period.64 As foroverall production, the 8,000 arroba figure cited above for all of Ostuncalco(i.e., the Costa Cuca) was more than equaled by four or five of the ingenioslocated in Guatemala’s central valley. The country’s largest mill, the ingenioSan Geronimo, generated 7,200 arrobas of sugar each year all by itself.65

Nevertheless, when considered in the context of agricultural statisticsfrom later in the century, Ostuncalco’s annual sugar production of 8,000

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arrobas in 1840 signified an important beginning. Nearly forty years later,in 1877, the Costa Cuca’s sugar output had risen to only 28,860 arrobas,less than a four-fold increase. Ten years after that, the entire department ofQuezaltenango—that is, El Palmar and Coatepeque in addition to the CostaCuca—which was listed as Guatemala’s third largest sugar producer, still onlygenerated 48,109 arrobas.66 In terms of labor, the trapiches associated withOstuncalco in the 1830s and 1840s probably employed hundreds of people alltold. Although the evidence is far from conclusive on this point, it certainlyis suggestive. In one document, dating from 1837, Feliciano Reyes of the SanCarlos Sija military base wrote Ostuncalco’s first alcalde Gregorio Castillothat he knew “for certain that in those areas of the coast in which theinhabitants have their farms and trapiches there can be found many desertersand soldiers from the accompanying list.” Reyes concluded by enjoiningCastillo to see that “said laborers” were returned to his command.67 The1841 inventory of Nicolas Castillo’s trapiche, discussed above, included a“rancherıa de mozos” or workers’ encampment. In addition, several otherdocuments spanning the period from the early 1830s to the early 1840s makereference to the workforces of various trapiches.68

Aguardiente production, meanwhile, was also emerging as an importantactivity, probably as early as the turn of the century, if not before. Regardlessof when aguardiente was first introduced, however, by the 1820s it was com-mon in Ostuncalco and the other Mam towns.69 And over the next severaldecades the industry thrived and developed into a major component of thelocal economy. Although men participated in this expansion as producers andsellers, most were involved at the point of consumption. Women, by contrast,though also a significant proportion of consumers, dominated among pro-ducers and sellers. This was true of the entire post-independence nineteenthcentury, and it was true for both the legal and illegal facets of the industry.Even when men were listed as legal holders of the government monopolyfor a particular area, existing evidence suggests that women—typically theirwives—actually managed the operation.70

In terms of ethnicity, the documentation would seem to indicate thatOstuncalco’s ladinos were more involved in the aguardiente industry thantheir indigenous neighbors or the inhabitants of the surrounding Mam towns.This is true particularly if one focuses on legally sanctioned producers andsellers. Purchasing a government monopoly or license required a substantialamount of money, something that placed above-ground participation in thelucrative business outside the purview of the Mayan majority. Even whenonly illegal or clandestine aguardiente is considered, however, ladinos stillappear with greater relative and absolute frequency than indıgenas in the doc-umentation compiled by Ostuncalco’s ladino municipalidad and higher levelstate authorities. The most straightforward explanation for this surprising

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table 4. Clandestine Aguardiente Arrests, 1862–1886

Number % of Total % of Gender % of Ethnicity

Total arrests 813 100Women 629 77.4Men 184 22.6Women of indeterminable

ethnicity260 32.0 41.3 80.5

Indigenous Women 160 19.7 25.4 74.4Ladino Women 209 25.7 33.2 76.0Men of indeterminable

ethnicity63 7.7 34.2 19.5

Indigenous Men 55 6.8 29.9 25.6Ladino Men 66 8.1 35.9 24.0

Sources: AMSJO, Procesos Judiciales (criminales), anos 1860–1885; Correspondencia anos1864–1870, 1875, 1877–1880, 1886.

finding—given the small size of the regional ladino population—is that sucha high percentage of ladinos was involved in distilling and dispensing clan-destine aguardiente that even in absolute or real terms they outnumberedtheir indigenous counterparts and thus were more likely to be apprehended.

To illustrate these conclusions I have tabulated arrests involving clandestineaguardiente found in the records kept by Ostuncalco’s ladino officials (seeTable 4). The most consistent documentation dates from 1862 to 1886, andthus these years were included in the tabulation. Arrests ranged from a highof 109 in 1865, to a low of 9 in 1873. Because there were no records ofaguardiente arrests for 1863, 1871, 1876, and 1883–85, the total of 813 isalmost certainly a vast undercounting. Even where documentation does exist,it probably was far from complete for any given year. Nevertheless, despitethese deficiencies, the table demonstrates overwhelmingly that women wereinvolved in illegal aguardiente activity to a much greater extent than men. Interms of ethnicity, though, the data is less than conclusive. It does not requirea stretch of the imagination, in light of the incomplete documentation, tosuggest that indigenous aguardiente producers and venders well may haveoutnumbered their ladino counterparts, at least in real terms if not on a percapita basis. The relatively small distance separating Mayan (215) and ladinoclandestinistas (275) easily could be closed by new evidence or if a slightlygreater proportion of the apprehended individuals of unknown ethnicity(323) turned out to be indigenous.

This reasoning does not even take into account the probable bias of thesources toward the inclusion of ladinos over indıgenas. Indeed, there is am-ple reason to believe that the records produced by ladino officials of all levels

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 121

were biased toward the activities of other ladinos. For example, illegal ladinoenterprises probably were detected on a per capita basis with much greaterfrequency than illegal indigenous operations. This makes perfect sense giventhe spatial and ethnic dimensions of the state’s administrative apparatus. OnlyOstuncalco counted the permanent presence of any ladino officials at all,whether in the form of the ladino municipalidad, of higher state authori-ties (recall the assistant Corregidor and the Juez Preventivo), or the Church.In other words, because most ladino producers of clandestine aguardienteresided in Ostuncalco proper, they were located directly under the noses ofthe very authorities who were most likely to investigate contraband. Just asimportant, these were the very authorities most likely to leave a paper trailthat later investigators, myself included, would be able to follow. Most ofthe Mam communities, by contrast, had no permanent ladino officials, andlittle direct contact with those of Ostuncalco. Even within Ostuncalco itself,while most ladinos resided in the town center, close to municipal and otherauthorities, the greatest concentration of indigenous residents, as a propor-tion of the town’s population, was located in the surrounding aldeas. In sum,because Mam producers and vendors of clandestine aguardiente were muchless likely to be noticed by ladino authorities, the existing documentationalmost certainly underrepresents the true significance of their illegal enter-prises. Thus, although a larger percentage of ladinos may have been involvedin the illicit aguardiente trade, it is highly unlikely that they outnumberedindigenous clandestinistas in absolute or real terms.

The relative scarcity of indigenous names within administrative and ju-dicial records appears to have been reinforced by the propensity of Mayanauthorities, when compared to their local ladino counterparts, to shield ille-gal aguardiente operations. With the exception of Ostuncalco’s indigenousofficials, the district’s Mam municipalidades had more leeway to enforce con-traband provisions as they desired, or as their constituencies demanded, be-cause they were geographically removed from the immediate supervision ofthe Juez Preventivo.71 Moreover, as a general rule, indigenous municipalidadestended to view outside interference in the governing of their communities asunwarranted and illegitimate intrusions into their own internal affairs. Intox-ication was a central part of their ceremonies and celebrations, and, likewise,cofradıas and municipal authorities were important suppliers of alcoholicbeverages.72 Suffice it to say that Mam community officials were loath toabide by state-imposed restrictions on the production and consumption ofaguardiente, and, on occasion, they openly asserted their refusal to do so.73

That said, ladino authorities were not immune from the temptationpresented by the illegal drink. Numerous documents demonstrate that mem-bers of Ostuncalco’s ladino municipalidad countenanced clandestine activ-ities, and some show that they were involved directly.74 Still, in contrast

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to the surrounding Mam communities, Ostuncalco’s ladino municipalidadhad to contend with the constant, immediate oversight of an assistant Cor-regidor, and later, Juez Preventivo, from the early 1840s onward.75 TheCorregidor/Juez Preventivo’s permanent presence in the town’s center—inthe midst of Ostuncalco’s ladino inhabitants—and the fact that he himselfwas a ladino, reinforced his predisposition to keep a close watch over thenon-indigenous municipal government and its constituents. The activitiesof indigenous residents outside the town center—in Ostuncalco’s numer-ous rural hamlets, or in the neighboring Mam towns—were of secondaryimportance.

The frequency with which ladino contraband was detected in contrastto indigenous contraband also may be explained in part by the relativelylarge size of ladino enterprises compared to their indigenous counterparts.That is, some ladinos may have distilled and sold clandestine aguardiente onsuch a scale that their operations gained notoriety and, as a result, attractedofficial scrutiny. Return, for a moment, to the details of coastal sugarcaneproduction. The largest growers appear to have been ladinos. What did theydo with their sugar, once prepared? The most obvious answer is that theysold it. The appetite for sugar among the clandestine aguardiente produc-ers of Ostuncalco and surrounding towns must have been substantial. Inaddition, the markets of Quezaltenango appear to have been an importantdestination.76 A second possibility, aside from local markets, is that coastalsugarcane growers converted their product into aguardiente themselves orwith the help of their family. Sometimes, for example, growers distilled andsold alcohol at their trapiche.77 In other cases, however, they transported thesugar to Ostuncalco where family members, especially spouses, fermented,distilled, and sold the resulting aguardiente.78 Either way, this vertical inte-gration of trapiche and distillery may have inclined some of the larger canecultivators to produce and sell otherwise incautious quantities of alcohol todispose of their burgeoning sugar supply.

There are multiple reasons to conclude that Mam residents throughoutthe political district of Ostuncalco outnumbered ladinos as producers andsellers of clandestine aguardiente in absolute numbers, if not as a proportionof their respective ethnic population. With regard to gender, however, Ta-ble 4 unequivocally demonstrates that women outnumbered men. If womendid not inhabit public spaces with the same frequency that men did, as thepublic/private spheres model suggests, then perhaps this was because theybrought the public space into their home—for example, by operating clan-destine taverns. Thus, when Francisco Castillo vented his rage because theMonroy residence had no more aguardiente to sell, it was Silveria Solıs, sixmonths pregnant, not her husband, Marcos Monroy, who Castillo “seizedand dragged about by the hair, kicking her” all the while.79

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Gender, Ethnicity, and National Aguardiente Policy

It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of aguardiente for the econ-omy of Mam Quezaltenango. Cane cultivators marketed their sugar to thosewho distilled the beverage, and innumerable households across the breadthand width of the region supplemented their income by illegally traffickingin the substance. As I have demonstrated, women, not men, were the onesmost intimately involved. From 1865 to 1868, the years for which the mostcomplete documentation exists, at least 70 women were arrested per annumwithin the political district of Ostuncalco for illegally trafficking in aguardi-ente. If we consider the likelihood that some of the evidence, even for theseyears, did not survive the ravages of time, that ladino authorities—includingthe district judge—concentrated most of their efforts on Ostuncalco’s ladinocore to the exclusion of the surrounding rural areas and municipalities thatcounted the majority of the district’s population, and that arrests probablyrepresented only a fraction of those who engaged in illicit activity, it is notunreasonable to suggest that the true number of female clandestinistas in anygiven year was several times higher than the annual average of 70 reflectedin the surviving documentation.80

Such a large figure is reinforced by a petition submitted to Rafael Carrerain 1841 by Ynes Natureno and several other women from the neighboringcity of Quezaltenango, capital of the department. Natureno et al complainedto “General Carrera” that “the only thing that the [alcohol monopoly] didwas deprive one hundred [Quezalteco] families from making a living sothat they perish in ruin and misery.” Although the petitioners probably ap-proximated the number of affected families for the purposes of argument,nevertheless, their claim makes clear that the aguardiente industry played acrucial role in the survival of many of the city’s residents. Moreover, be-cause the text of the document indicates that Natureno and her co-authorspurposefully excluded Quezaltenango’s K’iche’ majority from their repre-sentation, even the figure of one hundred families, however inexact in termsof ladinos, does not appear to have included numerous indigenous familiesthat also derived significant income from their participation in the illegalindustry.81

Thus, within the department of Quezaltenango alone, even if we con-sider only the capital city and the district of Ostuncalco, there appear to havebeen hundreds of aguardiente traffickers in the middle decades of the nine-teenth century. And if Quezaltenango is at all representative of Guatemala asa whole, then at any one time thousands of Guatemalan women, indigenousand ladino alike, supported themselves and their families by distilling and sell-ing aguardiente. The vast majority of them did so illegally because monopolystatutes criminalized the participation of all but a handful of relatively wealthy

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individuals who could afford to purchase state sanction for their activities.Within this context, why did Mayan opposition to the monopolies and otherstate-imposed restrictions lessen in the wake of the Conservative ban on in-toxicating beverages in indigenous communities that was imposed followingRafael Carrera’s victory over Liberal reformers in the late 1830s? And why,in the decades that followed, did the very communities that earlier had sup-ported the ban come to echo the demand for free trade in alcohol made byladinos and Liberal rebels?

By way of an answer, I will review the legislation generated by the suc-cessive regimes that spanned Guatemala’s nineteenth century to show thatthe apparently contradictory responses of different communities and sectorsof the population were not contradictory at all. One central, fundamentalgoal underlay all of them: to be able to produce aguardiente unmolested bythe repressive forces of the state. The manner in which a particular commu-nity determined to pursue this goal, however, differed depending on how itsethnic makeup and geographic position vis-a-vis the state’s administrative ap-paratus intersected with the national aguardiente policy of a given moment.In general, because indigenous communities were less subject to the scrutinyof the state, they supported either a ban on aguardiente, or free trade, butnot a monopoly. Both an aguardiente ban and free trade—despite appearingto be diametrically opposed policies—allowed indigenous community res-idents to traffic in aguardiente with little or no outside interference.82 Ofcourse, in the case of a ban, technically the aguardiente was illegal, but thisrarely mattered because ladino officials typically were far removed, and lo-cal indigenous leaders were fully complicit. Introduction of the monopolysystem, by contrast, brought with it not only greater ladino interferencebut also a dramatic rise in state repression. Why? In the first place, becausemonopolists were almost always ladinos from outside the community. Sec-ondly, because the monopolists were given special powers by the state to seekout and destroy all clandestine competitors. Foremost among these were thehated aguardiente police.

Ladinos, in contrast to the residents of indigenous towns, usually threwtheir support behind free trade. They rarely benefited from an outright banon the aguardiente trade in indigenous communities precisely because, inmost cases, they lived in towns with a significant ladino presence. The stategenerally did not attempt to ban intoxicating beverages in such towns, optinginstead for a monopoly.

Let us examine the available evidence, both primary and secondary,beginning with the late colonial period, to see how it fits with theschematic overview just proposed. According to McCreery, up until the mid-eighteenth century Crown policy had been directed at the complete sup-pression of aguardiente. Beginning in 1753 the Crown chose the monopoly

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 125

system instead. The way the monopoly typically worked, based on archivalevidence for the department of Quezaltenango during the nineteenth cen-tury, as well as published legal statutes for the same period, was that the statesold the right to produce and/or sell aguardiente in a given community tothe highest bidder. Departmental capitals—for example, Quezaltenango—frequently had several monopolists simultaneously. In general, all other townsusually had only one or two. This restriction frequently appears to have beencircumvented, however, through a practice of dubious legality known as sub-leasing, whereby the official monopolist authorized several additional peopleto produce and dispense aguardiente. The rationale for this practice, and thereason why the state tolerated it at all, was that the sub-monopolists helpedboost overall sales and thus ensured that the primary monopolist was able tomeet the costly financial obligations of her or his monopoly contract.83

McCreery states that the monopoly system was accompanied, in the early1780s, by a ban on intoxicating beverages in indigenous communities. Inter-estingly, though McCreery notes much public opposition to the monopoly,he does not mention a corresponding rejection of the ban. “The cofradıascomplained that the monopoly cut into the profits they made brewing andselling illegal alcohol at fiestas. Town officials and district governors tendedto oppose taverns in their jurisdictions, and local populations rioted againstthese establishments, for the contradictory reasons that they were an evilinfluence on the community and that they competed with local contrabandalcohol.”84 This last sentence, in particular, cuts to the heart of the matter. Anofficial ban on aguardiente was preferable to the monopoly because at leastin the former instance state officials, economic elites, and plebeian masseswere united in breaking the law. Once the monopoly was imposed, how-ever, monopolists and state officials now had a vested interest in abolishing allclandestine competition. The monopolists, because they desired to make aprofit in addition to the monthly quota that they owed to the state. Officials,because the monopoly became an indispensable means by which to help fillthe chronically empty public coffers.

Events from the city of Quezaltenango support such an interpretation.Gonzalez-Alzate makes clear that the production and sale of aguardientecrossed all class and ethnic boundaries. Attempts to impose the monopolysystem on the city in the mid-1780s were met with widespread oppositionfrom all sectors, including a rebellion that included both indigenous andladino participants.85

In Ostuncalco it appears that the ban on aguardiente remained through-out the late colonial period despite the fact that several hundred ladinosresided in the town.86 A similar situation almost certainly prevailed in theMam towns because they were entirely indigenous. Nevertheless, Crown andchurch officials accused indigenous leaders and commoners alike of alcohol

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consumption and abuse throughout the colonial period, although it is notclear whether aguardiente, per se, was to blame.87 Soon after independencefrom Spain was declared in September of 1821, the ban on aguardiente waslifted in Ostuncalco proper, and the monopoly system was imposed.88

During the first several years, however, local producers and vendors, withthe collusion of municipal officials, succeeded in circumventing most of therestrictions that a more literal and rigorous implementation of the monopolyregulations would have required. According to Quezaltenango’s jefe polıticoor departmental governor, Jose Suasnavar, their innovative manipulation ofthe aguardiente statutes led to three serious infractions of the law. First, eachmonopolist, of whom there appear to have been three simultaneously, soldpermits that authorized numerous other individuals to participate in thetrade under the pretext that they were “assistants.” Second, “they did notlimit themselves to only one point of sale” per monopoly, as the law re-quired, but instead they sold aguardiente at several locations throughout thetown. Third, the monopolists “supplied quantities of aguardiente to the re-maining towns of the district [of Ostuncalco] where its sale is not permitted.”“The tolerance of these abuses,” Suasnavar complained, is what has fomentedthe vice of drunkenness and the other resulting vices in all of the towns [ofthe district], but most scandalously in [Ostuncalco]. “[Y]es, the streets arefull of drunkards, vagrants, and smugglers, who by night bother the tran-quillity and sleep of the good citizens. The laws abundantly provide for thecorrection of these wrongs; but the officials charged with supervising publicconduct do not fulfill their responsibilities. [Rather], they are the reef onwhich the most effective [laws] shatter and break apart.”89

To remedy the situation, the governor demanded “that within two days[Ostuncalco’s] municipal officials should identify all of the legal monopolyposts . . . by numbering and placing the [national] coat of arms on the door.”At the same time, they were ordered to “seek out and destroy all of theremaining locations where aguardiente is manufactured and sold, fining allguilty parties” as required by law. In addition, Suasnavar continued, themunicipalidad must reconnoiter the city streets “at least four times daily, be-tween 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., especially the thoroughfares that lead tothe surrounding towns.” Lax or complicit officials, he threatened, would bepunished accordingly.90

Despite the governor’s complaint, and despite his prescriptions for thestrict enforcement of aguardiente regulations, local monopolists continuedto sell subsidiary rights to interested parties for the next several years. In oneparticularly egregious case, dating from 1829, former first alcalde AnisetoLopes leased his monopoly authority to an additional thirty-one individuals(twenty-five women and six men). What irked his accuser, Catalina Escobar,and caused her to report Lopes to Quezaltenango’s departmental governor,

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was not that he had sold subsidiary shares “to the entire town . . . , counselingmany not to purchase a [competing] monopoly because he would sell thempermission [much more cheaply].” Indeed, Escobar herself had purchasedsubsidiary rights from Lopes. No, what bothered Escobar was that “becauseI had been late in paying the monthly quota [of four reales or half of a peso],Lopes went before the municipalidad to make me pay. The first alcalde calledon me and forced me to pay the four reales.” To make matter’s worse, thealcalde then kept the money destined for Lopes, and as a result “the wifeof said Lopes began to insult [Escobar].” “All I ask,” Escobar concluded togovernor Corzo, “is that you tell me the truth about whether this man haslicense to disregard the [aguardiente] regulations because he is rich. . . .”91

Catalina Escobar’s complaint aside, it appears that in the early years of thepost-independence period serious opposition to the aguardiente monopolywas avoided in Ostuncalco. On the one hand, monopolists such as AnisetoLopes were all too willing to offer other townspeople the protection affordedby their monopoly. On the other hand, municipal authorities did little torepress these novel arrangements despite their likely illegality. Indeed, thepractices of sub-leasing monopoly rights and ignoring clandestine aguardi-ente were mutually reinforcing. Given the high monthly cost associated withpurchasing an aguardiente monopoly, proprietors could not hope to meettheir financial obligation to the state in the face of flourishing illegal competi-tion. Unable to count on municipal officials to effectively repress clandestineproducers and sellers, monopolists instead decided to spread their costs byrecruiting erstwhile competitors as sub-proprietors.92 To borrow again fromCatalina Escobar’s testimony, Lopes “obtained the [aguardiente] monopolyfor ten pesos, but the townspeople pay him more than twenty” for subsidiaryrights.93

By the early 1850s, as I will show, the Conservative state had instituteda more effective, if still far from perfect, apparatus for repressing clandestineaguardiente. Prior to that point, however, aguardiente policy went throughseveral convolutions, some associated with the social upheaval and regimechanges of the 1830s. First, in June 1833, the Liberal state abolished aguardi-ente monopolies in towns that did not produce more than 1,000 pesos forthe public treasury, with the following exceptions: the districts of the Peten,Escuintla, Huehuetenango, and Suchitepequez, and the capital cities of theremaining departments.94

Apparently Ostuncalco was one of the towns that saw its monopoly re-moved, and the measure was met with no small amount of public excitement.Indeed, support for this return to the glory days of the aguardiente ban (read:flourishing contraband trade) is documented by the overwhelming opposi-tion that town notables expressed barely a year later when the monopolywas reinstated. During an emergency junta that included both ladino and

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indigenous authorities, as well as parish priest Jose Marıa Orellana, the munic-ipalidad petitioned Quezaltenango’s departmental governor to continue theban on aguardiente.

Knowing from experience the grave damages that result from the licentiousnesscaused by drunkenness, not only to particular families, and to the entire populacegenerally, but also to the public treasury, since that which the [aguardiente] monopo-lies contribute does not make up for the deficit that they cause, delaying by many daysthe working and operations of agriculture, equaling the personal labor of perhaps1000 men, [and because] this is the patrimony of the monopolies, causing incalcu-lable damages as much physical as moral, . . . and in the end converting society into alabyrinth of beasts, which is what men are without judgment or reason, [the munici-palidad] has decided to beseech the Departmental Governor . . . to take the necessarymeasures so that this town . . . remains exempt from . . . [the] decree of 27 May of 1834.

If, in the time that has passed since the monopoly originally was abolished,the municipalidad continued, “there has been some aguardiente in this town,in the future [we] will exhaust [our] resources and keep watch with theutmost care so that [aguardiente] will disappear” from Ostuncalco. PadreOrellana then endorsed the petition with a postscript of his own. “[I] am infull agreement with the sentiments of the junta and municipalidad,” he wrote,“because the motives that they express are certain and evident, [and becauseI am] confident in the known zeal and activism of the present Alcalde, andthat he will exhaust, as is said, all resources toward the total extinction ofaguardiente in this town.”95

Initially, Ostuncalco’s municipalidad failed to meet its objective. As ofAugust 1834, if not before, the monopoly was restored.96 In the mediumterm, however, public criticism appears to have inspired limited reform ofstate aguardiente policy. A series of four laws, emitted between October1834 and August 1835, revised key aspects of the monopoly system. Amongthe most important revisions, towns that desired to avoid the monopolyaltogether were authorized to assume payment of the monthly quotathemselves. In addition, a parallel system of unlimited licenses was offeredas an alternative to the monopoly. Anyone who could afford the fee, whichranged from 3 to 15 pesos per month, depending on location, could receivea license. The only potentially prohibitive aspect of this alternative was thatthe amount of income generated by the new licenses had to meet or exceedwhat would have accrued to the public treasury if a monopoly had been inforce for the same area.97

As of early 1836 these changes to state aguardiente policy had beenimplemented among the towns of the department of Quezaltenangoin the following manner. In general, the largest communities, includingOstuncalco and the city of Quezaltenango, qualified for licenses. Ostuncalco

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alone counted eight license holders (five women, three men), who eachpaid 4 pesos monthly. The smaller towns, by contrast, tended to have asingle monopolist. Monthly quotas varied from 6 to 41 pesos, apparentlydepending on population and sales. For the first time two other Mamcommunities—Chiquirichapa and San Martın—were incorporated into themonopoly alongside Ostuncalco. Both of them, however, opted to pay theirmonthly quotas of 10.5 and 10 pesos, respectively, for the remainder of theyear, in order to preempt any outsiders who otherwise might have desiredto acquire their monopoly rights. Only Cantel, among all the other townsof the department of Quezaltenango, similarly paid its own monopolyquota. In the rest of the Mam communities under Ostuncalco’s jurisdiction,meanwhile, the ban on aguardiente remained in effect.98

Indigenous antipathy toward the aguardiente monopoly cannot beoveremphasized. Although ladinos, too, had good reason to dislike themonopoly, because it restricted the lucrative potential of aguardiente pro-duction and vending to a few relatively well-off individuals, and because itjustified some heavy-handed state intervention in local affairs, the oppositionof indigenous communities had an ethnic component as well. They saw themonopoly as the key by which ladino outsiders could open the door to theirtown. Even worse, the monopoly vested the newcomers with the authorityto use violence against the local populace in the name of repressing contra-band. Because ladinos tended to view indigenous people through a lens ofethnic superiority, the potential for abuse of authority was great. And that iswhy indigenous communities sometimes opted to pay the monopoly quotathemselves, despite the considerable financial burden it implied.

Both Chiquirichapa and San Martın paid their quotas for 1836. San Martınpleaded with Quezaltenango’s jefe polıtico to do the same again in June of 1838,even though Miguel Ralda, a ladino from Ostuncalco, had been operating themonopoly since the beginning of the year. Among other things, the town’smunicipalidad and principales complained, “the aguardiente that Ralda sells inthis unhappy town is more like cold water.” As a result, when municipalofficials offered to “host a party for the principales and other important menof the town before the day of Saint Peter [June 29th],” they sent a commis-sion headed by the first alcalde to purchase a cask of “first-rate aguardiente”from Ostuncalco’s monopolist. For such an important occasion, “said guestsrequired a delicate little beverage.” On returning to San Martın, however,the commission members were attacked, apparently by Ralda or his hench-men, and the cask of aguardiente was destroyed. “[A]ll in one voice,” thepetition concluded, “this [municipalidad], the principales of this town, andthe [officers] of the thirteen cofradıas . . . humbly ask and implore our Jefe[polıtico] to [rule] that said Miguel Ralda should no longer come to our townto sell aguardiente. . . .”99

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Needless to say, Conservative efforts to reform aguardiente policy in late1839, following Rafael Carrera’s assumption of state power, must have engen-dered a collective sigh of relief throughout Guatemala because they includeda return to the ban on alcohol in indigenous towns. Moreover, in additionto the ban itself, the Conservatives disallowed taverns in populations under10,000 people, and authorized municipal governments more generally, incombination with the local priest, to request that their respective town beexempted from the monopoly and closed to alcohol. If, however, contrabandtraffic flourished under such conditions, then municipal officials would beheld accountable.100

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that before long Ostuncalco was threat-ened yet again with an aguardiente monopoly. In February of 1841, barelya year after the ban had resumed, Quezaltenango’ treasury administratornotified the town of this fact. Two monopoly permits were to be sold atpublic auction at a base price of 40 pesos a month beginning March 1st.Ostuncalco’s ladino first alcalde responded that the indigenous municipalidadand principales “have expressed verbally that they will not admit the monopolyin [this] town.” Answering the challenge, the treasury official wrote back tothe ladino first alcalde that the indigenous officials had no choice.

[T]he interests of the public treasury have been harmed . . . because since the pastyear of 1840 until the present date the clandestine production and sale of aguardientehas been tolerated in that town as is notorious and proven. It is clear that the publictreasury has preference . . . over the particular interests of some residents who engagein the production and sale [of aguardiente] without contributing anything at all. . . .If the monopoly that has been sold and that is going to be established is as noxious tothat populace as you indicate, then it should present [its objections] in a legal mannerbefore the authority of the Senor Superior Intendant General of the public treasury,rather than insolently proclaiming as fact that the monopoly will not be admitted.101

Even the presence of the monopoly, however, as I have shown, did notnecessarily put an end to contraband traffic. Rather, it simply guaranteeda cut for the treasury. Indeed, the monopolists themselves appear to haveplayed at least some role in perpetuating clandestine activity by continuingthe illegal practice of selling subsidiary rights to spread the monthly quotacosts. Nevertheless, they still complained repeatedly that clandestine com-petition made it difficult for them to meet their financial obligations to thestate. Certainly Ostuncalco’s monopolists made this claim with some fre-quency, as did the monopolists of Chiquirichapa and San Martın, when thelatter two towns were brought back into the system sometime in the late1840s.102 In response to these problems, the state began to formulate a moreforceful policy toward contraband beginning around 1850. First, it estab-lished a corps of guards—the resguardo de aguardiente—who answered directly

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to treasury officials and the monopolists themselves, thereby circumvent-ing uncooperative local officials. This new body assisted in investigating andpersecuting clandestine producers and vendors. Second, the state levied newpenalties on contraband and provided that a portion of the monies col-lected by way of fines and the sale of confiscated equipment and propertywould serve as a reward for private citizens who helped uncover clandes-tine activities.103 Finally, the assistant Corregidor of Ostuncalco, originallyappointed ca. 1841, was given the additional title of Juez Preventivo in 1853.This augmented his administrative authority, as the local representative ofthe departmental Corregidor, with judicial powers deriving from the Juezde Primera Instancia based in Quezaltenango. As both executive officer andjudge, the assistant Corregidor/Juez Preventivo completely preempted the au-thority of Ostuncalco’s municipal officers, embodied at the highest level bythe first alcalde.104

Arrests for clandestine aguardiente jumped. Although the illegal trade wasnever in danger of being shut down, the new measures made life far moredifficult for a growing number of people.105 Complaints began to emergeindicating that the aguardiente guards consistently abused their authority andemployed excessive force. They beat up drunks, injured suspects, and dam-aged property. It was not uncommon for them to burst into a house unan-nounced, brandishing weapons, and then, to smash every piece of kitchen-ware that possibly could have contained or been used to produce contrabandalcohol.106 This was the modus operandi described by Ostuncalco’s indige-nous governor, Manuel Escobar, in a petition to Quezaltenango’s Corregidordated October 15, 1858. According to the governor, the guardsmen movedinto the canton of Sechicul in early October, “entering the houses of the[residents] with sword and pistols in hand, terrorizing them, and climbingup into their storage lofts, breaking jugs, kettles, . . . bowls, cups, griddles,and all manner of utensils used by women. . . .” In some of the houses theyhelped themselves to food, and in others they pocketed the loose moneythat they stumbled across during their frenzied “investigations.”107

If the guardsmen’s behavior appears to have been counterproductive, itwas. Even higher level state officials sometimes bemoaned their violent ten-dencies, after they wantonly destroyed evidence, or nearly goaded a neigh-borhood or an entire town into rebellion.108 Such was the case Christmasmorning, 1856. “Yesterday,” wrote Ostuncalco’s Juez Preventivo Jose MiguelUrrutia to the Corregidor, “the tranquillity of this population was almostshattered because of a mistake committed by the celadores” or aguardientepolice. “At about 10:00 a.m.,” he recounted, “they came to ask for my helpinvestigating a house, and although I had serious misgivings about doingso because it was [Christmas day], I ordered them to get the assistant regi-dor . . . to accompany them.” Later that afternoon, Urrutia continued, “at

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around 1:00 p.m., approximately fifty Indians confronted me, complainingthat the celadores had entered the house of the cofradıa of the Sweet Nameof Jesus, and had broken the kettles in which they were cooking tamales forthe impending celebration.” When the judge went to survey the damage,he found the kitchen full of water and a pile of corn and tamales amidst thecookware shards. “I realized then that the celadores, not finding the assistant[regidor], and against my orders, carried out the inspection by themselves,and, according to the Indians, caused this disturbance.” “It was not withoutsome work,” he concluded, “that I succeeded in calming the outrage of theaforementioned Indians [by] telling them that I would inform you of whathad happened so that you could order me to take appropriate action.”109

Faced with increasingly repressive state policies toward clandestineaguardiente from approximately 1850 onward, popular opposition to themonopoly system persisted and grew. In early 1854 Quezaltenango’sCorregidor ordered Ostuncalco’s Juez Preventivo Manuel Larrave to arrestanyone who continued to oppose the measures relating to the monopoly,precipitating the events of July and October of that year described in theanecdote at the start of this chapter. On the evening of July 30th, soldierssent to arrest Yrinea Ralda for contraband were held at sword point by herconcubine Leandro Galindo—who also happened to be the ladino municipal-idad’s first regidor—until an angry mob chased them away empty handed thefollowing day. Several months later, when the Juez Preventivo attempted toarrest Cayetano and Matilde Ralda—the leaders of the uprising—this sameregidor led him on such a tortured route to the suspects’ hiding place thatthey had time to escape. Thus, instead of capturing the fugitives, Larraveended up trading swordblows with Galindo before having the latter arrestedand hauled off to jail.110

Relations did not improve between the Juez Preventivo and the residents ofOstuncalco. Less than a year after the uproar caused by Judge Larrave’s sword-fight with councilmember Leandro Galindo, Quezaltenango’s Corregidorcharged Ostuncalco’s ladino mayor with tolerating conspiracies against thedistrict judge and the town’s aguardiente monopolist. “I make you, andthe Municipal Corporation,” wrote the Corregidor, “ladino as well as in-digenous, responsible should anything disagreeable occur.” The municipalcorporation responded by complaining to President Carrera directly, and Dis-trict Judge Larrave resigned shortly thereafter. The very day after Larrave’sresignation, in the words of Ostuncalco’s ladino mayor, “the better part ofthe populace appeared, . . . pleading with the Corporation, as protector ofthe people, and as eye-witness to their suffering . . . to implore [the SupremeGovernment] to free them of the monopoly. . . .” Needless to say, municipalofficials wasted no time in drafting a petition, “putting the case before theSupreme Government” so that it could decide on the appropriate solution.111

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Not only was the petition denied, however, but a little less than two monthslater the Corregidor informed the new district judge that he was to com-pletely disband Ostuncalco’s ladino corporation as of December 31st. Forthe next six years, until January 1862, a series of district judges administeredthe town with the help of indigenous authorities, several ladino assistants,and the notorious aguardiente police.112

Although this was perhaps the worst crisis that developed in Ostuncalcoas a result of state efforts to enforce the aguardiente monopoly, significanttension marked the remainder of the Conservative period. Within monthsafter the elimination of the ladino municipalidad indigenous authorities beganto issue complaints against monopolist Ramualdo Pacheco and the new JuezPreventivo. The latter resigned, barely a year after his predecessor, sometimein early 1857.113 The aguardiente guards, too, continued to be a source ofpublic resentment. Indeed, before this hated enemy even inter-ethnic an-imosities could be forgotten, if only temporarily. In the aldea of El Suj,where the resguardo had gone “to carry out inspections in search of con-traband aguardiente, they were attacked by several ladinos,” who, accordingto Quezaltenango’s Corregidor Narciso Pacheco, had been “incited by theIndians of the area.” Subsequent to the attack the indigenous residents hidthe offending ladinos to help them elude capture. “The same Resguardois going to inspect [El Suj] once again,” the corregidor wrote Ostuncalco’sJuez Preventivo, “and because the aforementioned ladinos undoubtedly re-main there, and because at the instigation of the Indians they will want todrive out the guards once again, I am sending you [an additional] ten menfrom this garrison so that you personally can go to the area, stationing your-self in a place where you can see but not be seen, ready to capture all of theladinos who might appear and making sure that nobody escapes. . . .”114

Little by little the Mam Maya towns surrounding Ostuncalco also wereplaced under the monopoly system. As I noted above, Chiquirichapa and SanMartın were reintroduced sometime in the late 1840s. San Cristobal Cabricanwas assigned a monopoly in the mid 1850s, and, by 1863, if not before, bothSan Miguel Siguila and Santa Cruz Cajola also were incorporated.115 All ofthese communities expressed their distaste for the aguardiente monopoly inone form or another, from petitions to conspiracy and violence. Whereverthe monopoly went, it seems, unhappiness and unrest were sure to follow. As ageneral rule, most of the Mam communities complained that the monopolistsdid not abide by the regulations that governed the hours and days of theiroperation. Drunkenness and debauchery were allowed to continue all night,for example, because the monopolists failed to close their doors at 6:00p.m. each evening. Numerous problems, including dozens of alcohol-relateddeaths, were blamed on their negligence. The monopolists, for their part,argued that harassment and uncooperative customers regularly prevented

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them from closing at the appointed hour. When they did attempt to closeon time the rabble that assembled outside their establishments sometimeswent so far as to break or burn their doors down.116

More specific problems also proliferated. Officials from Cabrican andSiguila charged that the monopolists of their respective towns had used theirnew positions to gain access to community land. “The Municipalidad, Prin-cipales and Comun” of Siguila wrote Ostuncalco’s Juez Preventivo that “fora long time Rosario Minera, a [ladina] from Quezaltenango, has admin-istered the aguardiente monopoly of our town.” During this period, theycomplained, “we have suffered continuous vexations from her and her fam-ily, appropriating for themselves the lands and properties of the Comun andof particular individuals [in exchange] for a little alcohol. In virtue of thisinformation, and without making mention of other scandalous facts relatingto Minera and family, we ask and we humbly beg, Senor Judge, that you seefit to make the aforementioned Senora and family leave our town. . . .”117

Cabrican’s governor and municipalidad made a similar request to theJuez Preventivo concerning their monopolist, Nemecio Toledo. Also fromQuezaltenango, Toledo, like Minera, had managed to acquire land that per-tained to the community ejido. It is not clear if the acquisitions had involvedaguardiente directly, as appears to have been true in Siguila, or whetherToledo simply purchased the properties outright once he moved to town.Regardless of the details, however, community officials were adamant thatthe monopolist had to go. “We do not like Toledo,” they wrote. Please orderhim to remove his cattle from “our land and to vacate our town.”118

Chiquirichapa’s authorities lamented the violence visited upon their resi-dents by the monopolists and the aguardiente guards. The 1857 testimony ofthe town’s second alcalde and the municipal secretary, aside from document-ing one such instance, suggests that popular animosity toward the repressivemonopoly system was prevalent among all sectors of the community. The al-calde and the secretary had witnessed the local monopolist and an aguardienteguard striking two drunken men—Baltazar Sanchez and Pedro Juares—withthe flats of their swords. When asked by Ostuncalco’s Juez Preventivo if this hadbeen an isolated incident, or if the celadores had committed other offenses ofthis nature, both officials responded that they had done even worse. To bor-row the words of Chiquirichapa’s alcalde, the guardsmen were notorious for“entering the cofradıas en masse and without any consideration for the factthat there are indigenous principales and even [municipal] authorities present,they beat them because they block the guards’ entrance to . . . the house.”119

San Martın’s community leaders also repeatedly expressed their dissat-isfaction with the individuals who filled the town’s monopoly. Sometimesthey petitioned higher level authorities to replace the offending monopolist.At other times they manifested their disenchantment through a campaign of

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intimidation. Such was the case in early 1864, after Domingo Benito pur-chased the town’s monopoly and placed Luciana Dias in charge as the admin-istrator. “[T]he indıgenas of [San Martın] are harassing the aforementionedDias,” the Corregidor wrote Ostuncalco’s Juez Preventivo, “not wanting torecognize her as the monopolist. You are to make such indıgenas understandthat . . . Dias is the legitimate operator of that monopoly, forewarning them atthe same time not to harass her nor to hinder her in the sale of aguardiente.”It is interesting to note that this admonition from the Corregidor came lessthan two months after San Martın’s governor had been forced to resign inthe face of charges that he “and other indıgenas of [the town had] attemptedan insurrection against the monopolist and [aguardiente] guards. . . .”120

In sum, residents of the district of Ostuncalco, indigenous and ladino,women and men, were more than ready to hear the Liberal rebels’ call for areplacement of the aguardiente monopoly by free and unrestricted trade.121

They had been denouncing and resisting the monopoly for decades, and areawomen, in particular, had suffered incarceration by the hundreds for theirtransgressions. Nor were they alone in this regard. People across Guatemalachafed at the restrictive and repressive aspects of the Conservative’s aguardi-ente policy, and they were willing to risk a return to Liberal rule becausethey had grown tired of thirty-odd years of repression and harassment atthe hands of the Conservative state.122 To focus on the fact that the Liberalsended up betraying their aspirations—almost immediately re-instituting anequally oppressive aguardiente regimen—misses the point.123 Dissatisfactionwith Conservative repression had never been enough to spark an outrightrevolution of the masses. Nor would it spark a repeat of the Carrera Re-volt in the face of Liberal betrayal. Rather, opposition to the aguardientemonopoly was one more factor that helped erode popular enthusiasm forCarrera and the Conservative regime—enthusiasm that might have servedto bolster Conservative fortunes in the face of the Liberal military challenge.Instead, popular sentiment was ambivalent. Indigenous communities, in par-ticular, still sympathized with Carrera’s memory. But the Conservative statehad hurt them in too many ways. Whether one’s focus is land, labor, oraguardiente, the evidence of betrayal is overwhelming. Most of the com-pelling reasons to defend Conservative rule, or to fear its demise and thebeginning of a Liberal era, had disappeared long before 1871.

chapter5From Ladino State to Ladino Nation: The

Malformation of Guatemalan National Identity

guatemala’s return to liberal rule in 1871 did not represent a water-shed transformation of labor relations or land tenure. Indeed, despite theimpressive flurry of ambitious sounding presidential decrees and legal re-forms that marked much of the 1870s and 1880s, continuity, not rupture,characterized Liberal and Conservative practices with regard to land and la-bor. If some regions did experience a heightened pace of property titlingor an expansion of coercive workforce recruitment mechanisms during theReforma, this was because the trends that had been initiated decades earliercontinued to gather momentum and to reach new areas of the country witheach passing decade.

In much the same way, the growth of the state after 1870, although moreimpressive than previous years, did not reflect a qualitative shift in priori-ties from Conservative to Liberal administrations, but rather the cumulativeefforts of both regimes to expand state institutions and infrastructure. Oneimportant exception to this continuity between Conservative and Liberalstate-building projects was the manner in which Liberals conceptualizedthe nation. Conservatives, echoing the colonial state before them, incorpo-rated indigenous Guatemalans into the nation as perpetual minors, or child-citizens, simultaneously restricted from certain social and political spheresbut also nominally protected from ladino predations. Post-1870 Liberals, bycontrast, given their historical experience struggling with indigenous com-munities over land, labor, and political power in the overwhelmingly Mayanwest, harbored an intense animosity toward the indigenous majority, andthey desired to exclude them from the privileges and rights associated withcitizenship—even a restricted citizenship—whenever possible. Henceforth,Guatemala was to be a ladino nation, open to indigenous people only when

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they abandoned their linguistic and cultural heritage in favor of the Spanishlanguage and “western” social customs, and began to cooperate with Liberalstate makers.

This chapter traces the emergence of a ladino-oriented national statefrom the renewed Spanish and mestizo colonization of Guatemala’s indige-nous western region during the eighteenth century to the Liberal Reformaof the 1870s and 1880s. Prior to the late eighteenth century, the indige-nous municipal council or cabildo had been the basic building block of thecolonial state in the western zone. After approximately 1750, however, asthe western ladino population burgeoned, a growing number of ladino mu-nicipal councils were established and incorporated into the state’s regionalgoverning apparatus. By the end of the colonial period the ladino council orayuntamiento, as it was now called, had displaced its indigenous counterpartas the medium of choice through which provincial officials administered thewestern highlands.

Perhaps because of this shift toward privileging local ladinos and ladinomunicipal officers over Mayan authorities and residents, the Guatemalan statehad little legitimacy among western indigenous communities once bereftof the Spanish crown. Surprisingly, however, the new republican state alsolacked legitimacy among western ladinos, who lost little time in assertingtheir autonomy and independence when they believed that Guatemala City’sattention was diverted elsewhere. The establishment of the State of Los Altosin 1838, at the height of the Carrera revolt, epitomized the provincial sen-timents of western ladinos. But it also had the effect of driving regionalindigenous communities back into the arms of Guatemala City. Indeed,Mayan distrust of their regional ladino rivals helped destroy the Los Altosexperiment and return the western highlands to the control of the erstwhilecolonial capital.

Over the next three decades Rafael Carrera firmly cemented the legit-imacy of Guatemala’s republican state, centered in Guatemala City, amongboth indigenous and ladino populations. He and his Conservative allies sup-ported commercial agriculture and the expansion and strengthening of var-ious state institutions, and, particularly after mid-century, his efforts werebolstered by the steady growth of treasury revenues. By the late 1860s, whenwestern Liberals began to challenge militarily the Conservative’s hold onpower, there was no question of separating the west from Guatemala City.Rather, the western-based rebels desired to take control of the now-stablenational state, and to use it as a vehicle for imposing their provincial andexclusionary vision of the nation on Guatemala’s ethnically diverse populaceas well as the capitalino elite.

That the western Liberals succeeded attests to their ability to mobilizeGuatemalan ladinos in support of the state. In addition, however, it also

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attests to the absence of widespread, popular mobilization of the kind thattoppled Mariano Galvez and the first generation of Liberal reformers. Partly,this was because popular sectors—particularly the indigenous majority—did not view the Reforma as a blanket attack on their way of life. Theladino nationalism of Reforma-era western Liberals did not forcibly repressindigenous culture as the Galvez administration had attempted to do thirtyyears earlier. Indeed, it was predicated on the continued existence of a largeindigenous population—to serve as an exploitable labor force but also as afoil against which ladino superiority and unity could be asserted. Nor did theReforma come packaged with a series of land reform laws that concretelydisentailed indigenous community property for the very first time. On thisfront post-1870 Liberals demonstrated remarkable flexibility and pragmatism,in some cases even enlarging a particular town’s common land. Of course,part of the reason for this occasional benevolence was that Conservativeauthorities already had presided over the expropriation of areas suitable forcash crops like coffee, sugar, and cotton. Finally, although income from thecoffee boom hardly was distributed in an equal or even fair manner, in thecontext of labor shortages and expanding state institutions and infrastructure,at least some popular sectors were able to glean enough for themselves fromthe expanding economy to survive the dramatic social changes of the latenineteenth century without resorting to another Carrera revolt.

The Indigenous Cabildo through the Eighteenth Century:Building Block of the Colonial State

Following the conquest of the kingdoms and peoples of the “New World,”the Spanish crown, as well as Spaniards of varying official and quasiofficialcapacities—gobernadores, alcaldes mayores, corregidores, priests, encomenderos—confronted the question of how to reorganize indigenous society. For themost part, high-level political and social structures were dismantled, while atthe level of the agricultural settlement or community the model finally writ-ten into—and henceforth demanded by—royal law was that of the Spanishmunicipio with its cabildo or town council. The cabildo itself proved onlypartially disruptive for non-elite Mayans because it was not all that dissimilarfrom preexisting local indigenous political practices, in which a relativelydemocratic, if highly patriarchal, decision-making body governed local af-fairs while under the surveillance and ultimate control of resident elites whotypically represented the larger polity. Far more problematic, by contrast,was the settlement pattern or physical layout of the municipio: that of a nucle-ated or concentrated town, established on a grid, and anchored at its centerby a literal “square” around which were constructed the church, cabildo

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offices, and other important municipal buildings. Because indigenous soci-ety was much less urban than its Spanish contemporary at the time of theconquest, this settlement pattern required the congregacion or reduccion of dis-persed households and hamlets that were located, quite logically, in closeproximity to the cultivated areas from which they derived their subsistence.The military violence of the early sixteenth century was followed not just bythe scourge of disease then, but also by the trauma associated with the reestab-lishment of indigenous communities along the lines of the Spanish municipio.

Despite this upheaval, it would be incorrect to conclude that there wasnot a logic, or at least a rationale, for the dislocation that Spanish authoritiesimposed on native populations of the “New World.” Once “reduced” to aseries of densely populated municipios, formerly dispersed peoples could beobserved and controlled much more easily, as well as more easily subjected tosuch demands and activities as tribute payment and religious indoctrination.These outcomes often remained elusive, however, and from the standpoint ofroyal officials and religious personnel there were many failures in the effort toforce indigenous society into the straightjacket of Spanish-style settlement.Some communities began to return to their former locales almost as soon asthey had been relocated. Others trickled back over the longer term. In stillother cases, the “reduced” towns simply replicated their former, dispersedstyle of settlement in the new location. Excepting market days, celebrations,and the activities of local government, town centers frequently were leftalmost vacant. For all practical purposes they returned to the status of pre-Columbian ceremonial and political sites, visited on religious holidays, forspecial gatherings, and to fulfill tributary or other obligations, but otherwiseinhabited only by a handful of religious or political functionaries.

Qualifications aside, on a formal level, at least, the Spanish municipio waswell established among Guatemala’s indigenous communities by the end ofthe sixteenth century. Its cabildo, or town council, comprised the followingofficials: an alcalde, who served both as mayor and judge, an assistant alcalde,four or more regidores or council members, and a sındico or manager/legalagent. In addition, most cabildos counted a number of messengers and as-sistants, referred to generically as alguaciles or mayores. Over the course ofthe next two centuries the cabildo melded with preexisting decision-makingbodies to produce the civil hierarchy of anthropological fame, with cabildoposts signifying stepping stones on the road to a community-wide council ofelder patriarchs, or principales. Although officially unrecognized by Spanishlaw, the principales represented the real power in the indigenous community,superseding the cabildo and deciding all but routine matters of day-to-daymunicipal administration.

A number of religious offices normally existed alongside the indigenouscommunity’s civil hierarchy: mayordomos, maestros de coro or cantores, fiscals,

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and sacristans. Depending on the community and the period, these officesalso were organized into a ranked hierarchy, and may have been integratedto varying degrees with the civil posts of the municipal cabildo. In addi-tion, aside from civil and religious offices, particular indigenous patriarchsoften wielded inordinate power due to their residual connections to thepre-Columbian state. They commonly retained control of lands that hadpertained to their predecessors as estates or administrative or political ju-risdictions, which they titled privately or sometimes sold off to individualSpaniards against the wishes of fellow community members. As descendantsof Mayan nobles and military chiefs, these patriarchs—referred to genericallyas caciques—often assumed the status of principal without serving the com-munity through a long succession of civil or religious posts. This does notmean, however, that they were opposed to holding such offices. Caciqueswere known to use their inherited status and relative affluence to monop-olize the highest cabildo positions and thus further dominate local politics.If this was made difficult by royal law, which prohibited the back-to-backreelection of civil officers, the same could not be said for the post of thegobernador, a municipal-level super-executive appointed by corregidores andalcaldes mayores. Gobernadores served for life unless they resigned or were re-placed due to malfeasance, and their power rivaled and sometimes preemptedthat of the entire elected cabildo. For much of the colonial period caciquesand others with links to the pre-Columbian nobility dominated the post ofgobernador.

This appears to have been the case among the southeastern Mam centeredat San Juan Ostuncalco. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, atleast, the region’s gobernadores were referred to periodically as caciques. Twocacique families in particular—Marroquın and Barrios de San Millan—filledthe post with relative frequency for much of the period. Moreover, on atleast two occasions, the Barrios de San Millan family attempted to capitalizeon its inherited privileges by privately titling community lands. In the firstinstance, dating from 1600, Gabriel Barrios de San Millan the elder titledtwelve caballerıas—later estimated at well over 100—called Zacualpa, whichhe subsequently sold off to two Spaniards from Quezaltenango. This salegave rise to numerous disputes and recriminations over the remainder of thecolonial period as Ostuncalco fought to reassert its control over the area.In the second instance, Gabriel the younger attempted to title a formerlivestock estancia north of Zacualpa that apparently had been maintained bythe residents of San Cristobal Cabrican in support of his father. Cabrican’sservice to Gabriel the elder, however, appears to have ended by the mid-seventeenth century—perhaps due to his removal from office as gobernadorca. 1637. Thus, when Gabriel the younger petitioned for title to the estanciain 1664 he was strenuously opposed by Cabrican’s cabildo officials.1

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 141

The “Ladinization” of the Colonial State: Non-IndigenousPopulations and Cabildos after 1750

Until the eighteenth century, the indigenous municipio served as the foun-dation of colonial society within the Kingdom of Guatemala. Its officialsexercised direct control over the vast majority of the inhabited territory thatcomprised the kingdom, and it is through indigenous municipal officialsthat royal authorities governed. Over the course of the eighteenth century,however, the calculus of Crown rule was altered by the demographic ex-pansion of ladinos within traditionally indigenous zones—for example, thewestern highland region. This trend received added impetus from a succes-sion of earthquakes that destroyed Guatemala’s colonial seat, Santiago de losCaballeros, during the 1770s, and prompted a mass exodus of ladinos to-ward the indigenous hinterlands in the west. Ladino migrants to the southof the western region formed what historians David McCreery and ArturoTaracena Arriola have called an “axis” of settlements by the late colonialperiod that stretched from San Miguel Totonicapan to the Barrio of SanMarcos and beyond. Two arcs connected these endpoints. The upper ornorthern arc comprised San Carlos Sija, San Antonio Bobos, Rıo Blanco,and San Lorenzo—small agricultural communities that emerged in the inter-stices of the surrounding indigenous towns. The lower or southern arc wascomposed of Salcaja, Quezaltenango, and San Juan Ostuncalco. Like SanMiguel and San Marcos, these settlements, with the exception of Salcaja,were formed by ladino colonization of preexisting indigenous populationcenters. Finally, west and north of San Marcos, additional ladino settle-ments emerged in the indigenous towns of Tejutla, Tacana, San Pablo, andMalacatan.2

One surprising aspect of this movement of ladinos from Guatemala’s cap-ital and its environs to the indigenous west is that it was, by and large, illegal.Not in the sense that the Crown specifically outlawed westward migration,but rather from the standpoint that non-Mayans—be they Spaniards, mesti-zos, or people of African descent—were barred from residing in indigenoustowns or from encroaching, unbidden, on indigenous land. Although therewere exceptions to the residence ban—royal officials serving in provincial orregional cabeceras, parish priests and other religious personnel—these couldnot account for the wave of ladinos that flooded indigenous towns duringthe eighteenth century. Likewise, although there were circumstances underwhich ladinos legally could challenge and title land utilized by indigenouscommunities, the success of such efforts usually had little to do with legalmerit, and everything to do with the socio-economic standing and politicalor personal connections of the plaintiff. In sum, the growing number of ladi-nos who took up residence in the indigenous communities of the western

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highlands, or who staked out territory claimed by indigenous agriculturists,did so against the spirit, if not always the letter, of royal law.3

The underlying illegality of this migration led to a revealing contradiction.Despite burgeoning numbers, ladino residents could not participate, at leastformally, in local politics or administration. Community elections and cabildooffices remained restricted to the indigenous inhabitants. This is not to saythat ladinos did not influence local affairs in important ways. They did, byexploiting ties to regionally based royal officials, and by making alliances with,or simply intimidating, indigenous authorities. Nonetheless, they lacked anopen, legitimate venue for deciding and managing their interests at the locallevel. This “problem” was finally “rectified,” at least from the standpointof the region’s ladinos, when the Crown began to authorize the formationof ladino municipal governments in the western highlands from the mid-eighteenth century onward. The first ladino cabildo so recognized in thesouthern portion of the region was San Marcos in 1754, followed by Salcajaand San Carlos Sija in 1778.4 Additional ladino councils were not authorizeduntil the early nineteenth century, beginning with Quezaltenango in 1805,and followed by a spate of others in 1806, including San Juan Ostuncalco,San Antonio Bobos, San Lorenzo, and Tejutla.5

By the early 1800s, then, a number of the ladino settlements that hademerged between and within the indigenous towns of Guatemala’s south-western highlands were allowed to form their own community-level govern-ing bodies. If the settlements located in the southern portion of the regionindeed could be considered to constitute a ladino axis, then a further fac-tor now distinguished the upper and lower arcs or tiers. Because upper-tierladinos had settled the interstices of preexisting Maya communities, theirnew cabildos and municipal jurisdictions were distinct from those of the sur-rounding indigenous towns, frequent boundary disputes notwithstanding.Lower-tier ladinos, by contrast, had settled at or alongside the very center ofpreexisting Mayan towns. The territorial jurisdiction of their new municipalcabildos was coterminous with those of indigenous authorities, creating a sit-uation fraught with ambiguity and tension as the ladino bodies moved quicklyto dominate their indigenous counterparts, to limit the latter’s autonomy andscope, and to usurp its prerogatives with regard to such things as how com-munity lands would be exploited.6 This is how the dual-municipality systemof local government emerged in Guatemala’s southwestern highlands, andexcepting the immediate post-independence period (ca. 1821–39), it per-sisted there in one form or another until well into the twentieth century.7

The municipal cabildo was not always the most reliable foundation for theSpanish colonial state because it had the potential to function more demo-cratically than other political and administrative institutions of the time. Intheory, at least, cabildo officers were elected by adult, property-holding males

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 143

from a pool of qualified candidates. All parties involved with this process,electors and candidates alike, were supposed to be local residents. In prac-tice, higher level Spanish authorities often named cabildo officials, and bythe seventeenth century it was common to auction off cabildo posts in theofficially established Spanish towns. Even in indigenous towns, where elec-tions rather than administrative appointments or auctions were the rule, theelectorate typically was restricted to present and former officeholders andother important male elders who together comprised the body of commu-nity principales. That said, the municipal cabildo still held the greatest promisefor popular-based politics of any colonial-era Spanish institution, and mostcabildos located outside of the vice-regal capitals and regional administrativeseats probably could be characterized as quasidemocratic. This would in-clude the majority of indigenous cabildos, almost by definition, but also—ifGuatemala serves as any guide—those ladino councils that were establishedtoward the end of the colonial period as a result of provincial pressure.8

Even after independence, as presidents and congresses replaced viceroys,gobernadores, and audiencias, the municipal government or municipalidad re-mained closest to, and most influenced by, the popular will, or at least whatpassed for such in Guatemalan cities and rural communities. This was truedespite the fact that colonial-era electoral practices continued to be the normfor most of the nineteenth century, restricting suffrage to present and formermunicipal officials, as well as principales in the case of indigenous towns.9

As a result, depending on the issue, or the moment, municipal councils of-ten sided with local interests, whether individual or collective, and againsthigher level state institutions or their particular demands. Certainly nationaland regional administrators often suspected municipal authorities—both in-digenous and ladino—of disloyalty, or of disobeying or undercutting theirorders. Thus, although the municipalidad served as the basic link between thestate and the population at large, it played a very contradictory role: on theone hand, receiving and complying with a constant barrage of orders fromhigher level functionaries; and on the other, frequently adapting or evenrefusing to implement these orders when they contravened local sensibilitiesor interests or destabilized the local balance of power.10

It bears repeating that the municipalidad exhibited a janus-faced quality re-gardless of whether it corresponded to an indigenous or ladino population.11

Yet because regional and national state officials shared the Hispanic back-ground of municipal-level ladinos, and because they were tied to the latteras kin, friends, business associates, or political allies, the state as a wholewas predisposed to identify the ladino council, in contrast to its indigenousprecursor, as a naturally more reliable and secure—if still inconsistent—ally.Almost by its very existence, then, the ladino municipalidad became the vehi-cle of choice through which state administrators exercised their power and

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discharged their duties at the sub-regional level. Although the indigenousmunicipal council was not subordinated to its ladino counterpart by royaldecree or early republican legislation, in actual practice it was transformedinto a junior partner. The proliferation of ladino councils and the emergenceof the dual-municipality system in the waning decades of the colonial periodthus implied the further subjugation of indigenous society to the politicalauthority and control of Guatemala’s ladino minority. Following indepen-dence, early republicans reinforced this trend, and where indigenous peopleonce had been able to imagine the possibility of a benevolent, if not en-tirely impartial, state, now they found themselves face to face with a muchmore overt antagonist. Not only did the republican state now operate at thelocal level through a proliferating number of ladino municipal councils andtheir officials, but it tended to favor and privilege those councils over thepreexisting indigenous ones.

This “ladinization” of the Guatemalan state, aside from presenting newdifficulties for indigenous society, corresponded to the development of re-gional identities among recently established provincial ladinos. For much ofthe colonial period separatist sentiment within the boundaries of present-dayGuatemala remained submerged—overshadowed by the tension that markedindigenous-Spanish relations, and subsumed within the constant powerstruggles that pitted conquistadors and their descendants against succeedingwaves of peninsular bureaucrats.12 The growth of sizable ladino settlementswell outside of Guatemala’s central valley, however, particularly from the late-seventeenth century onward, established the conditions for provincial resent-ment of the colonial capital. The subsequent proliferation of ladino municipalcouncils after 1750 provided an important vehicle by which the emergingregional population could elaborate its grievances and advance its interests,both within and apart from the state. As a result of this trend, regionally basedstate officials no longer ruled over an undifferentiated (in their eyes) massof colonial “others” in virtual isolation from their ethnic or caste equals—“alone” but for a small coterie of family members, assistants, and religiouspersonnel. Now they faced a growing constituency of Hispanic-oriented lo-cals, and in addition to kinship and business ties, they were linked to the latterthrough the administrative and political channels that wove each newly es-tablished ladino cabildo into the fabric of a particular region’s state apparatus.

In sum, by the end of the colonial era, regional state institutions fromdispersed ladino cabildos up to the office of the corregidor itself frequentlycultivated and advanced, rather than discouraged or repressed, provincial de-mands that challenged the policies and authority of superiors in GuatemalaCity. A shared cultural opposition to indigenous society, then, did not preventregionalist resentment of the privileged core from dividing provincial andcapital-based ladinos. This antagonism was heightened further by cultural

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and racial distinctions among ladinos themselves. Although capital-city elitestended to be Spaniards and creoles with close ties to royal institutions, theirprovincial counterparts generally included a greater proportion of mestizosand other outcasts of the colonial system. Prior to independence these dis-tinctions among ladinos were downplayed in the face of the creole-peninsularstruggle that marked the later years of Bourbon administration. Followingindependence, however, caste-based elitism gave regional partisans furtherreason to look with ambivalence and distrust at the creole republicans whocommanded the heights of the economy and the central state.13

Regionalism, Ethnicity, and the Illegitimacy of the IncipientRepublican State

At the start of the republican era, no region was readier than Quezalte-nango to challenge the ideological, political, and economic domination ofthe erstwhile colonial capital, Guatemala City. Quezaltenango had existedas a corregimiento for much of the colonial period, and its jurisdiction hadencompassed a large proportion of the ladino communities of the westernhighlands. The city itself, aside from having been cabecera of the former cor-regimiento, counted the largest non-indigenous population of any regionaltown and served as the fulcrum of the western ladino axis.14 Unsurprisingly,demands for greater political and administrative autonomy emanated mostforcefully from Quezaltenango’s provincial elite, who chafed at their lack ofrepresentation in Guatemala City as manifested by the prejudicial monopo-lies and special privileges that had been accorded the capital throughout thecolonial years. They pointed to persistent state inaction in the face of the im-ported cotton textiles that continued to harm western producers and slow theregion’s economic growth as further evidence of the supremacy of capitalinointerests. In addition, the Quezalteco elite lamented the failure of GuatemalaCity-based authorities to address adequately the region’s perceived “Indianproblem.” Western ladinos had been battling the region’s tenacious Mayancommunities for decades, attempting to carve out the economic and politicalspace they believed they were due. Land in particular, was a contentious issuethat gave rise to heated and even violent conflict in which ethnic differenceswere openly acknowledged and to which the dispute over land was oftenattributed. If something were not done to offset the western highland’s recal-citrant indigenous majority, the Quezalteco elite reasoned, then the city andits regional hinterlands would remain condemned to economic and socialstagnation—its rich lands untapped, its vast potential unrealized.15

Eventually, as I have described elsewhere, the advent of the Carrera Revoltprovided favorable conditions for the Quezalteco elite and other western ladi-nos to act on their resentment toward the capital by seceding from Guatemala

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in early 1838 as the independent state of Los Altos. Well before this rebel-lious denouement, however, Quezaltenango’s ladino elite already had begunto challenge the dominance of Guatemala City in a number of ways. One ofthe most notable incidents occurred shortly after Central America’s declara-tion of independence in September 1821. Impatient to ensure its autonomyfrom the former colonial capital, Quezaltenango’s ladino municipal councilunilaterally annexed itself to the incipient Mexican Empire of Agustın deIturbide. Neither Guatemala City nor the Guatemalan provisional govern-ing junta had decided on or authorized such a move, and interim politicalchief Gabino Gaınza, the former Captain General, complained with alarmthat Quezaltenango’s actions, along with similar developments elsewhere inthe isthmus, imposed annexation as the only alternative to Central America’scomplete disintegration.16 When Guatemala City attempted to reassert itsauthority over the errant province early in the new year, the ladino councilresponded that “[t]he citizens of Quezaltenango declare that in no way norunder any circumstances do they desire to recognize the Guatemalan gov-ernment and that their true wish is to recognize the Mexican Empire nowand forever.” The standoff continued for several months, ending only withthe arrival of Mexican troops under General Vicente Filısola. The Generalthreatened Quezaltenango’s ladino officials with forced reintegration if theyrefused to submit voluntarily to Guatemalan authority.17

Interestingly, Quezalteco indigenous leaders joined the ladino municipalcouncil in declaring for the Plan de Iguala in November 1821. Moreover,several nearby indigenous towns directly answered Quezaltenango’s call tosupport Mexican annexation of the region, and numerous other Mayancommunities throughout the highlands appear to have favored such an out-come independently.18 Simply put, the indigenous majority feared the ruleof Guatemalan ladinos unfettered by the moderating influence of higher levelroyal officials based outside the region and epitomized by the king himself.The rebellion of the “Indian King” of Totonicapan, for example, in 1820,provides ample evidence that the indigenous people of the western highlandsdid not trust Guatemala City-based officials or their regional subordinates tofairly and honestly implement royal policy. This distrust persisted through-out the 1820s and 1830s, as indigenous communities continued to pursueclandestine ties to Mexico and to resist and rebel against state policies thatcalled for changes in land tenure or taxation.19

In sum, both indigenous and ladino residents of the western highlandregion appear to have viewed the incipient republican state with a great dealof ambivalence in the early post-independence years. At times, the specterof onerous and unpopular impositions from Guatemala City even allowedinterethnic rivalry to be submerged, if only for awhile. This is exactly whatoccurred in late 1826, in a virtual dress rehearsal for the Carrera revolt. For

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 147

the preceding two years the population had suffered a train of burdensomeexactions and policies under Guatemala’s new Liberal state government, in-augurated as part of the Central American Federation. Taxes, free trade, landand cemetery reforms, and abolition of the religious fuero were just some ofthe Liberal-oriented measures that helped to generate discontent throughoutthe highlands.

Then, in October 1826, political crisis forced Guatemala’s state govern-ment to abandon Guatemala City for Quezaltenango. Federation PresidentManuel Jose Arce arrested Guatemala’s chief executive, Governor JuanBarrundia, and chased the remaining state officials out of the capital.Guatemalan Vice-governor Cirilo Flores reconvened the state governmentin Quezaltenango, where he set about to prepare for an anticipated invasionof federal troops by imposing forced loans and conscriptions on the town’salready-disgruntled residents. Soldiers raided house-to-house, looking forweapons and horses to provision the defense force, and even the Churchstables were looted. As news of this offense against God spread throughoutthe city, a multiethnic crowd of several thousand formed in front of Quezal-tenango’s cathedral. The vice-governor arrived with a handful of municipalofficials to quell the unrest, but in the end the angry mob beat Flores todeath, tearing him limb from limb to calls of “death to the tyrant, death tothe heretic, death to the thief ” and “long live religion.”20

San Juan Ostuncalco’s experiences during this period do not appear tohave included such overt manifestations of interethnic cooperation. Theydo reinforce, however, the conclusion that many sectors of the westernpopulace—regardless of ethnicity—questioned the legitimacy of Guatemala’spost-independence Liberal state. Conflict between Ostuncalco and depart-mental authorities over taxation, for example, endemic to the 1820s and1830s, demonstrates well this lack of legitimacy. Throughout these yearsOstuncalco’s indigenous and ladino municipal leaders rarely complied withstate-mandated tax collections in anything but the most half-hearted man-ner. In 1824, for example, the jefe polıtico of Quezaltenango issued severalorders to Ostuncalco’s first alcalde, ladino Francisco Lopes, demanding thathe collect a nation-wide donativo or “donation” that had been due at thebeginning of April. Writing his third reminder on 8 October, the jefe polıticocondemned the municipalidad’s lackadaisical response, complaining that “as oftoday, neither the donativo of the Indians nor of the Ladinos has arrived.”21

Departmental officials had similar problems collecting the national headtax or contribucion that superseded colonial-era tribute, not only in Ostun-calco but also in the surrounding Mam towns of the district. In 1830 thetax was supposed to have been collected by mid-spring, but as of late JulyOstuncalco’s authorities had turned over only 92 of 891 pesos. The jefepolıtico threatened to send in troops on at least three separate occasions, and in

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October he ordered the municipalidad to round up all the delinquents so thatthe soldiers could escort them to Quezaltenango. With regard to the nearbytowns of Concepcion Chiquirichapa and San Martın Sacatepequez, the jefepolıtico still had not received their tax moneys as of late November. He di-rected Ostuncalco’s ladino first alcalde Bernabe Monterrosa to remand theirmunicipal officers to Quezaltenango for imprisonment.22

A little over two years later, in the spring of 1833, the jefe polıtico faultedOstuncalco once again for its “proven tardiness,” and “the low regard [itplaced] on compliance with the orders dispatched by this government . . . ,the laws that govern us . . . , [and what I have] demanded of it in variousnotes which have gone unanswered. . . .” Apparently the town still had notfinished collecting the head tax for the previous two years, and the jefe polıticothreatened the municipalidad with a fine of 50 pesos, to be divided amongits members, if it did not comply within seven days. More than two weekspassed and the fine finally was assessed, accompanied by the threat that anadditional 100 pesos would be charged the municipal officers if they did notquickly settle the town’s delinquent tax accounts.23

Aside from the issue of taxation, Ostuncalco’s Mam residents had addi-tional reason to question the legitimacy of Guatemala’s post-colonial Liberalstate. Several new policies were aimed directly at decreasing the autonomy ofthe indigenous population vis-a-vis its ladino counterpart as well as the statemore generally. With regard to land, for example, the evidence is clear thatearly Liberal legislation was designed to challenge the proprietary controlthat Mayan communities historically had exercised over the territory withintheir administrative jurisdictions. Under the cover of these new laws ladinoclaims to the communal property of the Mam towns within Ostuncalco’sorbit jumped dramatically, particularly in the fertile piedmont area.24

Liberal authorities also attempted to build on articles of the 1812Cadız Constitution that established the legal foundation for integratedladino-indigenous municipal councils in ethnically heterogeneous towns.Evidence for the department of Quezaltenango suggests that such integratedcouncils were initiated with the municipal elections that followed therestoration of the Cadız Constitution in 1820. Despite Liberal proclamationsin favor of equality, integration as it was practiced meant that indigenouscouncil members were subordinated to their ladino counterparts in thehierarchy of municipal offices, although nothing in either the Spanishor Guatemalan constitutions explicitly required this. If Ostuncalco is anyguide, for example, then the position of first alcalde always was reserved fora ladino. Regardless, as Antonio Aguilar and Diego Agustin—two of thetown’s indigenous officials—remarked in 1826, “because the municipalidadis in one body, the naturales do nothing more than listen and watch.” Theintegrated municipalidad appears to have endured in the western highlandsthrough the first Liberal period and the short-lived Los Altos experiment,

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until the elections of December 1840 that followed Rafael Carrera’sdefinitive victory over regional Liberals.25

Finally, in the mid-1830s, implementation of the Livingston Codes sealedindigenous opinion toward the Guatemala City-based Liberal state. Theoret-ically, the Livingston Codes reorganized Guatemala’s legal system along moreefficient, egalitarian lines. Among other things, they instituted trial by jury,established the guarantee of habeas corpus, and placed new circuit courts intowns and regions that previously had not had easy access to supra-municipalstate institutions. In practice, however, these positive-sounding innovationsturned out to be more of a burden than a boon for the inhabitants of theaffected communities. Local residents now found themselves subjected to amuch greater degree of state scrutiny and intervention—usually unwanted—than ever before. And in the short-run, at least, they were required to com-plete a whole host of infrastructural and organizational tasks—representingsubstantial outlays of time and money—before the new legal system couldbe made operational, and before they could begin to realize some of itsanticipated benefits.26

Ostuncalco’s experiences are instructive in this regard because the town iswidely believed to have struck the first blow against the Livingston Codes,initiating the violent unrest of the late 1830s that toppled the Liberal Galvezadministration, and that brought Rafael Carrera to national attention.27 OnJanuary 20, 1837, the process of legal reform began with the arrival of thenewly appointed Circuit Court Judge, Felix Morales, from San Marcos.Morales confronted a difficult task in Ostuncalco, in large part because thetown lacked the infrastructure that was required of a circuit court under theLivingston Codes. He would have to construct a courthouse and a jail, andestablish accommodations for the thrice-yearly appellate visits of Quezalte-nango’s district court officials—all with local resources and local labor. Inaddition, Morales, and the court and the jail, would require a number ofmessengers and other assistants on a regular, on-going basis. None of thesepersonnel, it appears, would be remunerated by the state, but rather theywere to be provided, free of charge, by the circuit’s ladino and indigenousmunicipalidades. Finally, but no less important, Morales needed a census ofthe circuit’s potential jurors for the court to operate according to plan.28

The difficulty of Morales’ task was compounded immeasurably by thecallousness and disdain that he displayed toward Ostuncalco’s municipal of-ficials regardless of ethnicity. Less than forty-eight hours after arriving intotown, for example, he began to criticize the municipalidad for the tardinessof its responses. He also faulted it for failing to compile a census of poten-tial jurors. “Although, according to the decree of 30 November [1836], theGefe Departamental should have notified that Municipalidad to proceed inthe formation of the lists of jurors, it appears to me that this still has not beencomplied with. I advise [you],” Morales continued in his typically brusque

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manner, “to remit me said lists, precisely formed . . . within a period of threedays, and without any excuses.”29

On January 30 the judge reprimanded the municipalidad for not fulfillinghis request for a daily assistant, or mayor. “Because of this,” he announcedpunitively, “I not only want you to provide me with a mayor each day,but also an alcalde auxiliar, since both are needed for the operation of thiscourt.” Simultaneously, he also demanded a bricklayer and six laborers toconstruct the building that would serve as the new courthouse, as well asanother alcalde auxiliar to oversee their progress.30 Not even a week passedbefore Morales complained yet again that municipal officials had fallen shortof his expectations. Apparently the municipalidad still had not begun to readya house for the upcoming visit of Quezaltenango’s appellate tribunal. “It isstrange that that [municipal] corporation should view my orders with suchutter disregard,” he wrote caustically, “because I have told them that it isnecessary to fix up the house of Dolores Ocheita in order to lodge the[district] Magistrates.” Either the municipalidad should name someone nowto carry out this task, the judge concluded, “or . . . on the contrary, I shallbe compelled to pay someone . . . at your expense.”31

Unsurprisingly, Morales quickly became a target of abuse. A mere fivedays after his arrival, “el natural” Diego Gomes walked to his house, and, ac-cording to the judge, “agitated by aguardiente, showered me with insults . . . ,failing to show me due respect. . . .” For this offense Gomes was jailed nearlytwo weeks, and released only after paying a hefty fine of 5 pesos.32 Needlessto say, neither the judge’s demeanor, nor his constant, onerous demands,engendered sympathy or support from the local populace. In subsequent tes-timony indigenous leaders from several of the Mam towns accused him ofnumerous excesses. Ostuncalco’s indigenous alcalde Tomas Escobar, alongwith the town’s principales and authorities from Santa Cruz Cajola and SanMiguel Siguila, complained that Morales endeavored to sell a much-disputedpiece of land next to the Church, and that he had burdened them with anexploitative work regimen, jury duty, and numerous financial exactions. Toquestion his orders, or to fail to comply in any way, resulted in costly finesand even imprisonment: “If there were any problems with the work, we, themunicipal officials, had to suffer many insults, until it got to the point thatsaid [judge was] menacing us with imprisonment, or with fines . . . and thishas frightened us very much.”33

Reestablishing the Legitimacy of the Guatemalan State: TheCarrera Revolt, Los Altos, and the Indian Question

Faced with these grave injustices, the region’s Mam population re-belled in early March 1837. Although a small force of ladino militiamen

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 151

effectively quelled the uprising before the month was out, the Ostuncalcorebellion marked the first of many that swept the country in 1837, chal-lenging the perceived illegitimacy of the Guatemalan state and the LiberalGalvez administration. These uprisings culminated in a sustained insurrec-tionary movement anchored primarily south and east of Guatemala City thatlasted through 1839, and which came to be known as the Carrera Revolt.34

Much to the dismay of the rebellious indigenous communities of thewestern highlands, the Carrera Revolt also gave western regional ladinosthe cover they needed to launch their own rebellion against the authorityof Guatemala City, establishing the State of Los Altos in early February1838.35 This development, which boosted the autonomy and political powerof western ladinos, was the last thing that the highland Maya had desired fortheir local ethnic rivals. As a result, especially after it became clear that peasantrebel leader Rafael Carrera was the new power in Guatemala City, westernindigenous communities responded to the existence of Los Altos by returningtheir support to the Guatemalan state. In one particularly dramatic case, “adistraught indigenous man from the town of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan,followed by many others and accompanied by an interpreter, was presentedto [Guatemala’s] interim chief-of-state, bathed in tears and carrying in hishands a human head that he said was that of his own son.” According to theinterpreter, “troops from the State of Los Altos had gone to demand taxesfrom the town, and had resorted to the use of force,” in the process killingseveral townspeople, including the unfortunate man’s son. The Ixtahuacandelegation ended the visit by beseeching Guatemalan authorities to protectthem from the Quezaltenango-based government.36

Carrera’s military invasion and defeat of Los Altos in early 1840, andhis decisive triumph over Francisco Morazan shortly thereafter, cementednot only his hold on Guatemalan politics, but also the legitimacy of anindependent, republican Guatemala centered in the erstwhile colonial cap-ital. By crushing Los Altos, Carrera projected the national state as a vehi-cle for challenging western ladino interests, and thus as a valuable ally forthe western Maya in their struggle to resist being dominated by their non-indigenous neighbors. Moreover, by routing the activist administration ofLiberal Mariano Galvez, and by blunting the advance of Central Americanliberalism more generally, Carrera resurrected the possibility of continuitybetween divine-inspired colonial rule and Guatemala’s incipient nationalstate. Although the Spanish crown had never been an impartial mediator,neither had it served as a rubber stamp for the creole agenda. Likewise,under Carrera’s mantle, Guatemala City emerged as a potential brake onLiberal elites whose personal ambitions and wide-ranging reform projectsthreatened to rend asunder a Guatemalan social fabric already tattered fromyears of Bourbon experiments and the breakdown of Spanish colonialism.37

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As for the elites themselves, whether capitalino or provincial, they ac-cepted Carrera—at least in the beginning—largely based on their fear ofhis ability to command the subaltern “castes.” Carrera’s order to executeQuezaltenango’s ladino municipal officers in March 1841, immediately fol-lowing his decisive victory over General Morazan, drove home the dangerof challenging his authority, and probably convinced even the most recalci-trant Liberals to forego antagonizing the rebel-turned-power broker. Overtime elite fears were assuaged by the perception that Carrera also served asGuatemala’s most effective bulwark against caste warfare a la Haiti, Mexico,or the Andes. Under Carrera’s leadership the Guatemalan state maintained ahigh degree of political and social stability when viewed within the contextof the uncertainty and dislocation that had marked the preceding decades ofthe nineteenth century. In addition, capital-city elites came to value Carrerafor his acceptance of colonial-era economic restrictions that favored theirinterests over those of the provinces. Even provincial elites—although theychafed at the privileges accorded to capital-city merchants and others—reached a grudging accommodation with Carrera based on his ability tocontain indigenous discontent while simultaneously promoting or at leastallowing many of the reform measures that originally had been charted byearlier Liberal administrations.38

In sum, then, Carrera secured the legitimacy of Guatemala’s post-independence state among most sectors of the populace: eastern mestizos;capital-city elites, especially those with a Conservative orientation; someprovincial elites; and the Mayan majority. Unfortunately for the latter, how-ever, Carrera’s Conservative-popular image, and his anti-Liberal symbolism,belied the reality of his policies—and those of his political subordinates—overtime. Once the central state’s effective jurisdiction no longer was in question,Carrera gave tacit support to many of the Liberal-inspired innovations thathad generated such popular animosity only a few years before. Most of thesepolicies aimed to enhance the political power and administrative efficacyof the central state in one way or another. Some policies directly reformedor expanded existing state institutions, or created new ones. Others took amore roundabout approach: fostering economic—primarily agricultural—enterprises, for example, to generate new and more lucrative sources of staterevenue; or promoting greater cultural homogeneity and civic consciousnessin the hopes of creating a more governable citizenry.

With regard to corporately held property, for example, Rafael Carreraand his Conservative associates actively and passively facilitated the transferof indigenous community land to outside agriculturists—usually ladinos—as part of their efforts to promote the expansion of commercially orientedagriculture. Traditional products such as cattle and sugar were favored in thisway, as were less established, but prospective, commodities such as coffee.

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 153

Conservative authorities generally did not abrogate legal documents and ti-tles that established clear community rights to a particular territory. Instead,they cajoled and coerced community officials into ceding effective controlof desirable parcels to interested entrepreneurs. Sometimes the state pushedthrough settlements that ratified a community’s legal title to a property, butin exchange for allowing the introduction of outside agriculturists. At othertimes Conservative authorities simply refused to enforce indigenous commu-nity property rights in the face of ladino incursions. In either case, however,the outcome was the same. Because the state refused to afford communityproperty the same protections as individual property—ultimately throughthe use of state-sanctioned violence—indigenous towns located in primeagricultural areas lost effective control of their communal property even astheir legal title or documentation remained intact.

In terms of state institutions, Carrera and his ministers lost little timefollowing up on the Galvez-inspired establishment of new administrative–judicial districts throughout the country. Sometime in late 1840 or early1841, for example, Quezaltenango’s corregidor appointed an encargado orcomisionado polıtico to administer the political district of Ostuncalco, an areacorresponding to the former court circuit that had been designated by thenow-defunct Livingston Codes. In the early 1850s the comisionado polıticoalso was vested with judicial powers, acquiring the additional title of juezpreventivo.39 From 1839 onward several new administrative sub-regions werecarved out of this district in the vast piedmont area that would come to beknown as the Costa Cuca. Although almost all of this territory fell within thelegal boundaries of San Martın Sacatepequez, Ostuncalco’s ladino municipal-idad assumed formal responsibility for the new administrative units primarilythrough its appointment of one or more ladino auxiliary officials for each lo-cale. By the 1860s the number of piedmont sub-regions had grown from oneto five, and each was now administered by three ladino auxiliares—an alcaldeand two regidores—instead of one. For much of this later period, as well,supervision of the Costa Cuca’s auxiliares was transferred from Ostuncalco’sladino municipalidad to the district’s juez preventivo-comisionado polıtico.40

Under Carrera, the Conservative state also encouraged the expansion ofGuatemala’s military forces. Anthropologist Robert Carmack discusses theemergence of indigenous militia units in Momostenango during Carrera’stenure, and within the department of Quezaltenango there was a renewedeffort to organize “milicias urbanas” among regional ladinos beginning inthe early 1850s. This was not the first time that Guatemala’s post-colonialstate had tried to establish militia units throughout the country. As early as1823, shortly after the declaration of Central America’s United Provinces, au-thorities had directed municipal governments—probably focusing on thosewith significant ladino populations—to form militias. Similar calls were made

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throughout the subsequent years. Yet in the western highlands, at least, out-side of the departmental capitals and perhaps one or two other provincialtowns, these militia units either were very short-lived, or they failed to ma-terialize at all. Thus, for example, when faced with the Mam uprising inOstuncalco in 1837, regional officials were unable to assemble the mini-mum 200 troops that first-hand observers had insisted would be necessaryto repress the event. After nearly two weeks of preparation they were hard-pressed to come up with even half of that number, eventually amassingabout eighty men—primarily milicianos, but including a handful of regularsoldiers—from the towns of Quezaltenango, San Carlos Sija, San MiguelTotonicapan, Malacatan, and Chiantla combined. As late as 1848, when de-partmental authorities ordered Ostuncalco to muster and arm its militia foremergency detail in Quezaltenango, the town’s ladino mayor responded that“here in this town, there have not been militias organized, nor are there anytoday. With respect to weapons . . . , at no time have [we] had any.”41

In contrast to previous years, the evidence from Ostuncalco and vicinitysuggests that the 1850s marked a minor watershed in the organization ofGuatemalan military forces. Beginning with an initial decree of August 26,1852, regional militias multiplied and grew in number, as did the presence ofregular army troops. Militias appeared in Ostuncalco, San Antonio Bobos,and San Pedro Sacatepequez during this period, and Ostuncalco’s regimentcame to include well over 100 men by the early 1860s, double the original 50called for in 1852.42 At about this same time, the district’s juez preventivo alsowas given command of a contingent of regular soldiers that ranged in sizefrom 5 to 25 men depending on local circumstances.43 The ability of Quezal-tenango’s military commander to send a division of 700 men against therebellious K’iche’ Maya of Momostenango and San Bartolo Aguas Calientesin mid-1853 demonstrates the Conservative state’s success in establishing andenhancing regional militia and regular army forces, particularly when con-sidered against the pathetic performance of its Liberal precursor in 1837.44

The 1850s also appear to have been a minor watershed with regard tostate-mandated and supported education. The Conservative state called forschools to be established in several of Quezaltenango’s municipalities in 1851,including San Juan Ostuncalco, and the following year it issued a nation-widedecree demanding at least one school for each sex in every parish. More sur-prising than the decrees themselves, however, is that fact that departmentalauthorities followed up on them, repeatedly reminding and even threaten-ing municipal officers to comply with the state’s educational directives.45

Although Ostuncalco had maintained a single boys’ school sporadically overthe course of the 1840s, pressure from Quezaltenango’s Corregidor helpedto ensure its continuous operation from 1852 onward. School attendance

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was promoted, and in some years enrollment reached well over 100 malestudents. Efforts to initiate a school for Ostuncalco’s girls did not begin until1855, and once again the intervention of the Corregidor was required beforethe plans were carried out. At the latter’s instigation, the girls’ school enteredmore or less continuous operation in late 1860.46 Educational goals appearto have been civic rather than vocational, in that students were trained inChristian doctrine and ethics and such disciplines as reading and writing.They did not attend school to become more effective agriculturists or toprepare for a particular trade, but rather to be educated as citizens in theclassical, elitist sense of the word, imbued with an underlying set of beliefsand a particular outlook on life.47

Finally, after mid-century, the Conservative state also began to pursuea number of notable infrastructure projects. Roads and port facilities wereexpanded and improved, and telegraph and railroad projects eventually wereinitiated.48 In the case of western Guatemala, forced laborers constructedcart roads linking Quezaltenango to the ports of Retalhuleu and Ostuncalcoto the Costa Cuca. Indeed, throughout the country Carrera allowed thecolonial practice of forced labor drafts or mandamientos to be reintroducedwith vigor, establishing a pattern that would be followed and expanded uponduring the Liberal Reforma.

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation: The Reforma and theExclusionary Implications of Western Regional Liberalism

Guatemala’s Liberal rebels took power at a time of great economic and so-cial transformation. The coffee economy was growing by leaps and bounds,land privatization proceeded apace, and wage labor proliferated as rural sub-alterns faced greater and greater difficulties obtaining their livelihood fromsubsistence agriculture. Moreover, unlike their ideological forebears of the1830s, Liberal rebels had the good fortune to inherit a state apparatus whosefundamental legitimacy was not in dispute. Indeed, even they did not chal-lenge fundamentally the sovereignty or jurisdiction of Guatemala City, de-spite their origins in the ladino population centers of the western highlands,steeped in the long tradition of Los Altos regionalism. No, the westernladino quest for greater political power and recognition was no longer tiedto the idea of secession, but rather to a complete takeover of the Guatemalanstate. For as historian Arturo Taracena Arriola recently has pointed out, “al-tense leaders . . . were aware that to dominate the indigenous majority, powerwould have to be exercised not within an altense State, but within the Re-public of Guatemala.” In other words, the “Indian question” lay at the heartof the western ladinos’ strategic reevaluation.49

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Apart from the issue of legitimacy, post-1870 Liberals also inherited amuch stronger state than that which had existed four decades earlier. RafaelCarrera and his Conservative allies had bolstered significantly the state’s abilityto coerce and coopt potentially restive sectors of the population duringtheir long rule. The post-1870 Liberals built on this success. Despite boldproclamations of revolutionary change, they eschewed the volunteerism oftheir Liberal predecessors and instead continued in the Conservative veinof expanding and strengthening the state while simultaneously pursuing apiecemeal, divide-and-conquer strategy that gave added—but not reckless—impetus to the economic and social transformations already well underway.

Although it is true that the victorious Liberals brought a greater number ofcoffee planters than ever before into the highest levels of government, I do notbelieve that this is the most significant or lasting legacy of the movement of1871. The Guatemalan state already included numerous coffee planters priorto the 1870s, and even more importantly, it had been accommodating coffeeinterests and promoting coffee cultivation for the past two decades. There islittle reason to think that Guatemala would have been less of a “coffee state”had the Liberal rebels failed. Indeed, perhaps the Guatemalan state wouldhave facilitated coffee’s expansion and developed the coffee industry in all ofits facets even more effectively had not coffee planters such as Justo RufinoBarrios and Manuel Lisandro Barillas directly occupied the presidency for somany years.50

No, the most significant impact of the Liberal military triumph of 1871 wasthat it allowed western ladinos to project their very specific, regional brandof liberalism—with its strident anti-indigeousness—upon the national stage.Aside from redirecting state revenues toward a wish list of western-orientedinfrastructure projects—for example, improvement of the Pacific port atChamperico—the defining element of Los Altos liberalism was its completenegation of Guatemala’s Mayan majority. Simply put, western Liberals deniedthat indigenous people were citizens, even in the limited sense of the termoperative during the colonial, and subsequently Conservative, periods, whenthe Maya were treated as a protected class of subjects—as perpetual minors or“wards” of the state. From now on, ladinos would be considered the only truecitizens of Guatemala, and if the Maya desired citizenship of any kind, thenthey would have to separate themselves from indigenous society. Otherwise,they would serve out their lives as mere fodder for the nation’s economicdevelopment, an outcome that suited the post-1870 Liberals in practice ifnot in theory. The latter were content to accept indigenous non-citizenshipbecause it propped up Guatemala’s commercial agricultural sector. Besides, tofollow the lead of their Liberal forebears in pushing a more aggressive programof mass “ladinization” ran the risk of provoking another Carrera revolt, or,as one Liberal commentator put it, a “fierce collision between the cultured

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society and the indigenous masses . . . of which we have unfortunately hadmore than one sad example.”51 Reforma-era state-makers looked back at thefailures of the earlier Liberal generation and concluded that it was neitherpractical nor desirable to include the Mayan majority in their efforts to satisfythe “fiction of ethnic and cultural homogeneity” that lay at the core of the“liberal-republican ideal.”52

Western ladino attitudes toward their indigenous neighbors reflected thehistoric antagonism that had developed between the two ethnic groups whenladinos began to colonize the western region at the start of the 18th cen-tury. Two key issues engendered this antagonism. The first issue was land.The entire western highlands had pertained to one indigenous polity oranother prior to the Spanish conquest. Following the conquest, territo-rial claims devolved from the defeated Mayan kingdoms to the constituentcommunities that had administered and exploited their immediate environsaccording to the rules of the larger polity, either through their own leaders—indigenous to the community, or under the direction of state representativeswho had been stationed at the local, community, level. This process wasfraught with ambiguity, and it generated numerous conflicts and disputesbetween communities but also within them, as rival kin groups and factionswith different historical ties to the now-vanquished kingdoms challengedone another for access to particular land resources. The demographic de-cline that marked the sixteenth and much of the seventeenth centuries onlyadded to the confusion because it left large areas devoid of permanent resi-dents. Within the framework of the Spanish colonial legal system, who hadlegitimate claim to these areas? Was historical precedent sufficient, or didcommunities need to demonstrate a more physical, immediate, connectionto the territory they claimed, such as the presence of a sizable, permanentpopulation?

Throughout the colonial period, but especially during the eighteenthcentury, growing numbers of Spaniards and mestizos invaded and settled theareas of the western mountain zone left vacant by the political disintegrationand the demographic collapse of indigenous society. In doing so, the ladinonewcomers challenged the historical and political claims of western indige-nous towns. Conflict over land became endemic. In addition, the ladinosbegan to seek formal recognition for their newly established communities,and over time Guatemala’s royal audiencia granted official municipal statusto the largest of these settlements. Some Spaniards and mestizos also beganto settle within the more important indigenous towns. Although the crownprohibited non-indigenous residency within indigenous communities, eventhese ostensibly illegal settlers eventually pushed the audiencia for municipalprivileges, which they were granted at the start of the nineteenth century. Asa result of this dramatic policy reversal, indigenous towns with a significant

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ladino minority—for example, Quezaltenango and San Juan Ostuncalco—now counted two, instead of one, municipal councils administering the sameterritory simultaneously. Whereas a single, indigenous, council had oncegoverned the affected town all by itself, now it had to negotiate with acompeting, ladino, governing body.

A second point of conflict, then, that fueled the ladino/indigenous an-tagonism, was the question of local political power. The Mayan commu-nities of the western highlands had been able to insist on a certain degreeof autonomy within the framework of Spanish colonialism. With the on-set of the eighteenth century, however, and the growing influx of Spanishand mestizo migrants, indigenous towns now faced an encircling web ofladino municipalities and officials that increasingly circumscribed their au-thority. Worse still, where indigenous councils were forced to coexist witha ladino counterpart, the challenge to indigenous autonomy came fromwithin the community itself. Lest one conclude that the conflict over po-litical power was somehow unconnected to the conflict over land discussedabove, imagine the ambiguity and confusion that resulted when the sta-tus of a town’s communal property was disputed by its own municipalcouncil.

This was precisely what occurred in San Juan Ostuncalco in the early1820s. Several important ladinos, including a number of former municipalofficials, desired to build houses in the center of town, and they petitionedthe municipalidad for permission to purchase undeveloped land abutting thechurch for this purpose. Although the petitioners were backed by the depart-mental governor of Quezaltenango as well as Ostuncalco’s parish priest, JoseMarıa Orellana, the municipalidad met vociferous resistance from the town’sMam officials, who on at least one occasion arrived with several hundredindigenous opponents to underscore popular dissatisfaction with the move.In the end, it appears that the plan remained still-born, because oppositionto the sale of this same area surrounding the church emerged again in early1837 to spark the rebellion that began the Carrera revolt. Nevertheless, eth-nic tension over land remained high throughout this period, and the region’sMam residents were far from thrilled at the growing presence of ladinos intheir midst. As Nicolas Juares stated in his 1821 petition to Quezaltenango’sCorregidor, opposing the sale of a rural property in Ostuncalco to one ofthe town’s ladino notables, former sındico Aniseto Lopes, “[w]e do not wanta ladino to enter our area. Ladinos with ladinos, Indians with Indians.”53

These two points of contention—the competition over land, and thestruggle for local political supremacy—comprised a single, historical antago-nism that kept the indigenous and ladino populations of the western highlandregion locked in conflict, and perpetuated a high degree of interethnic ten-sion when compared to the rest of Guatemala at that time. Returning to the

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question of the legacy of 1871, it was within this milieu that Los Altos ladinosformulated their regionalist or provincial brand of liberalism. Aside from re-sentment toward the privileges accorded Guatemala City as the old colonialcapital—a common component of provincial liberalism in Latin America—Los Altos ladinos also harbored a uniquely intense hatred of their local ethnicrivals.54 In their view, the highland Maya had prevented them from realizingtheir full economic and political potential: they had used administrative andjudicial channels to stymie ladino usurpation and exploitation of tradition-ally indigenous lands; they had rebelled against the Galvez administrationand the corresponding land reform laws that had aided such usurpation; andthey had helped to destroy the State of Los Altos, throwing their support be-hind peasant rebel Rafael Carrera. In sum, Los Altos Liberals concluded, thehighland Maya had done all they could to obstruct western ladino yearningsfor progress and modernity, and thus they did not deserve to be treated ascitizens in post-1870 Guatemala.

Now to say that the Liberals who ruled Guatemala after 1870 viewed theindigenous population as unworthy of citizenship does not mean that theyliterally excepted them from the legal definition of the term. According toArticle 8 of the 1879 constitution, “Citizens are Guatemalan adults of 21 yearswith an income, occupation, business, or profession which provides themwith the means of subsistence.”55 Nor does it imply that the Liberals ignoredindigenous people altogether. How could they? The Maya comprised anoverwhelming majority of the country’s total population, and, more impor-tantly, at least from the Liberals’ perspective, of the rural labor force. Theyformed the productive core of most agricultural enterprises, and they had thenumbers to disrupt the political and social stability upon which the nation’seconomic growth and development depended. The Liberals had no choicebut to attempt to administer and to control this majority, not simply becausecoffee planters, the state, and so many others relied on indigenous labor, butalso because a repeat of the Carrera revolt had to be avoided at all costs. Inthe process, however, western Liberals introduced a central contradiction ofGuatemalan nationhood. At the same time that they proclaimed the formalequality of all citizens, rejecting the protected, infantilized legal status thatConservatives had conferred paternalistically on the indigenous majority,they continued to treat the Maya as an inferior class and to single them outwith coercive state policies that were inconsistent with Liberal notions ofequality. If, during the Conservative era, such unequal treatment had beenjustified by a legal caste system, during the Liberal Reforma it emerged asa glaring affront to constitutional claims of “liberty, equality, and personalsecurity.” For if all Guatemalan citizens were guaranteed equal rights andequal protections, then the Maya either were not citizens, or they were notGuatemalans, in Liberal Guatemala.56

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Continuity, Pragmatism, and Patronage: The Foundations ofLiberal Longevity

Even as they abolished the legal basis for state paternalism toward indige-nous communities, then, post-1870 Liberals perpetuated various elements ofthe Conservative’s paternalistic modus operandi. They built on Conserva-tive practices that singled out indigenous peoples for “betterment” throughforced labor and the abrogation of their corporate property rights, and theyalso continued to employ the patriarchal discourse characteristic of Con-servative rule, commonly referring to the general populace, for example,as “hijos del paıs.” Likewise, Liberal presidents continued the Conservative-and even colonial-era tradition of cultivating personalistic relationships andfollowings. A foreign visitor to the house of President Justo Rufino Barriosin early 1885 related the following scene:

In the courtyard were seventy-five or a hundred Indians from the country, sittingand lying on the ground in the sun, waiting hours and hours and sometimes all dayfor a chance to pay their respects to [the president]. As soon as he came in sightevery Indian rose and took off his hat. Many were satisfied with a mere glance, whileothers had some trivial complaint to offer. These complaints were often somewhatamusing, but Barrios always listened to them attentively, and with a few words anda pat on the head sent the Indian off perfectly happy. He always saw that the Indianswere protected in what rights they did have, and was worshipped by them.57

Romanticization aside, the Liberals appear to have favored the more repres-sive aspects of paternalism when compared to their predecessors. Yet theyattempted to play up their role as benevolent superiors, promoting and pro-tecting the interests of the indigenous majority even when that same majoritywas too “blinded” by costumbre to graciously accept the “assistance” beingoffered.58

In addition, like their Conservative predecessors, the Liberals pursued apragmatic, divide-and-conquer strategy toward indigenous towns, placatingsome and repressing others. In the case of land, for instance, Liberal authori-ties sometimes reduced the territory of one community to augment the land-holdings of another. Exclusively highland communities found that the Liberalstate could be convinced to protect their corporate landholdings, particularlythe ejido proper, while those with ties to the fertile piedmont and coastal re-gions so suitable for commercial agriculture continued to be expropriated enmasse. The example of San Martın Sacatepequez illustrates both outcomes.Although the town lost approximately 1,000 caballerıas of coastal land to cof-fee planters and other agriculturists, Liberal officials allowed it to keep theterritory that remained in the highlands.59 Turning to community politics,the municipal reform law of 1879 removed all legal basis for dual indigenous

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 161

and ladino municipalities in keeping with Liberal desires to rationalize thestate apparatus at the local level, particularly when that meant eliminatingsemi-autonomous Mayan institutions. Nevertheless, as the case of San JuanOstuncalco demonstrates, the Liberal state was not opposed to reversing itselfand allowing indigenous councils to persist in some of the dual-municipalitytowns despite objections from local- and regional-level ladino officials.60

This combination of paternalism and pragmatism helps to explain theability of post-1870 Liberals to dismantle Conservative-era judicial protec-tions for the indigenous majority—demoting them from the status of partialcitizens or legal juveniles to non-citizens—without provoking the kind ofconflagration sparked by their reform-minded progenitors in the late 1830s.Greg Grandin’s pathbreaking work on Quezaltenango suggests that Mayaelites themselves may have helped to ensure such indigenous quiescence.Rather than rejecting western Liberals’ new, exclusionary polity outright,they insisted on their own inclusion, attempting to parlay their continuedrole as power brokers within the indigenous community and labor suppli-ers to the state for a class-based threshold of citizenship over which theycould pass. Although their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, as Grandinnotes, they did enhance their position of privilege within Mayan society andeven gain some measure of economic power by the standards of regionalladino elites. More to the point, however, they simultaneously weakened thepossibility of a more oppositional, mass-based response to the new Liberalstate.61

Of perhaps greater significance, many of the battles begun by the originalLiberal reform generation of the 1830s were carried forward piecemeal bythe Conservatives, and had been either settled or at least partially defusedlong before the western Liberals took power in 1871. Thus, for example, theReforma state could not be held responsible for the large-scale disenfran-chisement that had dismembered many piedmont and coastal communitiesin the name of expanding commercial agriculture because it had occurredon the Conservative’s watch. Similarly, the new generation of Liberals couldhardly take credit, or receive all of the blame, for a coercive labor regimen thathad been implemented in large part by Carrera and his associates. Becauseof this, the western Liberals’ attack on the Conservative caste system—withall of its ostensible protections—as part of their effort to create an exclusivelyladino nation, could not clearly be connected to continuing state efforts tofacilitate the expropriation of indigenous community lands and the exploita-tion of indigenous labor. Unlike the 1830s, when the Livingston Codes, newtaxes, and a succession of land reform initiatives coalesced to highlight theillegitimacy of the Galvez administration, the harmful policies of the 1870sdid not uniformly focus popular animosity toward the new generation ofLiberal state-makers.

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A large measure of Liberal success in disenfranchising the indigenous ma-jority, then, and creating a “ladino” nation, can be attributed to continuitiesin Conservative and Liberal rule. But Liberal success also rested on a num-ber of additional factors. For example, post-1870 Liberals were able to relyon a significantly larger core constituency of western ladinos than had ex-isted when the ill-fated State of Los Altos was first declared earlier in thenineteenth century.62 Moreover, by constructing Guatemalan citizenship ona foundation of non-indigenousness, the Liberals reached beyond their re-gional western power-base to embrace the even more numerous ladinos ofthe center-east. Overall, the country’s ladino population had almost doubledbetween the 1830s and 1880—from 201,000 to 380,000, respectively—andthe new Liberal project unified non-indigenous Guatemalans, rich and poor,by asserting their historic role as the bearers of national progress and by ac-cording them a privileged position as the true citizens of the nation, incontrast to the indigenous “other.”63

The Liberal state embarked on a very conscious campaign to cultivate itswestern ladino constituency by favoring it with land grants located in the re-gion’s piedmont and coastal zones as well as in the highlands. Western ladinomilicianos, in particular, benefited from Liberal land parcelings that distributedhundreds of caballerıas at greatly reduced prices.64 Often the beneficiariespaid only the associated surveying costs, typically amounting to no morethan 20 pesos per caballerıa. Although this still represented a considerablesum to most Guatemalans in the late nineteenth century, nevertheless, it waswell below the 500-peso minimum legally stipulated for the purchase of acaballerıa of prime Costa Cuca coffee land. San Juan Ostuncalco’s militiamenbenefited from the Liberal state’s largess, as did those of San Antonio Bobos.President Barrios granted the latter town 67 caballerıas at El Zapote, andOstuncalco ladinos received more than 28 caballerıas in Saquichilla, bothwithin the Costa Cuca.65

President Barrios gave even greater consideration to the milicianos ofnearby San Carlos Sija. First he granted Sija 46 caballerıas of Costa Cucaland in the late 1870s. Next, as Robert Carmack describes, the president ex-propriated another 46 caballerıas of prime highland territory from the neigh-boring indigenous canton of Buenabaj, Momostenango, and distributed itto Sija’s militiamen for a total sum of 1,000 pesos. Fittingly, the expropriatedland was renamed “Recuerdo de Barrios,” and it reflected the special rela-tionship that existed between western Liberal leaders and the sijenos whoserved the state by repressing indigenous unrest in the surrounding towns,of which Buenabaj was just one. Santa Cruz Cajola, also a destination forthe Sija militia, subsequently suffered two back-to-back expropriations to-taling more than 42 caballerıas. Once again, Sija’s ladino milicianos were thebeneficiaries.66

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State Revenue Expansion in the Late Nineteenth Century

Another factor that accounts for the success of Reforma-era Liberals is theincreasingly robust revenue enjoyed by the state after 1871 (see Table 5). Al-though coffee exports grew much more dramatically in relative terms duringthe 1850s and 1860s than during the 1870s and 1880s, nevertheless, as a pro-portion of national income, coffee remained quite small until the mid-1860s.Because of this, and because cochineal experienced a slow decline followingits heyday in the mid-1850s, Conservatives faced a stagnating export sectoroverall, and a corresponding stagnation in state revenue, through the early1860s. Even when coffee did begin to have a significant impact—income tothe state rose an average of more than 10 percent per year between 1865 and1870, a figure in line with subsequent Liberal growth rates—the results weremeager when compared to the actual sums collected by Liberal authorities.Conservative revenues amounted to only 1.3 million per year from 1865 to1870, while the Liberal state averaged more than four million annually forthe period 1872–1883.

This constantly growing income stream allowed Liberal political leaders tobetter the efforts of their predecessors in expanding and improving the state’sinfrastructure and institutions, and, consequently, to regulate, administer,and repress subaltern sectors—including the Mayan majority—with greaterand greater efficacy. In terms of transportation, for example, the post-1870Liberals continued Conservative efforts to improve the connections betweenthe western highlands and the Pacific coast—by refurbishing existing cartpaths and establishing new ones—and they also initiated railroad projects inseveral areas of the country. In terms of communication, the Liberals madegood on Conservative plans to link western cities to the capital by telegraph.Education, as well, received greater and greater state backing, as did newhealth care facilities and protocols. Finally, the military also was enlarged,reaching new locales and incorporating many additional individuals. Again,this was not so much because qualitative philosophical differences separatedLiberals from Conservatives, but rather because the Liberals, as a rule, hadmore money to work with.

The expansion of the state’s infrastructure and institutions not only en-hanced administration, surveillance, and control, but it also increased thestate’s capacity for cooptation while simultaneously providing popular sec-tors with new opportunities for resistance and accommodation. The multi-plication of cantonal sub-divisions within municipalities, for example, eachwith its own set of auxiliary offices, placed the state’s administrative appa-ratus in closer proximity to a greater number of largely rural residents andostensibly allowed for better management and control of the population. Yetat the same time, each of these new auxiliary posts was staffed by residents of

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table 5. Export Earnings and Gross Government Revenues

Cochineal Coffee Cochineal & Total GrossExport Export Coffee Export Export Government

Year Earnings Earnings Earnings Earnings Revenue

1854 $1,757,300 $64 $1,757,364 $2,033,300 $869,0001855 $985,780 $744 $986,524 $1,282,891 $775,0001856 $1,381,240 $1,500 $1,382,740 $1,706,973 $826,0001857 $1,017,270 $1,700 $1,018,970 $1,615,388 $939,0001858 $1,407,410 $1,040 $1,408,450 $2,024,560 $897,0001859 $1,222,680 $4,680 $1,227,360 $1,537,835 $1,030,0001860 $1,274,240 $15,350 $1,289,590 $1,632,735 $950,0001861 $788,650 $53,110 $841,760 $1,106,583 $824,0001862 $837,986 $119,076 $957,062 $1,368,150 $1,019,0001863 $855,838 $199,830 $1,055,668 $1,498,311 $1,109,0001864 $688,080 $192,762 $880,842 $1,562,916 $887,0001865 $975,933 $265,404 $1,241,337 $1,833,325 $957,0001866 $957,132 $384,936 $1,342,068 $1,680,341 $1,084,0001867 $1,068,047 $415,878 $1,483,925 $1,972,950 $1,257,0001868 $891,513 $788,035 $1,679,548 $2,141,099 $1,082,0001869 $1,266,614 $790,228 $2,056,842 $2,497,127 $1,963,0001870 $865,414 $1,132,298 $1,997,712 $2,391,414 $1,546,0001871 $876,025 $1,312,129 $2,188,154 $2,657,716 $987,0001872 $495,880 $1,669,653 $2,165,533 $2,691,800 $1,771,8791873 $498,367 $2,408,107 $2,906,474 $3,363,062 $2,602,6691874 $400,509 $2,585,341 $2,985,850 $3,300,621 $2,588,8291875 $241,013 $2,617,278 $2,858,291 $3,217,345 n/a1876 $246,338 $3,318,402 $3,564,740 $3,767,471 n/a1877 $181,683 $3,358,956 $3,540,639 $3,773,183 $4,462,0321878 $22,684 $3,349,740 $3,372,424 $3,918,912 n/a1879 $65,387 $4,032,269 $4,097,656 $4,605,633 n/a1880 $32,193 $4,032,270 $4,064,463 $4,425,000 n/a1881 $45,077 $3,645,220 $3,690,297 $4,084,349 n/a1882 $11,868 $3,132,716 $3,144,584 $3,719,210 $6,441,9181883 $9,200 $4,848,833 $4,858,033 $5,436,302 $6,624,262

Sources : Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala,1821–1871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 379, 383, and 410; Manuel Rubio Sanchez,“Historia del comercio del cafe en Guatemala. Siglos XVIII–XIX,” parts 2 and 3, ASGHG 51(1978): 125–204, and 52 (1979): 110–117, respectively; Thomas R. Herrick, Desarrollo economicoy polıtico de Guatemala durante el perıodo de Justo Rufino Barrios (1871–1885) (Guatemala: EditorialUniversitaria de Guatemala/EDUCA, 1974); Ignacio Solıs, Memorias de la Casa de Moneda deGuatemala y del desarrollo economico del paıs (Guatemala: Ministerio de Finanzas de Guatemala,1979); Sanford Mosk, “The Coffee Economy of Guatemala, 1850–1918: Development andSigns of Instability,” Interamerican Economic Affairs 9 (Winter 1955): 12.

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 165

the incipient canton. And in the western highlands, where most rural zoneswere overwhelmingly—if not entirely—indigenous, this meant that a grow-ing number of Maya were being incorporated into the lower rungs of thestate. Even formally ladino municipal councils in dual-municipality townscame to rely on a sizable and growing number of indigenous auxiliares. Theofficials who staffed the indigenous municipalidad and its own auxiliatura, ofcourse, were entirely indigenous.

The case of San Juan Ostuncalco is illuminating in this regard. Apartfrom the town center, the number of cantons grew from three to at leastseven between 1871 and the late-1880s. Each canton began with one or twoalcaldes and a small number of assistants or mayores. Over time, however,additional alcaldes and mayores were appointed such that any one cantoncounted a dozen and sometimes many more auxiliaries. The larger cantonsall had four alcaldes—two indigenous and two ladino—by the end of the1880s, and each alcalde appointed several mayores to assist him. With at leastseven cantons in total, Ostuncalco probably averaged well over 100 auxiliaresin any given year as the nineteenth century came to a close. An 1886 towncensus revealed 131 municipal officials, including those of the town centerand the municipalidad. Of these, 95 were indigenous, 36 ladino, and at least78 were auxiliares for the cantons. An 1895 counting of canton Palestina(El Suj) alone, by no means Ostuncalco’s largest, produced 22 auxiliares,almost all of whom were indigenous.67

Although the new auxiliary positions often were quite burdensome, aswas true of positions within the municipal council itself, on the other hand,they bestowed upon the officeholder a certain degree of social prestige andpolitical power, as well as increased opportunities for economic profit. Aux-iliary officials became important mediators, balancing local—often ethnic—concerns against the demands of the state, the municipalidad, and the towncenter. They could attempt to defend local interests and resist onerous de-mands, or conversely, they could help higher level officials impose time-consuming projects or financial exactions on a recalcitrant populace. Interms of personal gain, although most municipal posts—including the aux-iliary positions—lacked a formal salary, municipal officials were authorizedto collect fees for some of the services that they provided.68

In sum, then, the multiplication of municipal offices that accompaniedthe establishment of each new cantonal sub-division meant that increasingnumbers of people—largely rural and often indigenous—were being incor-porated into the state’s administrative apparatus. Grandin shows convincinglyfor Quezaltenango that this process helped entrench the elite status of tra-ditional indigenous leaders. Yet in towns where class differentiation was lessdeveloped, such as Ostuncalco and the surrounding Mam communities, the

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state may not have benefited as significantly from these proliferating munic-ipal posts. The newly appointed officials could use their offices to mediateon behalf of the local populace, as well as to add to their own wealth andthat of their followers. A similar outcome resulted from the expansion ofthe state’s military apparatus and its extension to new areas of the country.On the one hand, the military’s institutional growth increased the state’srepressive capabilities. On the other hand, it also provided opportunitiesfor self-aggrandizement and cooptation in much the same way that the ad-ministrative expansion did. Although this appears to have worked primarilyto the advantage of ladino milicianos—recall the land giveaways discussedpreviously—over time indigenous sectors too began to enter the ranks ofmunicipal militias.69

The ceaseless demand for labor of the coastal plantations and the concomi-tant growth of the labor force likewise opened up new arenas for resistance,negotiation, and cooptation. Municipal alcaldes, regidores, secretaries, andauxiliares—indigenous and ladino alike—became important intermediariesin national- and department-level efforts to provide a sufficient labor forceand to ensure its stability with surveillance and coercion. These officialsplayed a key role in how well the labor regimen worked, and in prac-tice they often imposed a degree of flexibility and graft that contradictedthe efficient, seamless operation desired by higher level state authorities.Eventually, the Liberal state was forced to incorporate into the legal codemoneys for municipal officials and governments that helped to recruit menfor the forced labor drafts or mandamientos. The infamous decree 177, forexample, issued in April 1877, stipulated that planters who requested la-bor drafts had to pay municipal treasuries between one-half and one realfor each recruited worker. They also had to provide each worker withan up-front payment not to exceed one-half of the wage for the entireperiod. In practice, however, this up-front payment, or habilitacion, oftenamounted to much more. Moreover, planters also became accustomed topaying a special fee to the lower level municipal officials—generally aux-iliares and mayores or messenger-assistants—when they tracked down andretrieved absent or escaped workers or when they escorted workers off theplantation.70

Finally, the mediating role of municipal officials at all levels was re-inforced by the state’s increasingly ambitious infrastructure developmentagenda, which placed additional demands on an already insufficient laborsupply. Workers were needed to upgrade existing cart tracks and to buildnew ones, to clear the way for railroads, and to string telegraph lines betweenGuatemala City and the major provincial cities. The continual shortfall oflaborers kept an upward pressure on wages, and the state frequently offeredhigher pay than the coastal plantations.71

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 167

Conclusions

The emergence of Guatemala as an exclusionary, ladino nation in the af-termath of Liberal military victory in 1871 was the culmination of a longprocess of state formation that had its roots in the early decades of the eigh-teenth century, if not before. Indeed, one could point to the very conquestitself—the invasion and subsequent colonization of the area by Spanish sol-diers of fortune—as the first step toward ladino nationhood. Faced with anambivalent Crown vacillating between its thirst for wealth and its desire toprovide moral and political justification for the violent subjugation of anentire hemisphere, Guatemala’s conquistadors lost little time in positioningthemselves as the underappreciated benefactors of the “new” world, selflesslycivilizing the incorrigible indigenous populace with little recognition—andmuch interference—from royal bureaucrats and religious zealots. This com-bination of ethnic bigotry and self-righteousness weathered the Crown’speriodic and generally half-hearted attempts to regulate creole exploitationof the indigenous majority, and gained renewed relevance among the Spanishand mestizo migrants who began to settle the indigenous hinterlands west ofthe capital in significant numbers over the course of the eighteenth century.The greater the indigenous resistance, the greater the resentment on the partof the Hispanic migrants, giving rise to a regionally specific ethnic identitybased on strong animosity toward the local “other.”

The newcomers found themselves in a rather tenuous position for a num-ber of reasons. First and foremost, their presence among the indigenous com-munities of the western highlands was largely illegal in terms of Crown law.As a result, aside from their frequently close ties to provincial bureaucrats,they were denied formal political representation in all but a few cases. Theladino migrants resisted their political exclusion, however, and by the end ofthe colonial period the crown had authorized the establishment of severalnon-indigenous municipal governments or ayuntamientos. In the aftermathof independence, these ayuntamientos served as the building blocks of thestate’s administrative apparatus in the western highlands.

The new republican state that emerged in the shadow of Spanish colonial-ism and its attendant institutions—centered in the erstwhile colonial capitalof Guatemala City—suffered from an acute lack of legitimacy. Westernindigenous communities consistently challenged its authority, and even someladino municipal councils flouted its demands with regularity. Early calls forannexation to the Mexican Empire were followed by years of intermittentcivil war that did not end until peasant rebel Rafael Carrera tossed out theLiberal administration of Mariano Galvez and took definitive control of thestate ca. 1840. Carrera was the first republican leader who could claim a mod-icum of legitimacy across all sectors of society, whether indigenous or ladino,

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subaltern or elite. He used this legitimacy to initiate a thirty-year periodof relative political stability and steady economic growth under his ownnominally Conservative leadership and that of his hand-picked successor,Vicente Cerna.

By the time that Guatemalan Liberals mounted a successful military chal-lenge to Cerna, the primacy of a Guatemala City-based republican state wasno longer in question. Indeed, Guatemala’s western Liberals had learned thehard way that they could not pursue their regionalist plan for enlightenedmodernization independent of the former colonial capital. Their attemptsto remove the western provinces of Los Altos from the control of GuatemalaCity had foundered on opposition from the region’s overwhelmingly in-digenous majority as well as on the refusal of Rafael Carrera and capital-cityelites to accept Guatemala’s dismemberment. If anything, the push for LosAltos had only made Carrera’s job easier, by helping to convince westernindigenous communities that they would be better off under the republicansovereignty of Guatemala City rather than a more regionally based state con-trolled by their antagonistic ladino neighbors. Western Liberals thus realizedtheir national vision not by charting an independent path, but rather by tak-ing military control of the capital and commandeering the Guatemalan state.

Their success in this endeavor, and their subsequent longevity, is explainedlargely by the fact that by the time the Liberals forcibly retook the state fromtheir Conservative predecessors many of the planks of the Liberal agendaalready had been nailed into place. The military conflict between Liberalsand Conservatives that marked the late 1860s and early 1870s, and all ofits associated rhetorical grandstanding, masked a great deal of underlyingcontinuity between the two parties particularly with regard to land and la-bor policies and support for the coffee economy more generally. By 1871all that was left to complete the Liberal project was the diversion of a fewmore state dollars toward western infrastructure projects and the impositionof a ladino-centric nationhood. Otherwise, state formation in an institu-tional sense proceeded much as it had before, following the fortunes of anexpanding export economy.

Indigenous communities did not rise en masse to challenge the Liberal’sexclusionary redefinition of the nation because it did not come as part of ablanket attack on their way of life. Rather, in the context of the nineteenthcentury, the post-1870 Liberal refashioning of nationhood was a late-breakingaddition to the expropriation of community land and the coercive target-ing of indigenous labor that had begun decades earlier under Conservativeauthorities. Moreover, in comparison to previous Liberal efforts to forcibly“ladinize” the indigenous majority, the new project of ethnic exclusion wasmuch less intrusive, and, in the short-term at least, had more to do withbuilding a firm power base for the state among ladinos than disenfranchising

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 169

the Maya in new and disruptive ways. Finally, in practice, the continued ex-pansion of the coffee economy and of the Guatemalan state opened up newspaces and possibilities for the indigenous majority—or at least a significantnumber among them—to offset the most harmful consequences of land pri-vatization and labor coercion and to negotiate a marginally acceptable wayof life that included the reproduction of indigenous community culture andinstitutions.

chapter6Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and

Nation–State Formation: Final Reflections onGuatemala’s Nineteenth Century

this study turns on a paradox. In the late 1830s Guatemala’s popular sec-tors rejected Liberal reform by routing the activist administration of MarianoGalvez, and by establishing peasant rebel Rafael Carrera as the kingpinof Guatemalan politics for the next twenty-five years. When the popularcaudillo died in 1865, however, the resulting power vacuum proved a boon toLiberal insurgents, and by mid-1871 they had vanquished Carrera’s Conser-vative heirs. Under the leadership of Justo Rufino Barrios, they proceededalong the reformist path first charted decades earlier by their ideologicalprogenitors, ushering in Guatemala’s Liberal Reforma. Yet this time around,despite some significant opposition, popular sectors were either unwilling orunable to mount a fatal attack on the Liberal reform project. Why?

That is the paradox that this study has sought to unravel. The answer, asI have shown in chapters on indigenous community land, labor relations,the politics of alcohol, and state formation, required more than simply—oreven primarily—an investigation of the Liberal Reforma. That was only apart of the puzzle. Rather, to understand why Liberalism was more palatableand rebellion less likely in the 1870s than the 1830s, it was necessary toplace this event in the proper historical context—one that stretched backat least to the beginning of the postcolonial era. In other words, it wasnecessary to undertake an on-the-ground reconstruction and comparison ofthe years of Liberal rule that led up to the Carrera Revolt, of the Conservativeinterregnum that followed, and of the post-1870 period of reform itself.

The results of this endeavor were surprising. With regard to land tenure,for example, Rafael Carrera initially forced the Galvez administration to

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and Nation–State Formation 171

reverse its most sweeping privatization initiatives. Shortly thereafter, how-ever, he helped to effectively end indigenous community control over whatwould become the country’s most productive coffee zones. In terms of debtand more overtly coercive labor recruitment mechanisms, Carrera and hisConservative associates were every bit as pioneering as later Liberals. Theywere the ones who reintroduced the colonial-era mandamiento to republicanGuatemala. Likewise, they also legitimated and expanded the national state,establishing a precedent for increased government intervention and activismon which Reforma-era Liberals continued to build. Ironically, earlier Liberalefforts to revamp and strengthen the state had been one of the most explo-sive issues fueling the insurrectionary conflagration of the late 1830s. Finally,Conservative authorities alienated growing numbers of erstwhile subalternsupporters with such repressive policies as the state-run alcohol monopoly,providing opportunities for Liberal insurgents to capture the popular imagi-nation by calling for free and open trade in distilled and fermented beverages.

My goal in this conclusion is to situate the findings of the various chapterswithin an explicitly conceptual discussion of rebellion to better understandwhy the conditions and contingencies of the late 1820s and 1830s ended in amassive and successful subaltern insurrection, whereas those of the 1870s and1880s did not. The discussion will begin by considering the anatomy andevolution of the Carrera Revolt, and then continue with an evaluation of itsgenesis and subsequent success in theoretical terms. This analysis will serve asthe basis for an understanding of why the Liberal Reforma did not engendera more energetic and effective popular response. Finally, in the last pages, Iwill consider the Reforma’s implications for Guatemalan state formation inthe context of recent literature on Mexico and Andean South America.

The Carrera Revolt: A Reappraisal

Most authors agree that the first uprising of the period of upheaval andinsurrection that has come to be included under the rubric of the CarreraRevolt took place in early March 1837, in the political district of San JuanOstuncalco.1 By May uprisings had spread from the mountainous west to themountainous east, from Guatemala’s overwhelmingly indigenous Los Altosregion or western highlands to La Montana, an area immediately to theeast and south of the capital with a more significant ladino population. It ishere that the scattered and apparently spontaneous uprisings that swept thecountry in early 1837 began to coalesce into the coordinated and sustainedarmed movement that would turn back Galvez’s reforms and challenge over-all Liberal control of the state. Rafael Carrera emerged as the leader of thismovement early on, expanding the insurgents’ field of operations east to

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the Caribbean and west into Verapaz and Sacatepequez. Ironically, althoughCarrera’s invasion of Guatemala City in early 1838 made it possible for west-ern ladino elites to establish the independent state of Los Altos, the altensesspared nothing for the rebel leader, and their military forces played a crucialrole in his near-defeat later that fall.2

Throughout this period western indigenous communities continuedto oppose and to rebel against Liberal policies and officials regardless ofwhether the latter derived their authority from Guatemala City (the stateof Guatemala) or Quezaltenango (the state of Los Altos). Almost as soonas Carrera retook the capital in April 1839, however, restoring the Con-servative government once and for all, these same communities began toagitate for a return to the jurisdiction of Guatemala City. Despite such sen-timents, the western Maya do not appear to have had any formal agreementor alliance with the rebel caudillo until perhaps the very end of the year,as Carrera readied plans for returning the errant Los Altos provinces tothe Guatemalan fold.3 In late January 1840 he completely destroyed the LosAltos military near Solola while the indigenous population of Quezaltenangosimultaneously took control of the erstwhile altense capital. Carrera’s tri-umphant entry into the defeated city two days later, before an enthusiastic andlargely indigenous crowd, represented the reunification of all of Guatemalaunder a single, Conservative state, and ultimately, under a single, popularleader.4

Why did tens—perhaps hundreds—of thousands of Guatemalans risk thedangerous course of rebellion in 1837? Did implementation of the LivingstonCodes, and the dramatic overhaul of the country’s judicial system that theyimplied, really represent such a life-altering threat? Or was it the addedtension generated by the appearance of cholera in Guatemala at the beginningof the year, and the epidemic that developed in the months thereafter, whichdrove so many to put their lives in the balance? Perhaps the Church was toblame. Some contemporary observers believed that the religious communitywas actively encouraging popular opposition to the Galvez administration inretaliation for Liberal attacks on Church property and the secularization ofits important civil functions such as marriage and education, not to mentionFrancisco Morazan’s expulsion of Guatemalan archbishop Ramon Casaus in1829.5

Alongside the complicated question of why the Carrera Revolt beganat all there is the even more surprising fact of its remarkable success. Howdid this popular insurrection achieve such a resounding victory after monthsof intense persecution at the hands of some of Central America’s foremostmilitary strategists? Few popular movements conclude by placing one oftheir own at the apex of political power, never mind for so many years. YetRafael Carrera rode the insurrectionary wave of the late 1830s from subaltern

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and Nation–State Formation 173

obscurity to national prominence in a matter of months, becoming the finalarbiter of Guatemalan politics ca. 1840 until his death in 1865.

In trying to reach an understanding of the Carrera Revolt—why it be-gan, and how it achieved such a surprising military victory—a likely placeto start is at the very beginning: with the uprising of several thousand MamMaya on March 8, 1837, in the political district of San Juan Ostuncalco.What were the grievances and contingencies that gave rise to this, the firstof more than thirty apparently spontaneous indigenous rebellions that sweptGuatemala that year?6 Based on petitions from leaders of the participat-ing towns, it seems clear that the Livingston Codes were much disliked byQuezaltenango’s Mam residents. Not because they had read the codes word-for-word; indeed, the petitioners did not even mention the codes by name.Rather, the district’s indigenous municipal officials declared their unhappi-ness with the Livingston Codes’ “lived” implications, which they had begunto experience on a regular basis in early 1837, the point at which Ostuncalco’snew circuit court began to function. They complained of onerous financialand labor demands associated not only with constructing a new courthouseand jail, but also with operating the new circuit court, which required nu-merous personnel and the creation of a functioning jury system. Ostuncalco’sofficials in particular objected to the sale of a much-disputed piece of com-munity land to underwrite part of these costs. Finally, all of the petitionersexpressed their dislike for the newly appointed circuit court judge, who theyconsidered rash and abusive.

These “lived” implications of the Livingston Codes, described by the dis-trict’s Mam municipal authorities, were both specific and general. On onehand, they reflected the peculiarities of how the codes were implemented ina particular region. On the other hand, they also pointed up the larger polit-ical and legal context in which the codes were situated. The land complaint,for example, concerned the sale of a specific parcel of community territoryto help fund the new circuit court. Yet this same property tied directly intothe historic struggle between Maya and non-Maya over land use and control,not only in Ostuncalco, but also throughout the country. In addition, thevery practice of selling community land in this manner had only becomepossible with the recent spate of Liberal reform laws that were designed tofacilitate the expropriation of corporately held, largely indigenous, proper-ties. Thus, what first appears to have been an isolated struggle over a smallparcel of municipal territory actually tied into a much broader project ofstate-sponsored privatization, and fed deep-seated fears within indigenoussociety over the long-term integrity of its corporate land base, and of itsvery communities.

Nowhere was this broader project more obvious than in the politicaldistrict of San Juan Ostuncalco, which included the land-rich Mam town of

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San Martın Sacatepequez. As we saw in Chapter 2, San Martın held title to avast area within Guatemala’s fertile piedmont zone that was utilized by all ofthe district’s Mam towns to supplement their “cold country” cultivation withadditional planting seasons as well as agricultural products that could only begrown in a semitropical environment. Since independence, but particularlyafter the Liberal legal “innovations” of the late 1820s and early-to-mid-1830s,San Martın had been fending off a growing invasion of ladino agriculturistsfrom Ostuncalco proper, the city of Quezaltenango, and other regional ladinopopulation centers. It was in this volatile context that Ostuncalco’s newcircuit judge proposed selling a portion of community territory to help fundthe circuit court.

As was true of the land sale, opposition to the circuit judge himself simul-taneously highlighted the specific and general implications of the LivingstonCodes. On one hand, Judge Felix Morales was exceptionally insensitive inhis treatment of the district’s municipal authorities. In hindsight, he does notappear to have been well suited for the job. On the other hand, he would nothave been there at all if the Livingston Codes had not erected circuit court dis-tricts throughout Guatemala, designating San Juan Ostuncalco as the cabeceraor seat of one of them. Indeed, aside from the judge’s abrasive demeanor, andthe fact that he was imposing onerous demands on the local populace, thenewness of his position did not help matters. It is quite likely that the district’sresidents would have found his presence in Ostuncalco disconcerting evenif he had not been attempting to coerce their cooperation in an ambitiousinfrastructure project, and ineptly at that. Indigenous municipal officials, ifnot the general population, almost certainly viewed his very appearance intheir midst as a new attack on their political autonomy and another shift inthe local balance of power toward ladinos and the postcolonial ladino state.

In sum, municipal leaders who petitioned the state during the course ofthe uprising in Ostuncalco focused on injustices related to the LivingstonCodes and, although only indirectly, to the Liberal-inspired land reform mea-sures. Apparently these issues, rather than new or increased taxes, the state’sattack on the Church, or the cholera epidemic, were what drove Quezal-tenango’s Mam residents to risk their lives in the rebellion of March 1837.Elsewhere in Guatemala, however, a different constellation of factors figuredin local decisions to riot or rebel. Rafael Carrera’s own pronouncementagainst the Liberal Galvez administration called for “the return of the SenorArchbishop,” “re-establishment of the religious convents,” and “abolition ofthe decree that imposes a tax of two pesos per person” in addition to termi-nation of the Livingston Codes.7 Other towns rose up amidst charges that thestate was “trying to kill all the peasants by poisoning the waters” under thepretext of administering medicine to combat the spread of cholera—“part ofa plan to take over their small land possessions for the foreigners and to put

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and Nation–State Formation 175

the artisans out of work.”8 This last claim was made in reference to Liberalland grants, particularly in eastern Guatemala, intended to attract colonistsand capital from northern Europe. Although in the long run few Europeanmigrants responded to such schemes, the Galvez administration signed overlarge tracts of land for this purpose, and rebels in or near the affected areasconsidered the grants akin to treason.9

From one community or region to the next, then, local concerns andconditions intersected with administrative prerogatives and the broader po-litical and social milieu to engender uprisings and rebellions. In answer tothe question of why the Carrera Revolt occurred, there was no single causalfactor such as land loss or support for the Church, or even some uniformconstellation of real and supposed grievances that precipitated every vio-lent manifestation of popular discontent. Instead, a more or less distinct ifoverlapping configuration of abuses and complaints mobilized popular par-ticipation in each case. It was precisely the convergence of these mobilizingfactors in diverse and varied combinations throughout Guatemala at roughlythe same time that made 1837 so unique, and that gave the movement itsheterogeneous and irrepressible character. Thus, the very same prolifera-tion of overlapping grievances that gave rise to the Carrera Revolt likewisecontributed to its longevity and to its remarkable military success.

For instance, only a handful of the numerous rebellions that marked early1837 appear to have had a direct link to the group of insurgents that coalescedaround Rafael Carrera. Yet the very occurrence of so much spontaneousunrest throughout so many parts of the country foretold of the ease withwhich Carrera and his associates would garner support virtually everywherethey went. In addition, the extreme explosiveness of the period kept the statein disarray, helping to deflect some of the attention that might otherwise havebeen used to quash Carrera’s incipient rebel network. Even if an organizedinsurgency had not emerged under the leadership of Rafael Carrera in 1837,the sheer number of uprisings and rebellions that swept the country over thecourse of that year would have posed a formidable challenge to a state sosorely lacking in legitimacy.

This lack of legitimacy also played a significant part in the drama thatended with Carrera’s triumphal march into Guatemala City. Numerouscommunities and regions, ladino and indigenous alike, had refused tosupport the Guatemala City-based postcolonial state right from its veryinception. As a result, tax collection was excruciatingly difficult throughoutthe early republican years, and with no other source of stable income,the state remained weak and moribund. Although the Liberal Galvezadministration energetically set about to remedy this situation beginningin 1831, instead it further alienated an already distrustful population,subaltern and elite alike. When rural rebellion swept the country in early

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1837, beginning with San Juan Ostuncalco on March 8, the very lack oflegitimacy that had helped to precipitate the unrest now contributed to theinefficacy of the Liberal state’s response.

Disaffected elites took advantage of the confusion in Guatemala City todefect in droves. The nearby departments of Sacatepequez, Chiquimula, andVerapaz established rival provisional governments, whereas provincial lead-ers from Quezaltenango and other areas west of the capital seceded fromGuatemala altogether, forming the independent state of Los Altos.10 Somemembers of the elite, particularly those with ties to the eastern Montana,also may have joined forces with Carrera, creating the very “cross-class”—and, I would add, cross-cultural—alliances that Peter Guardino has shownto have been so crucial for the notorious nineteenth-century insurgenciesof Mexico’s center-south.11 The Montana counted a significant number ofhaciendas when compared to elsewhere in Guatemala and, in addition, itssubaltern population was more ethnically heterogeneous and less rigidly seg-regated between ladino and Maya. Whatever the reason, it certainly appearsthat Carrera had at least some relatively wealthy patrons, and that his forcesincluded a sizable proportion of both castas and Maya—developments thatwould have been almost unthinkable in the west, where a more pronouncedladino–indigenous antagonism made interethnic alliances among neighborsdifficult.12

In a word, the Carrera Revolt’s irrepressibility and astonishing success iscaptured by French philosopher Louis Althusser’s notion of “overdetermi-nation.” Discussing the conditions that lead to a “revolutionary situation,”Althusser described how “a vast accumulation of ‘contradictions’ comes intoplay in the same court, some of which are radically heterogeneous . . . butwhich nevertheless ‘merge’ into a ruptural unity.”13 Overdetermination, inhis view, referred to the way that this “revolutionary situation,” itself a “socialprocess, . . . is constituted by the interaction of all other social processes in asocial formation.”14 Although I cannot vouch for the theoretical rigor withwhich I employ Althusser’s concept, I do believe that he provides a usefulheuristic lens through which to view the Carrera Revolt. Because overde-termination denies any attempt to “reduce” the revolt, or its success, “to theeffects of a single process or partial subset of processes,” we are obliged toacknowledge the myriad trends, actions, and contingencies that convergednot only to engender Carrera’s spirited insurgency, but also to provide it witha hospitable environment and thus the potential to flourish.15

Popular Rebellion, Popular Quiescence:Some Theoretical Considerations

The problem of rebellion—why it occurs, and why some snowball whereothers just melt away—continues to perplex and intrigue, a fact underscored

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by ongoing discussion and debate of the topic in numerous scholarlyforums.16 Although Althusser’s notion of “overdetermination” may help toconceptualize the complex and multifaceted process by which rebellionsgather momentum and achieve success, it does not provide a means to ex-plore subaltern decisions to oppose the state and ruling elites with violentacts or movements.

A more useful reflection, in this regard, is Gilbert M. Joseph and DanielNugent’s Everyday Forms of State Formation, an edited collection of essays thatconfronts the empirical and theoretical challenges posed by the Mexicanrevolution.17 “[A]ny understanding of ‘why, men [and women] rebel,” histo-rian Alan Knight writes in his introduction to the volume, “must be paralleledby an understanding of why they do not; of why subordination, inequality,abuses (all the factors that supposedly lie behind rebellion) may also coexistwith quiescence (in terms of actions, not necessarily beliefs).”18 And any un-derstanding of rebellion and its absence, he concludes, is impossible withoutthe notion of “hegemony.”

Knight’s position nicely sums up advances in the study of popular resis-tance. Latin American scholars largely have come to agree with the likes ofE. P. Thompson and James C. Scott that the question of rebellion should beinvestigated as part of the larger fabric of subaltern politics. Overt violencedirected at the state or ruling elites must be viewed within the frameworkof much longer cycles of “resistant adaptation” in which myriad and oftenunnoticed subaltern efforts to challenge domination are integral to thequotidian struggle for survival.19 Uprisings and insurrections, far from beingatavistic manifestations of popular rage that disrupt the otherwise harmo-nious flow of daily life, represent just one of the many strategies continuallyin play as those at the bottom seek to resist, evade, cope with, or deny theirsubjugation.

Within this scenario, quiescence is not necessarily a sign of contentmentat all. Subaltern actors well may be choosing to forego overt and attention-grabbing acts of resistance for tactical or practical reasons, not because theyare satisfied with the status quo. The problem, however, is to ascertain whatthese reasons might be. In essence, the timeless query “Why rebellion?” hasbeen supplanted by an equally challenging but also complementary rejoinder:“Why the absence of rebellion?” And as Knight suggests, arguing that “aneffective system of coercion” has “cowed [subaltern sectors] into inaction”simply does not suffice as a thorough or convincing answer in most cases.Hence the growing resort to hegemony by Latin Americanists and otherstudents of subaltern politics as reflected in the pages of the Joseph andNugent volume.20

Unfortunately, Knight’s misconceptualization of hegemony as some-thing akin to its logical inverse—“mystification, ideological domination,false consciousness”—suggests that his answer to the question of subaltern

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quiescence is every bit as dissatisfying as those that rely on simple repression.21

Indeed, the equation of hegemony with false consciousness is one of the“standard uses of the concept” that Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer decryin The Great Arch, and by which James Scott justifies his complete abandon-ment of the term in Weapons of the Weak.22 Florencia E. Mallon providesa more sensitive and useful elaboration of this complex idea in her con-tribution to the Joseph and Nugent volume. Mallon conceptualizes hege-mony as a “constant and ongoing” process “through which power relationsare contested, legitimated, and redefined at all levels of society . . . ,” i.e., inthe family, community, social movement, institution, region, etc. In addi-tion, she considers hegemony to be “an actual end point, . . . a contract oragreement, . . . [a]n always dynamic or precarious balance [that] is reachedamong contesting forces.” In other words, hegemony as “end point” is itself“the result of hegemonic processes.”23

Mallon’s definition has several important implications for the analysisof rebellion. First, because hegemony is based fundamentally on a pro-cess of continual contestation and renegotiation, it is ever changing andconstantly up for grabs. In a word, hegemony is fluid, and its fluidity be-comes doubly clear when one considers it in the context of Corrigan andSayer’s conceptualization of the state. According to Sayer, in his contribu-tion to Everyday Forms of State Formation, “[t]he critical point for theoriesof hegemony is that [state rule] is the exact opposite of ‘mystification’ or‘false consciousness.’”

This was the point of The Great Arch’s insistence that ‘the state’ lives in and throughits subjects: we were not arguing an ‘incorporation’ thesis at the level of ideologyor belief, but pointing to precisely the materiality of everyday forms of state for-mation. . . . [State] power works through the way it forcibly organizes, and divides,subjectivities, and thereby produces and reproduces quite material forms of social-ity. . . . It is cynicism, not ideological incorporation, that makes this system work. . . .Individuals live the lie that is ‘the state,’ and it lives through their performances. . . .[B]y their very actions [they are] affirming the power of what is sanctified. . . . Theirbeliefs are neither here nor there. What is demanded of them is only—is precisely—performances. . . .

This “hegemony of the state,” Sayer continues, “is also exactly what is mostfragile about the state, precisely because it does depend on people living whatthey much of the time know to be a lie.” Every so often, people deliberatelyrefuse to cooperate, and when this happens, “all that is solid melts intoair.” That is the moment when “‘hegemony’ is revealed for what it is: theintellectual equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes.”24

For the very reason that hegemony is not false consciousness, then, butrather a continual struggle over power that generates the knowing, if often

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grudging, “performance” of innumerable individuals “at all levels of society,”there is always the potential that those “living the lie” will refuse to perform.Hence Sayer’s claim that the hegemony of the state is “fragile:” its apparentimmutability is easily shattered by the reality of constant contestation andnoncompliance.

Yet the very “fragility” of hegemony—what I referred to above as itsfluidity—is also a source of strength. On one hand, it is quite possible for thestate to renegotiate the terms of domination, and to incorporate challengesand deviation. On the other hand, as any political organizer can attest, ascattering of individuals refusing to “perform” in isolation from one anotherdoes not make an opposition movement or even a coherent resistance. Again,the issue is not one of mystification or false consciousness, but rather thatthe inertia of compliance is hard to overcome when “such accommodationsdiminish and disempower their participants.”25 Moreover, the very problemof hegemony—what Mallon describes as its “always dynamic or precariousbalance”—poses a challenge to each incipient counterhegemonic movementjust as it does to the state. The differences of culture and place and the diffi-culties of distance and material subsistence are no easy matters to overcome,and thus resistance movements tend to remain fragmented. Although thisfragmentation or “plurality” is, as James Scott notes, a source of “strengthand resilience,” it also means that “popular resistance . . . has no unitary coun-terhegemony of its own to impose. . . .” Thus it “seeks . . . to evade,” ratherthan to mount a more directed or fundamental challenge to the hegemonyof the state.26

In sum, the concept of hegemony is particularly well suited for investi-gating subaltern politics. It redirects analytical attention away from a single-minded examination of high-level functionaries and the so-called politicalclass to the nexus between governing institutions and authorities and thesupposedly apolitical majority. Hegemony reminds us that political domina-tion is a relational term that requires at least two groups: the rulers and theruled, and that without the other, neither one would exist.27 It highlightsthe negotiated if not often consensual nature of such domination, with afew exceptions rejecting that repression alone can provide social stability.At the same time, hegemony also minimizes the role of false consciousnessand ideological indoctrination. Instead, it privileges the subaltern capacityfor informed and consequential political engagement in contrast to muchconventional wisdom. Finally, in the particular case of popular rebellion,hegemony demands that we focus on the breakdown of the “pact” betweenthe state and popular sectors. At what point, and for what reasons, do signif-icant numbers of people, “living what they much of the time know to be alie,” decide not to cooperate with elite designs in an increasingly coordinatedand open manner?

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Dissolving the Paradox: The Carrera Revolt and the LiberalReforma in Comparative Perspective

Let me now summarize the lessons of the Carrera Revolt within the frame-work of the ideas developed above. My goal will be to establish a usefulbaseline or point of comparison from which to discuss why it was that sub-altern sectors failed to mount another successful insurrection when facedwith the Liberal Reforma. The first lesson concerns the implications of in-dependence for the incipient postcolonial state and the indigenous majority.The years immediately following the collapse of Spanish rule constituted aunique moment in Guatemala’s postconquest history. Guatemala City hadbeen transformed from the seat of a colonial Audiencia to a republican capi-tal, and in large part because of this its legitimacy was at an all-time low. TheMaya in particular worried that the local state would no longer afford themeven the modicum of impartiality that had prevailed when a distant kingserved as the final—if often only symbolic—arbiter of political affairs. Theirfears were only reinforced as Liberal partisans enacted sweeping reforms thatchallenged Mayan subsistence, culture, and administrative autonomy. Thusthe indigenous majority began to rethink fundamentally its relationship tothe state institutions and authorities centered in the erstwhile colonial cap-ital. Simply put, the system of domination that had been negotiated overcenturies of colonial rule, and that had served as the basis for the so-calledPax Hispanica, became a relic of the past—in the view of many Mayancommunities, at least—once the postcolonial era had commenced.

The second lesson concerns the stability of the state in the aftermath ofindependence. Political elites found it difficult to unite in the power vacuumleft by the withdrawal of the Spanish crown, and much of the first postcolonialdecade was marked by violence and warfare among the contesting factions.No longer able to rely on tribute, the incipient republican state also founditself simultaneously short on funds. It could not provision anything but themost modest of military forces, and its effective reach outside of GuatemalaCity itself was severely restricted because colonial authorities had done littleto develop significant provincial apparatuses. In sum, the coercive capacityof the central state was extremely limited.

A third lesson involves the Liberal ideologues and activists who con-trolled the state for most of the period prior to the Carrera Revolt, and theirapproach to Guatemala’s indigenous majority. Rather than attempting to re-build the negotiated status quo or pact that had resulted in such remarkablestability during the centuries of Spanish rule, Liberal elites instead thumbedtheir noses at the colonial past and, in effect, popular sensibilities. Instead theycharged headlong down the road that they believed would lead to enlight-ened modernization, enacting a series of increasingly disruptive reforms that

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attacked community land, increased taxes, diminished local political auton-omy, and threatened the social role of the Catholic Church. With the com-pelling if idealized memory of Spanish paternalism still fresh, these reformsrocked the landscape of popular consciousness like a massive earthquake.

Needless to say, the multitude of Guatemalans “living the lie” on whichthe state depended for its survival began to reconsider the reasons for doingso. A severely fragmented or “plural” popular resistance, held in check by thecolonial state’s deliberative manner and paternalistic concern for nonelites,and forced to “evade” rather than confront Spanish military power—nowcontemplated more direct and open challenges to Guatemala City and re-publican officials. And over a period of weeks and months, in one of thoserare historical conjunctures, popular fragmentation gave way to popular unityas spontaneous riots and uprisings became coordinated rebellions and thena prolonged insurgency. Although it would be incorrect to claim that allGuatemalan subalterns had coalesced beneath or behind a “unitary counter-hegemony,” significant segments came close enough to mount a direct—andultimately successful—assault on the state.

The “problem” of Guatemala’s Liberal Reforma when viewed withinthis context is how to explain its survival despite a strong similarity to thevery reform project that had spawned the Carrera Revolt in the late 1830s.Legally, both programs represented an attack on corporate land tenure andthus on the territorial integrity of most rural communities as well as on thesubsistence base of many rural families. Both programs imposed new taxes,strengthened the institutions of the state, and undercut the power of theCatholic Church and its involvement in daily life. Both programs also werepremised on the idea that the country’s indigenous majority was culturally,if not biologically, unsuitable for citizenship. Why, then, did the first reformproject sink on the shoals of popular insurrection, whereas the second sailedmore or less smoothly into the twentieth century?

Part of the answer to this question can be found by looking beyond thediscursive horizon of each government’s legal record to see what these twoapparently similar projects signified for the popular classes of their respec-tive historical contexts. Did the implementation of both projects representan equally abrupt and devastating rupture with the past—a breakdown ofthe theory and practice of state-subaltern contestation that had developedunder the Spanish crown? Or, conversely, had so much changed from the1830s to the 1870s that the subaltern majority perceived and experiencedthe two reform projects in very different ways? The evidence from westernGuatemala, I believe, supports the second of these two scenarios: whetherwe consider land, labor, or local political autonomy, it seems clear that whatloomed so threatening in the immediate postindependence years had becomea fait accompli by 1871. During their long rule Conservative authorities had

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succeeded where first-generation Liberals had failed, altering the equationof state–subaltern relations by implementing much of what later Liberal gen-erations presumed to take credit for.

In the case of land, for example, Conservative rather than Reforma-eraauthorities made good on the efforts of first-generation Liberals to openQuezaltenango’s Costa Cuca to nonindigenous cultivation against the wishesof San Martın Sacatepequez. And San Martın’s unhappy encounter with sugarand cattle in the early 1840s was merely a harbinger of what many additionalMayan communities would experience during the 1850s and 1860s, as coffeewas introduced to fertile piedmont zones throughout Guatemala. Indeed, itappears that prior to the Liberal Reforma, only the indigenous residents ofHuehuetenango, El Quiche, and perhaps Solola, were spared the large-scaleexpropriations associated with coffee’s expansion.

If we look at labor and community autonomy, as well, a similar panoramaunfolds. Quezaltenango’s Mam leaders opposed state demands to provideworkers for building and operating a circuit court that they would havepreferred to do without in the first place. Over the course of the Conservativeinterregnum, however, state authorities regularized both the presence of adistrict judge as well as the use of forced labor rotations to further publicworks projects. Thus, by the time that Liberal rebels retook Guatemala Cityin 1871, district-level officials already served in San Juan Ostuncalco andmany other areas of the country that previously had little direct contactwith the state. Likewise, the infamous mandamiento was well established inthe department of Quezaltenango, as well as in San Marcos, Totonicapan,Solola, and the Verapaz.

Within this context, new forms of “resistant adaptation” evolved. Con-tracted labor of one type or another now played a significant role in thesubsistence strategies of many rural households. Under Conservative au-thorities, and later during the Reforma as well, workers demanded andreceived new extensions of credit from planters on a seasonal basis regard-less of their outstanding debts, and some of them even succeeded at therisky game of accepting multiple pay advances simultaneously. The clandes-tine aguardiente enterprises that proliferated during the Conservative inter-regnum, along with the associated input industry of sugar cane cultivationand processing, also generated significant income for many families. Finally,the growth of state revenues and of the state itself offered new opportuni-ties for patronage and cooptation, and this trend only increased during theReforma.

If rupture well describes how the subaltern majority perceived and expe-rienced the Liberal reforms attempted prior to 1837, then continuity is thebyword for the 1870s. Although the Reforma looked every bit as ominouson paper as the earlier Liberal legislation, in contrast to the first round of re-forms it implied little more than a renewed and energized commitment to the

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status quo for much of the population. Historians Lowell Gudmundson andHector Lindo-Fuentes have described Central America’s late-nineteenth-century Liberal reforms as “more capstone than cornerstone in the process”of social and economic change that transformed the region in the decadesafter independence.28 Expanding on their imagery for the case of Guatemala,the years up to 1837 laid the foundation for this transformation, and it tookshape with increasing momentum over the course of the Conservative inter-regnum (ca. 1840–1870). In keeping with the analogy, the Liberal Reforma,or capstone, was not a revolution at all, but rather the finishing touches ona project long in the building.

At least in the eyes of Guatemala’s popular classes, then, the first Liberalreform project had threatened disjuncture where the second brought onlymore of the same. Yet this is just part of the reason that the two periods of re-form met with such different outcomes. There is also the important questionof the state. In 1837 the Guatemala City-based state was extremely weak, andit had little legitimacy among either subalterns or provincial elites. By 1871,however, not even historically secessionist western Liberals contested its rule.Rafael Carrera and his Conservative allies had done much to reestablish thelegitimacy lost with the collapse of Spanish colonialism. Most significantly,Carrera “answered” the smoldering “Indian Question” that had flared upduring and after independence by rejecting the hated Liberal reforms, smash-ing the incipient state of Los Altos, and reaffirming the caste foundation ofGuatemalan society. In this manner he reestablished the paternalistic pact thathad linked the state with the Mayan majority, even if in subsequent years thislinkage was revealed to be largely symbolic. At the same time, Carrera andhis political allies demonstrated to capitalino and provincial elites that theycould maintain social stability—no small thing at a time when the specter ofcaste warfare haunted privileged sectors throughout the Americas.

In addition, Carrera and the Conservatives began slow but steady effortsto strengthen and expand the national state. Positioning judges and politicalcommissioners at the subdepartmental level was just one of the ways thatthey accomplished this during their long tenure. As their resurrection ofthe mandamiento implies, Conservative officials also embarked on ambitiousinfrastructure projects, and they successfully pushed for the creation of newschools and militia companies outside the handful of provincial capitals towhich these institutions heretofore had been restricted.

When Liberal rebels retook Guatemala City in 1871, then, they inheriteda much stronger state than the one that they had been forced to abandonover three decades earlier. Although Conservative leaders were unable toretain enthusiastic mass support following Carrera’s death in 1865—probablybecause of their unpopular aguardiente monopoly, and because their policiestoward the rural majority had disenfranchised so many—the fundamentallegitimacy of the state itself no longer came into question. The Conservatives

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had greatly expanded its institutions and infrastructure, as well as its capacityfor repression and cooptation. Moreover, by the late 1860s, coffee exportearnings finally had begun to overshadow cochineal’s stagnation and decline,leading to a rapid rise in state revenue just as the Liberals marked theirtriumphant return to power. Flush with coffee money, they took over wheretheir vanquished foes had left off, expanding the state with greater and greaterease.

The Liberals returned to state power at an especially auspicious momentduring the nineteenth century. The state was larger and stronger, and notcoincidentally, as Corrigan and Sayer would remind us, it had more legiti-macy than at any previous time. Unlike the unpopular Galvez administration,which could not hide its association with a broad array of potentially dis-ruptive reforms and innovations, Reforma-era Liberals appeared relativelydistant from the policies that had been disenfranchising indigenous commu-nity members for the past three decades. Although the Liberals deliberatelycontinued these policies—attempting, often unsuccessfully, to revamp themwith new legal backing—they simply could not be blamed for the social trans-formation that already was well underway. And when unrest did threaten,or disputes did emerge, the new Liberal leaders eschewed the inflexibilityof their ideological progenitors—learning from the latter’s mistakes—andinstead adopted a more pragmatic and paternalistic approach to popular dis-content reminiscent of Carrera and his Conservative associates.

To summarize, by the late 1830s a number of reinforcing factors had con-verged to create an environment in which popular insurrection flourished.Opposition to Liberal policy was rampant, riot and rebellion left almost noregion untouched, Guatemala City’s jurisdiction was rejected by provincialsubalterns and elites alike, and the state lacked the financial and militaryresources to mount an effective response. Simply put, the Carrera Revoltwas “overdetermined.” Popular resistance had coalesced into a counterhege-monic force that no longer needed to evade the state, but rather couldchallenge it head on.

During the Liberal Reforma, by contrast, there was nothing like con-vergence of reinforcing factors. Popular discontent remained unfocused,Guatemala City’s right to rule the rest of the country was firmly established,and the state was stronger than ever by almost any measure—institutional, fi-nancial, or military. As a result, the two notable examples of popular rebellionthat marked the Reforma years—one in the east, the so-called Remincheros,the other in Momostenango—were notable precisely because they stood bythemselves on an otherwise empty battle field. Unable to broaden their baseof support, these rebellions were repressed and coopted into submission.29

Although popular resistance was anything but absent during the Reforma, itsimply could not move beyond a fragmented or “plural” counterhegemony.

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And thus evasion of the state, not direct and open confrontation, remainedthe order of the day.

Guatemalan Nation–State Formation inComparative Perspective

Throughout this study I have proposed the idea that continuity, not rupture,marked the transition from Conservative to Liberal rule in 1871. Althoughthere were differences that separated Liberals from Conservatives—enoughto mobilize an armed movement against the Conservative state in the late1860s— most of them had little practical consequence once the Liberalscontrolled Guatemala City. Indeed, the core group of western elites whosupported the insurrection was motivated more by provincial resentmentthan some deep-seated ideological or even programmatic disagreement withcapitalino Conservatives. That said, two exceptions to this generalizationstand out. First, Liberal attitudes toward the Catholic Church differed signif-icantly from those of Conservatives. Liberals viewed the Church as a threatto the state but also to economic and social progress, and they desired todiminish its power. Thus, some of the earliest decrees of the Reforma weregeared toward this end, abolishing all religious orders and nationalizing theirproperty, ending the religious fuero, and declaring freedom of worship.30

The second significant difference between Liberals and Conservativesconcerned how they conceptualized Guatemala’s indigenous majority. Con-servatives held a racialized or biologically deterministic view of society, inwhich the Maya were considered a distinct class of citizens because of theirsupposedly stunted intellect. They could not be judged by the same standardsas those of European descent, and thus they needed special protections aswell as special attention and direction. Legally speaking, the Conservativestreated indigenous people as wards of the state. Liberals, by contrast, believedthat the “Indian problem” was more cultural in nature. Perhaps this pointedup the importance of western provincial thought to Guatemalan Liberalism.Even as they bemoaned Mayan “backwardness,” Los Altos ladinos knew fromexperience that their indigenous neighbors were formidable adversaries withfully functioning minds. No, Mayan “failure” to conform to “modernity”had little to do with biology, and everything to do their implacable resistanceto change and a stubborn determination to retain their distinctive cultureand identity. Legal protections had to be ended, then, not simply becauseLiberalism demanded formal equality before the law, but also because pro-tection was viewed as tantamount to helping the indigenous majority resistfurther ladinization.

The problem with the Liberal approach, however, was that it didnot simultaneously eliminate other statutes and policies that continued to

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stigmatize the Maya as a separate class or caste when it came to their landand their labor. Indeed, in many ways the Reforma was an attempt to refur-bish such prejudicial stigmatization. National development—that is to say,commercial agriculturists and the state—depended on legally targeting in-digenous land for usurpation and indigenous people for exploitation. Theselaws were deemed necessary despite their affront to formal equality, and de-spite the fact that they perpetuated the very political and ultimately socialdistinctions among Guatemalans that Liberals professed to abhor. Apparently,the Maya were to be treated as equals only when it suited the interests of theagricultural entrepreneurs. If Liberal equality and Liberal desires for a homog-enized ladino citizenry impeded the planters’ search for profit or the state’ssearch for revenue, then they were abandoned without a second thought.

And so we arrive at the contradiction that Reforma-era Liberalism posedfor Guatemalan state formation. The 1879 constitution granted citizenshipregardless of ethnicity, and bestowed certain rights like liberty and equalitybefore the law to all citizens. This was in keeping with the Liberal’s professeddesire for a “modern,” westernized citizenry. In fact, however, the Liberalstate continued to target indigenous people as a class, to exclude them fromthe rights of citizenship on a regular, ongoing basis. In Liberal practice, andindeed, in Liberal thought, there was only one true citizen of Guatemala:the ladino.31 What Reforma-era Liberals did not realize was that by denyingcitizenship for the indigenous majority, they likewise denied the possibilityof the Guatemalan nation.

The malformation of Guatemala as a ladino nation is not unique in LatinAmerica. Ethnicity continues to pose problems for the process of state forma-tion in many parts of the region. Indeed, the violence and open warfare en-demic to several contemporary Latin American republics reflect the ongoingnature of the process, as well as its numerous failings up to this point. Activeguerrilla movements continue in Colombia, Peru, and Mexico, and in all ofthese cases the state’s historic engagement with the indigenous population isopenly acknowledged to be a source of discontent. Is it purely coincidentalthat Guatemala, too, has only recently concluded more than three decadesof civil war in which the state committed what United Nations investigatorshave termed “acts of genocide” against the Mayan majority?32 Let us considerbriefly some of the recent literature on Peru, Mexico, and Central Americato see how it might help us better understand the Guatemalan context.

A good place to begin the comparison is with Florencia E. Mallon’sexplicitly comparative Peasant and Nation: the Making of Postcolonial Mexicoand Peru.33 Although I risk putting the cart before the horse, Mallon’s ultimategoal in this work is to help explain why these two Latin American countries—both former viceregal centers of the Spanish Empire—have followed suchdivergent twentieth-century trajectories. What allowed the Mexican state

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to leave behind the constant political turnovers and crises of the nineteenthcentury in such marked contrast to Peru? Is it enough simply to point outthat Peru did not experience anything like the Mexican Revolution, as ifthe cathartic explosion of popular outrage that began in 1910 singularlyhealed that country’s body-politic? Without downplaying the importance ofthis pivotal event, Mallon suggests that the relative tranquility of Mexico’stwentieth century—e.g., the stability and longevity of the postrevolutionarystate, unique to Latin America—cannot be understood through the lens ofthe 1910 revolution alone. Instead, she suggests that the revolution and itsaftermath, like the events of Peru’s twentieth century, should be seen asthe continuation of political processes that developed over the precedingpostcolonial decades.

At the heart of Mallon’s distinction between Mexico and Peru is the ca-pacity of subaltern sectors to engage political elites and, in so doing, to insistthat their agenda, or at least parts of it, be incorporated into the state. Af-ter carefully researching the nineteenth-century histories of both countries,she concludes that this kind of subaltern-elite articulation occurred muchmore frequently and successfully in Mexico than in Peru. Although pop-ular involvement in national political projects ultimately was repressed andmarginalized in both places prior to the twentieth century, its greater poten-tial in Mexico was reflected by the lasting impact that subalterns had on theprocess of state formation or reformation that began in 1910. The state thatemerged over the course of the Mexican Revolution reflected in importantways the demands of popular insurgents, and it included mechanisms for theongoing incorporation of such typically marginalized groups as peasants andlabor. If the increasingly technocratic orientation of the Mexican state has ledto the deterioration of the postrevolutionary hegemonic pact, and hence anunprecedented level of opposition—recall not just the 1994 Chiapas upris-ing but also the 1997 election of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas to the mayoralty ofMexico City and the 2000 presidential election of Vicente Fox—this shouldnot divert our attention from the country’s distinctive twentieth-centurypolitics when viewed in the context of Latin America.

In many ways, Peasant and Nation lays the foundation for two subsequentmonographs on the nineteenth-century histories of Mexico and Peru, re-spectively. The first, by historian Peter Guardino, adds important detail toMallon’s contention that Mexican subalterns contributed significantly tonational-level political projects during this period. Employing the notion of“cross-class alliances,” Guardino demonstrates how the contours of Mexico’spolitical landscape facilitated the emergence of numerous multiclass and mul-tiethnic opposition movements that challenged the state from a popular andregionalist perspective.34 Although most of these alliances failed to capturethe executive office for any length of time, they succeeded in keeping the

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issues of democracy and local autonomy in the national spotlight, bolsteringfederalist fortunes for many years and beating back numerous attempts tocentralize and consolidate the Mexican state along more hierarchical, au-thoritarian lines. It took powerful federalist Porfirio Dıaz to finally imposea centralized state on his erstwhile regional allies, and even then, only afterdecades of careful negotiation and cooptation. One might argue that thevery “success” of Dıaz’s top-down centralization project, particularly in thelater years, is precisely what propelled popular resistance to take the violentform that it did beginning in 1910.35

If Guardino’s “cross-class alliances” are the key to Mexican distinctivenessbecause they provided a channel for regional subalterns to insinuate them-selves in the elite-dominated realm of national politics—to place their agendaon the table uninvited—then the very failure of these alliances in postcolonialPeru helps to explain that country’s unbroken legacy of popular exclusionand concomitant political instability. This is the conclusion that anthropolo-gist Mark Thurner reaches in his recent monograph on nineteenth-centuryPeru, and in so doing he echoes Mallon’s Peasant and Nation.36 According toThurner, the most successful example of cross-class alliance in Peruvian his-tory was the coalition of Quechua, mestizo, and creole that had backed Inkanoble Tupac Amaru II in his 1780 rebellion against the injustices of Spanishcolonialism. When the state responded to the rebellion by eliminating theindigenous nobility from Andean society in recognition of its ability to mo-bilize the provincial population across class and caste, it greatly diminishedthe possibility of further cross-class alliances. Neither indigenous municipalofficials nor local mestizos or creoles were able to fill the political, intellec-tual, or symbolic shoes of the extinguished Inka nobility over the courseof the nineteenth century. Even top-down incorporation along the lines ofMexican indigenismo was out of the question in Peru, because limeno elitesfeared that by employing symbols from the pre-Columbian era they wouldprovoke a resurgence of Inka nationalism. Hence the politics of exclusionthat, as Mallon notes, has continued in Peru with few interruptions up tothe present day.

Within this context, perhaps the best that can be hoped for in termsof Peruvian national identity is the antiindigenista recognition of racial andcultural hybridity described by Marisol de la Cadena in Indigenous Mestizos.If in Mexico indigenismo and mestizaje have been two sides of the samecoin, in Peru, by and large, they have been distinct—even contradictory—entities. As de la Cadena relates, the region of Cuzco is unique in Peru forits development in the first decades of the twentieth century of an elite-ledindigenismo that rejected mestizaje just as limeno glorification of the mestizorejected things indigenous. Over time a reconciliation of these two ideas hasresulted, at least in Cuzco, but even here, as the title of de la Cadena’s book

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hints, it is based on a privileging of mestizo identity. Indigenous cuzquenosare formally mestizo, even if “they use ‘mestizo’ to identify literate and eco-nomically successful people who share indigenous cultural practices yet donot perceive themselves as miserable, a condition they consider ‘Indian.’ ”37

In the Central American context, Jeffrey Gould notes a similar devel-opment in Nicaragua. Here, too, a mestizo identity among indigenousNicaraguans has not automatically precluded their ability to positively val-orize indigenous history or culture even as they have sought to escape thenegative connotations of being “Indian.”38 Yet overall, the effects of thisidentity have not been so benign. Rather, as in Peru, mestizo national iden-tity has worked to deny the continued existence of indigenous peoples andto refuse them any positive role in contemporary society. Gould explainshow this came about with Mexico as his explicit counterpoint. Accordingto Gould, Nicaraguan national integration, unlike that of Mexico, did notoccur until the late nineteenth century, when coffee was emerging as thecountry’s economic produit moteur. Local intellectuals who, if in Mexico,might have served to articulate indigenous and popular demands to largernational projects, instead became intimately tied to the expansion of coffee.And since coffee required the very land and labor defended by indigenous in-stitutions and culture, Nicaragua’s local intellectuals believed that importantaspects of indigenous society had to be suppressed or dismantled.

Implied, though not stated outright in Gould’s account, is that this in-tersection of coffee and national integration was no mere coincidence. Inother words, coffee wealth gave rise to the provincial intellectual class thatmade Nicaraguan national integration possible. In Mexico, by contrast, dueto significant regional development over the course of the colonial period,this class began to emerge in various locales well before independence. Thus,provincial elites and intellectuals were well-placed to be the protagonists—along with neighboring indigenous and plebeian sectors—of the politicalbattles that swept early nineteenth-century Mexico. And in this capacity,the former frequently allied with, rather than uniformly opposed, the latter,serving to articulate subaltern demands and aspirations into the struggle overMexican nationhood.39

How do the Mexican, Peruvian, and Nicaraguan cases compare withthat of Guatemala? Although the myth of Mexico as a mestizo democracyor a “cosmic race” of equals appears to have been little more than that—a myth—the country’s largely indigenous and mestizo majority has donea credible job of imposing a more inclusive and participatory politics on areluctant core elite through its manipulation of cross-class alliances fromindependence through the Mexican Revolution and beyond. In postcolo-nial Peru, by contrast, such alliances have tended to be extremely tenuouswhen they have materialized at all, even after the emergence of an elite-led

190 Chapter 6

indigenismo in the 1920s.40 Similarly, as Gould describes, cross-class—ormore accurately, cross-caste—alliances were also the exception, rather thanthe rule, in Nicaragua.41 For this reason, Guatemala appears to bear a strikingresemblance to the Peruvian and Nicaraguan cases. The ladino nationalismimposed by Los Altos Liberals after 1870 clearly was based on the exclusionof the indigenous majority, and that legacy continues to the present.

Still, there were moments in the early nineteenth century when the poten-tial for a more inclusive alternative was substantial, at least in contrast to Peruand Nicaragua, and in this regard Guatemala is more reminiscent of Mexico.The interethnic and cross-class alliances of the eastern montana that propelledRafael Carrera to the top of Guatemalan politics evince important similaritieswith the movements of Guerrero and the Mexican south. In addition, Carrerasucceeded in resurrecting the caste-based corporatism that had prevailed incolonial times. Although firmly rooted in a racist, hierarchal conceptualiza-tion of society, the caste system afforded Carrera’s indigenous supporters—whether in the east or the west—a degree of cultural and political autonomybecause it accepted them more or less on their own terms. That is, incorpo-ration into the body politic, however partial or circumscribed, was not tiedto assimilation or the embrace of things ladino. For this reason, the Maya cer-tainly appeared to prefer caste-based citizenship with all of its attendant prob-lems to the universal variety offered by early nineteenth-century Liberals.

Unfortunately, as we have seen, Conservative elites squandered this oppor-tunity to pursue a constructive pact with the indigenous majority. They usedthe paternalistic underpinnings of caste hierarchism to justify the usurpationof indigenous land, the coercion of indigenous labor, and increased interven-tion in local politics and administration, rather than to bolster state supportfor and protection of Mayan communities. Much like Bolivia, GuatemalanConservatives had become increasingly positivist and “liberal” by the secondhalf of the nineteenth century.42 Thus, when Los Altos Liberals capturedthe state in 1871, their especially virulent antiindigenous stance representedmerely the coup de grace for the crumbling remains of caste-based corpo-ratism that Conservatives had resurrected three decades earlier.

Leaving aside the example of Rafael Carrera, even Guatemala’s morerigidly segregated west held out some potential for cross-class and cross-castealliances in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Unlike Nicaragua, asseveral recent works on Quezaltenango demonstrate, Guatemala did count asignificant provincial elite in the western Los Altos region well before coffeebecame king.43 Moreover, during the internal conflicts that accompaniedindependence, this elite linked with surrounding indigenous populationsin demanding incorporation into the Mexican imperium as a way to gainautonomy from Guatemala City. Yet a stable, long-term coalition was pre-vented from developing by the rapid fall of Iturbide in Mexico and by the

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and Nation–State Formation 191

subsequent decision of western ladino elites to secede from Guatemala en-tirely, establishing the sixth Central American state of Los Altos. Ratherthan ally with the Maya in order to influence the shape of a postcolonialstate based in Guatemala City, Los Altos ladinos determined to create a stateof their own, one that would give them complete autonomy as well as adecisive advantage over their indigenous neighbors—the vast majority ofthe Los Altos population. This effort quickly transformed the latter frompotential allies to vociferous opponents, for if the western Maya had dislikedthe idea that state power would devolve from Spain to Guatemala City—preferring Mexico—they adamantly rejected its location in Quezaltenango.The subsequent collapse of Los Altos in no way diminished the antagonismbetween these two ethnic groups, and after the midcentury the emergenceof coffee cemented its existence. Western provincials embraced coffee everybit as enthusiastically as their Nicaraguan counterparts. And as in Nicaragua,this embrace left no room for indigenous institutions or cultural practicesthat impeded coffee’s expansion.

This does not mean that indigenous–ladino alliances were impossible inthe age of coffee, only that they were unlikely to be the basis for radicallymoving the state in a more democratic, popular direction—one that would,among other things, give greater support and autonomy to Mayan institu-tions and cultural practices. As Greg Grandin notes in his innovative studyof Quezaltenango, the nature of cross-caste alliances had been transformed.In the early nineteenth century, linkages between ladino and Maya had re-flected more broadly communal, popular, interests on the part of the latter.Mayan leaders had negotiated with their ladino counterparts as communitypatriarchs, not a class-based elite. By the second half of the century, how-ever, as coffee entered the picture, and as commercial agriculture in generalcontinued to expand, narrower class interests became the basis for collabora-tion between indigenous and nonindigenous leaders. Cross-caste no longerimplied cross-class or the incorporation of popular demands into a largerproject. Indeed, according to Grandin, after 1870 a key point of agreementbetween Mayan and ladino elites was the desire to prevent interethnic subal-tern unity.44 Simply put, class had begun to trump caste in local social rela-tions. This makes perfect sense when one remembers that Quezaltenango isthe subject of Grandin’s study. The city is unique in the Guatemalan contextfor the size of its “indigenous bourgeoisie,” and this provided a significantfoundation for intraclass collaboration that cut across ethnic lines.45

Outside of the city of Quezaltenango the situation was somewhat differ-ent. Here most Mayan communities were significantly less stratified, and thusclass could not serve as such a potent mechanism for creating a convergenceof interests among ladino and Mayan leaders. In these areas the state hadto rely more on the personal malleability of individual indigenous officials

192 Chapter 6

and its own capacity for cooptation and coercion to bring about interethniccollaboration. As we saw in the case of San Juan Ostuncalco, the expansionof state institutions and revenues after the midcentury made this kind ofcollaboration more possible. By the 1880s and 1890s, hundreds of Mam san-juaneros were incorporated into the local state apparatus, cooperating withtheir ladino superiors in administering the town. Still, these Mam officialswere less dependable allies than the K’iche’ elite of Quezaltenango. Withouta common class perspective to inform their actions, Mam authorities oftenused their positions within the state to sidetrack or vitiate ladino goals andcommands. What they most certainly did not do, however, was transformthe state from the inside out to create a governing apparatus more amenableto indigenous interests.

For a variety of reasons, then, the potential for the kind of cross-class (andcaste) alliances analyzed by Guardino in the Mexican case, and referred toby Gould as a counterpoint to Nicaragua, was much reduced in Guatemalaafter 1870. Among the Maya, class stratification over the preceding decadeshad tempered indigenous leaders as proponents of the kinds of communaldemands that might have fueled a potent, populist opposition movement.In any case, elite western ladinos were no longer the provincial malcontentsof the early 1800s who had sought to alter or overthrow the state. After1870 they controlled it. Now, when they pursued cross-caste ties, it was tofurther their personal enterprises or generally reinforce the status quo ratherthan establish an antistate opposition or insurgency. Ladino chauvinism hadbecome the substance of Guatemalan national identity, and few ladinos wereinclined to consider indigenous peoples or their culture as anything morethan a necessary evil. In such an environment, Mexican-style indigenismo—the integration of a more sympathetic evaluation of Mayan history and itscontemporary cultural practices into the national self-image—was no morelikely to emerge than in Peru or Nicaragua. Perhaps this helps to explainwhy the ideas of Miguel Angel Asturias, Guatemala’s most famous indi-genista, were so thoroughly assimilationist. Perhaps this also helps to explainwhy, despite his racist assumptions and patronizing prescriptions, Asturiasdid not always feel welcome in the country of his birth, spending significantportions of his life abroad. For he genuinely desired to end the sufferingand exploitation of the country’s Mayan population—something that mostelite Guatemalans refused to contemplate.46 They could not conceive of amore inclusive politics through assimilation or otherwise. They feared theindigenous majority too deeply, and preferred to jeopardize the nation ratherthan risk their own political prerogatives.

Reference Matter

Notes and Abbreviations

archival sources

agca: Archivo General de Centro America.A Colonial sectionB Republican sectionC CongresoST Seccion de Tierras, organized by department

agq: Archivo de Gobernacion de Quezaltenango. Citations refer to hojassueltas unless otherwise indicated.

aha: Archivo Historico Arqidiocesano “Francisco Paula Garcıa Pelaez.” Citedarchive sections include “Cartas” and “Padron de Pueblos.” Bulto orpacket years for Cartas correspond to the date of the cited document andare not indicated unless the document is undated or located within a bultoof a different year.

ahq: Archivo Historico de Quezaltenango. Cited archive sections include“Miscelaneo” and “Libros de Actas.” Bulto or packet years for Miscelaneodocuments correspond to the date of the cited document and are notindicated unless the document is undated or located within a bulto of adifferent year.

ahpo: Archivo Historico Parroquial de San Juan Ostuncalco. Citations refer tohojas sueltas unless otherwise indicated.

amm: Archivo Municipal de Momostenango. Citations do not indicate the bultoor packet year—assumed to correspond to the date of the citeddocument—unless the document is undated or located within a bulto of adifferent year.

amsjo: Archivo Municipal de San Juan Ostuncalco. Citations do not indicate thearchive section—assumed to be “Correspondencia”—unless the citeddocument pertains to “Procesos judiciales (criminales)” or “Tıtulossupletorios.” Bulto or packet years correspond to the date of the cited

196 Notes to Introduction

document and are not indicated unless the document is undated or locatedwithin a bulto of a different year.

exp.: expediente.leg.: legajo.paq.: paquete.

published primary sources & journals

asghg: Anales de la Sociedad de Geografıa e Historia de Guatemala.bagg: Boletın del Archivo General del Gobierno.cg: Luis Marinas Otero. Las Constituciones de Guatemala. Madrid: Instituto de

Estudios Polıticos, 1958.csjo: Hostnig, Rainer, comp. El Curato de San Juan Ostuncalco. 2 tomos.

Quezaltenango: Centro de Capacitacion e Investigacion Campesina, 1993& 1995.

dgm: Cortes y Larraz, Pedro. Descripcion Geografico-Moral de la Diocesis deGoathemala. Vol. 20, Biblioteca “Goathemala” de la Sociedad de Geografıa eHistoria. Guatemala: Tipografıa Nacional, 1958.

eten: Hostnig, Rainer, comp. Esta tierra es nuestra: compendio de fuentes historicassobre denuncias, medidas y remedidas, composiciones, titulaciones, usurpaciones,desmembraciones, litigios, transacciones y remates de tierra (Anos 1555–1952).2 tomos. Quezaltenango: Centro de Capacitacion e InvestigacionCampesina, 1997.

hahr: Hispanic American Historical Review.larr: Latin American Research Review.lig: Jorge Skinner-Klee, comp. Legislacion indigenista de Guatemala. Mexico:

Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, 1954.rf: Fuentes y Guzman, Francisco A. Recordacion florida, discurso historial y

demostracion natural, material, militar y polıtica del reyno de Guatemala. Vols.6–8, Biblioteca “Goathemala” de la Sociedad de Geografıa e Historia.Guatemala: Tipografıa Nacional, 1933.

rla: Recopilacion de Leyes Agrarias. Guatemala: Tipografico “La Union,” 1890.rlg: Pineda de Mont, Manuel, comp. Recopilacion de las leyes de Guatemala.

3 tomos. Guatemala: Imprenta de la Paz, 1871.rlrg: Recopilacion de las leyes emitidas por el gobierno democratico de la Republica de

Guatemala. Continuous volumes, multiple editors and publishers.Guatemala City, 1874–.

rlri: Recopilacion de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias. 3 tomos. Madrid: La Viudade D. Joaquın Ibarra, 1791.

notes to introduction

1. AGCA B, leg. 3266, exp. 69381.2. AGCA B, leg. 3266, exps. 69370, 69381, 69383, 69384, 69386, and 69387;

AHQ Libros de Actas, “Libro Numero 17: Principiado el 4 de Octubre de 1836;

Notes to Introduction 197

Terminado el 1o. de Abril de 1837,” 8 marzo 1837. The quotation is from AGCA B,leg. 3266, exp. 69381. Although various published sources list the beginning of therevolt as March 6, my reading of the existing archival evidence indicates that March8 was the starting date. See, for instance, Alejandro Marure, Efemerides de los hechosnotables acaecidos en la republica de Centro America desde el ano de 1821 hasta el de 1842(Guatemala: Ministerio de Educacion, 1956 [1885]), 151; and Lorenzo Montufar,Resena historica de Centroamerica, 7 tomos (Guatemala, 1878–1887), 2:339–349.

3. A Palmerstonian Diplomat in Central America: Frederick Chatfield, Esq. (Tucson:University of Arizona, 1964), 138.

4. RLA, 22 julio 1873, 85–86, and 13 mayo 1874, 86; RLRG, 17 octubre 1873,201–202.

5. RLA, “Decreto Num. 170,” 8 enero 1877, 90–93; LIG, “Decreto GubernativoNo. 177,” 3 abril 1877, 35–42. The latter is also referred to as the “Reglamento dejornaleros.”

6. Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic ofGuatemala, 1821–1871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 347.

7. On the Liberal orientation of much of the Guatemalan historiography, seeLowell Gudmundson and Hector Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 1821–1871: Lib-eralism before Liberal Reform (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1995), 1–5; ToddLittle-Siebold, Guatemala and the Dream of a Nation: National Policy and RegionalPractice in the Liberal Era, 1871–1945 (Chiquimula, San Marcos) (Ph.D. diss., TulaneUniversity, 1995), 5–7; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, xiv. On Latin America generally,including Guatemala, see E. Bradford Burns, “Ideology in Nineteenth-Century LatinAmerican Historiography,” HAHR 58 (August 1978): 409–431, and The Poverty ofProgress: Latin America in the 19th Century (Berkeley: University of California, 1980),41–50, 98, 106, 147. Anthropologist Carol A. Smith is one of the few studentsof Guatemala’s nineteenth century who attempts to explain the Liberal Reforma inlight of the Carrera Revolt. See her “Failed Nationalist Movements in 19th-CenturyGuatemala: A Parable for the Third World,” in Nationalist Ideologies and the Productionof National Cultures, ed. Richard G. Fox (Washington, D. C.: American Anthro-pological Association, 1990), 148–177, and “Origins of the National Question inGuatemala: A Hypothesis,” in Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540–1988, ed. CarolA. Smith (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 72–95.

8. On the Liberal underpinnings of even the revisionists, see Gudmundson andLindo-Fuentes, Central America, 2–3, 7–9, and 81–82. Revisionist interpretations ofRafael Carrera, in particular, are found in Burns, Poverty of Progress, 96–105; Smith,“Failed Nationalist Movements,” and “Origins of the National Question,” and Smithand Jeff Boyer, “Central America since 1979,” Annual Review in Anthropology 16(1987): 207; Robert G. Williams, States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise ofNational Governments in Central America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina,1994), 56 and passim; and Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 422–423.

9. Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes note this association in Central America, 93.Cf. Steven Paul Palmer, A Liberal Discipline: Inventing Nations in Guatemala and CostaRica, 1870–1900 (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1990), 84–85; Williams, States andSocial Evolution, 68–69.

198 Notes to Introduction

10. Williams, States and Social Evolution, 26–31, 298–299 n. 33; Manuel RubioSanchez, “Historia del comercio del cafe en Guatemala. Siglos XVIII–XIX,” part 1,ASGHG 50 (1977): 174–191.

11. Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 93.12. On the Liberal orientation of Brazilian monarchists, see Sam Adamo, “Recent

Works on Modern Brazilian History,” LARR 27 (1992): 193, and Emilia Viotti daCosta, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (Chicago: University of Chicago,1985), xix–xxi, 5–8, 23, 53–60, 69–75, on which Adamo bases his remarks. Onthe Liberal Conservatives of Antioquia, Colombia, see Nancy Appelbaum, “Re-membering Riosucio: Race and Region in Old Caldas” (paper presented at the an-nual meeting of the American Historical Association, Seattle, Washington, January1998), 5, 7–10, and Charles Bergquist, Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886–1910(Durham: Duke University, 1978): 8 n. 12. Tristan Platt notes that Bolivia’s Con-servative and Liberal parties were equally positivist and “Liberal” by the second halfof the nineteenth century in Estado boliviano y ayllu andino: tierra y tributo en el nortede potosı (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1982), esp. 37 n. 16. Gudmundsonand Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 87, 91, 93, 98–100, discuss the developmental-ist strategies of Costa Rican and El Salvadoran Conservatives. See also RichmondF. Brown’s review of Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes’ book, entitled “Review ofLowell Gudmundson and Hector Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 1821–1871: Lib-eralism before Liberal Reform,” H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews, July, 1996.

13. Burns, Poverty of Progress, 96–106. Other examples of Carrera revisionists in-clude: Keith L. Miceli, “Rafael Carrera: Defender and Promoter of Peasant Interestsin Guatemala, 1837–1848,” Americas 31 (July 1974) 72–95; Ralph Lee Woodward,“Social Revolution in Guatemala: The Carrera Revolt,” in Applied Enlightenment:Nineteenth Century Liberalism, 1830–1839 (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1971),43–70, and “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Response of the Peasants of LaMontana to the Government of Guatemala, 1821–1850,” Plantation Society in theAmericas 1 (February 1979): 109–129; and Carol A. Smith, “Origins of the NationalQuestion,” 72–95.

14. Liberal supporters and detractors who view the Reforma period as having im-plied dramatic changes in land tenure, among other social relations, include HubertHowe Bancroft, History of Central America, 3 vols. (San Francisco: The History Com-pany, 1886), 3:650–651; Burns, Poverty of Progress, 97–105; Ciro F. S. Cardoso, “Histo-ria economica del cafe en Centroamerica (siglo XIX): estudio comparativo,” EstudiosSociales Centroamericanos 4 (Enero-Abril 1975): 21–22; Alain Dessaint, “Effects ofthe Hacienda and Plantation Systems on Guatemala’s Indians,” America indıgena 22(Octubre 1962): 330–331; Handy, Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala (Boston:South End, 1984), 68–69; Chester Lloyd Jones, Guatemala: Past and Present (NewYork: Russell & Russell, 1966), 150; Oliver LaFarge, “Maya Ethnology: TheSequence of Cultures,” in The Maya and Their Neighbors, eds. Clarence L. Hay, etal (New York: D. Appleton Century, 1940), 283; W. George Lovell, “SurvivingConquest: The Maya of Guatemala in Historical Perspective,” LARR 23 (1988):37–39; Severo Martınez Pelaez, La patria del criollo: ensayo de interpretacion de la realidadcolonial guatemalteca (Mexico: Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, 1987), 578–579;

Notes to Introduction 199

David J. McCreery, “Coffee and Class: The Structure of Development in LiberalGuatemala,” HAHR 56 (August 1976): 456–457; Carol A. Smith, “Local Historyin Global Context: Social and Economic Transitions in Western Guatemala,”Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (1984): 200–204, and “Origins of theNational Question,” 84; Valentın Solorzano Fernandez, Historia de evolucion economicade Guatemala, 4a. ed. (Guatemala: Ministerio de Educacion, 1977), 317–323ff,397–398; and Ralph Lee Woodward, Central America: A Nation Divided (Oxford:Oxford University, 1985), 174.

15. David J. McCreery, “Debt Servitude in Rural Guatemala, 1876–1936,” HAHR63 (November 1983): 739.

16. Even El Salvador’s image as the region where Liberal land reform legislationmost forcefully disenfranchized indigenous communities is coming under scrutiny,thanks to the careful research of Hector Lindo-Fuentes. See Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 25, 50–51, 96–98.

17. David J. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University,1994), esp. 236–254. See also McCreery, “State Power, Indigenous Communities, andLand in Nineteenth-Century Guatemala, 1820–1920,” in Guatemalan Indians and theState: 1540–1988, ed. Carol A. Smith (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 96, 106–110.

18. J. C. Cambranes, Coffee and Peasants in Guatemala: The Origins of the ModernPlantation Economy in Guatemala, 1853–1897 (Stockholm: Institute of Latin AmericanStudies, 1985), 84 and 89.

19. Woodward, Rafael Carrera; Jorge Gonzalez Alzate, A History of Los Altos,Guatemala: A Study of Regional Conflict and National Integration, 1750–1885 (Ph.D.diss., Tulane University, 1994); Robert G. Williams, States and Social Evolution.

20. Wayne M. Clegern, Origins of Liberal Dictatorship in Central America: Guatemala,1865–1873 (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1994); Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America.

21. Wayne M. Clegern, Origins of Liberal Dictatorship, 45–54 and 150; GonzalezAlzate, “History of Los Altos,” 552–553, 560–564, and 578–581; Williams, States andSocial Evolution, 60–61; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 423–432.

22. Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 428.23. Clegern, Origins of Liberal Dictatorship, 76–77.24. Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 1 and 93.25. Gonzalez Alzate, “A History of Los Altos,” 172–173.26. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 249.27. See Arturo Taracena Arriola’s excellent Invencion criolla, sueno ladino, pesadilla

indıgena: los altos de Guatemala: de region a Estado, 1740–1850 (Costa Rica: EditorialPorvenir y CIRMA, 1997) on this point.

28. AMSJO, 8 enero 1821.29. San Juan Ostuncalco’s municipal archive was a repository not only for local-

level officials, but also for those who administered the nineteenth-century politicaldistrict with its handful of towns. The same was true for Momostenango, a K’iche’town in the neighboring department of Totonicapan.

30. See Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, “Founding Statement,” boundary2 20 (1993): 119–121, for further discussion of this problem.

200 Notes to Chapter 1

31. See Florencia E. Mallon, “The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies:Perspectives from Latin American History,” American Historical Review 99 (December1994): 1494; but also Gyan Prakash, “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism,”American Historical Review 99 (December 1994): 1477, 1480.

32. See for example, Marisol de la Cadena’s Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Raceand Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991 (Durham: Duke University, 2000), Jeffrey L.Gould’s To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880–1965(Durham: Duke University, 1998), Greg Grandin’s The Blood of Guatemala: A Historyof Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University, 2000), Peter F. Guardino’s Peasants,Politics, and the Formation of Mexico’s National State: Guerrero, 1800–1857 (Stanford:Stanford University, 1996), Aldo Lauria-Santiago’s An Agrarian Republic: CommercialAgriculture and the Politics of Peasant Communities in El Salvador, 1824–1918 (Pittsburgh:University of Pittsburgh, 1999), Florencia E. Mallon’s Peasant and Nation: The Makingof Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California, 1995), and MarkThurner’s From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmakingin Andean Peru (Durham: Duke University, 1997).

33. By “coast” I am not referring to the actual Pacific shoreline, but rather thebroad swath of piedmont and plains—as much as fifty miles wide—that connect theshoreline to the heights of the Sierra Madre, and that runs the length of Guatemala,from its border with Mexico, to El Salvador. This usage of the word, though perhapspuzzling to North American readers, was common in Guatemala, particularly priorto the twentieth century, and made sense given that the vast majority of the populaceinhabited the country’s mountainous interior.

notes to chapter 1

1. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660.2. Robert M. Carmack, Quichean Civilization: The Ethnohistoric, Ethnographic, and

Archaeological Sources (Berkeley: University of California, 1973), 68.3. Ostuncalco’s leaders spoke of the “Rıo Comalate,” but from their description

it is clear that they were referring to the Rıo Samala.4. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660.5. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660.6. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660.7. A league is approximately 3 miles.8. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660.9. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660.10. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660.11. “Tıtulos de la casa Izquin-Nehaib, senora del territorio de Otzoya,” or

“Tıtulo Nijaib I,” transcribed in Adrian Recinos, ed., Cronicas Indıgenas de Guatemala(Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 1957), 71–96; “Tıtulo C’oyoi,” transcribed andtranslated in Carmack, Quichean Civilzation, 273–306. For a fuller documentation ofthe K’iche’ tıtulos, see my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples: The SubalternRoots of National Politics in Nineteenth Century Guatemala (Ph.D. diss., University ofWisconsin-Madison, 1999), 33 n 15.

Notes to Chapter 1 201

12. Although the “Tıtulo Nijaib I” claims that the first significant K’iche’ con-quest of the Mam occurred in 1300 (76), both Recinos and Carmack dispute theveracity of this date. See the Cronicas Indıgenas, 15, and Robert Carmack’s The QuicheMayas of Utatlan: The Evolution of a Highland Guatemala Kingdom (Norman: Univer-sity of Oklahoma, 1981), 121, and Rebels of Highland Guatemala: The Quiche-Mayasof Momostenango (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1995), 39–40.

13. “Tıtulo Nijaib I,” 74–76. See also Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala,38–40.

14. John W. Fox, Quiche Conquest: Centralism and Regionalism in HighlandGuatemalan State Development (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1978),149–150, and Maya Postclassic State Formation: Segmentary Lineage Migration in Ad-vancing Frontiers (New York: Cambridge University, 1987), 182–185. Cf. the “TıtuloC’oyoi,” 297.

15. Carmack, Quichean Civilization, 33; Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala,40–42; Carmack, The Quiche Mayas, 137–140; “Tıtulo Nijaib I,” 71–73, 77–84.

16. Fox, Quiche Conquest, 149–150 and 174–175, and Maya Postclassic State Forma-tion, 182–185.

17. Fox, Quiche Conquest, 171 and 1987: 184; and Carmack, Rebels of HighlandGuatemala, 11.

18. “Tıtulo Nijaib I,” 71–78; Fox, Quiche Conquest, 153–157.19. Carmack, The Quiche Mayas, 134–135.20. Fox, Quiche Conquest, 174–175, and Maya Postclassic State Formation, 184–185.21. “Tıtulo Nijaib I,” 71–73, 77–78; “Tıtulo Retalulew,” transcribed in Carmack,

Quichean Civilization, 361–363.22. Carmack, The Quiche Mayas, 140–141; “Tıtulo Nijaib I,” 79–84.23. Cf. Fox, Quiche Conquest, 171.24. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660.25. Sacatepequez refers to San Pedro Sacatepequez, the main Mam town in what

would become the department of San Marcos by the second half of the nineteenthcentury. See the map on p. 2 in Lawrence H. Feldman, Indian Payment in Kind: TheSixteenth-Century Encomiendas of Guatemala (Lancaster, CA: Labyrinthos, 1992), fora visual representation of this.

26. Wendy J. Kramer, Encomienda Politics in Early Colonial Guatemala, 1524–1544: Dividing the Spoils (Boulder: Westview, 1994), 146–200. Feldman claims thatOstuncalco had become a “Crown” town by 1589 in Indian Payment in Kind (5),whereas Hostnig, Monografıa, 15–16, lists encomenderos for the town until 1678.

27. RF, 8:180; AGCA A1, leg. 5987, leg. 52660.28. See the “Carta que Diego Garces escribio a la Real Audiencia de

Guatemala . . . ,” in Pedro Carrasco, Sobre los indios de Guatemala (Guatemala: Minis-terio de Educacion, 1982), 96. Cf. Farriss, Maya Society, 206–210.

29. AGCA A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502.30. “Carta que Diego Garces escribio,” 95–96; AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660.31. Readers interested in the detailed documentation of this demographic evo-

lution should consult Reeves, Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 43–45,including the associated notes.

202 Notes to Chapter 1

32. AGCA A1, leg. 6057, exp. 53751; A1.10, leg. 2448, exp. 18809; ST, Quezal-tenango paq. 1, exps. 4 and 17; AGQ, 19 nov. 1836, 20 enero 1840; leg. 262, 3junio 1855, 7 junio 1860, 22 febrero 1865, 19 marzo 1867; leg. 479, sept. 1874; leg.792, 1884; ETEN, “Comun de Paxoj, deslined con el pueblo de Huitan, 1887,”1:577–591; AMSJO, 2 junio 1862, 16 febrero 1863, 20 octubre 1863, 17 mayo 1865,2 febrero 1866, 5 marzo 1868; Gall 1976–1983: 299–300.

33. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660; A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502; A1.11, leg.4056, exp. 31441; “Tıtulo Nijaib I,” 71–96, esp. 76–84; “Carta que Diego Garcesescribio,” 89–97; CSJO, “Visita Pastoral realizada por el obispo Fray Andres de lasNavas y Quevedo,” 1:34; “Informe sobre el estado del curato . . . elaborado por elcura doctrinero Fray Andres Gonzalez, por order del obisbo Fr. Andres de las Navasy Quevedo,” 1:55–56); Carmack, The Quiche Mayas, 137–143; Elıas Zamora Acosta,“El control vertical de diferentes pisos ecologicos: aplicacion del modelo al Occidentede Guatemala,” Revista de la Universidad Complutense 27 (1979): 245–272.

34. “Relacion de los caciques y principales del pueblo de Atitlan (1571),” AS-GHG 26 (septiembre a diciembre 1952): 435–437; and by Alonso Paez Betancor yFr. Pedro de Arboleda: “Relacion de Santiago Atitlan, ano de 1585,” ASGHG 37(enero a diciembre 1964): 87, 98, 105; “Descripcion de San Bartolome, del Partidode Atitlan, ano 1585,” ASGHG 38 (enero a diciembre 1965): 265–269; and “Estanciasde San Andres y de San Francisco, sujetas al pueblo de Atitlan, ano de 1585,” ASGHG42 (enero a diciembre 1969): 52–55, 63–65.

35. “Carta que Diego Garces escribio,” 91–96; Juan de Pineda, “Descripcion dela Provincia de Guatemala,” ASGHG 1 (Junio 1925): 336–341.

36. “Relacion de los caciques y principales,” 435–437; Betancor y Arboleda,“Relacion de Santiago Atitlan,” 87, 98, 105, “Descripcion de San Bartolome,” 265–269, and “Estancias de San Andres y de San Francisco,” 52–55, 63–65; “Carta queDiego Garces escribio,” 91–96; Pineda, “Descripcion de la Provincia,” 336–342.

37. For a comparison of this phenomenon with the Andean ayllu, see my Liberals,Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 52.

38. Carta que Diego Garces escribio, 96.39. AGCA A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502.40. Carta que Diego Garces escribio, 95–96; Pineda, Descripcion de la Provincia, 340–

342.41. AGCA A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502.42. Carta que Diego Garces escribio, 95–96; Pineda, Descripcion de la Provincia, 340–

342; Father Alonso Ponce, “Relacion breve y verdadera de algunas cosas de las muchasque sucedieron al padre fray Alonso Ponce,” ASGHG 39 (enero a diciembre 1966),130; AGCA A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502; Zamora Acosta, “El control vertical,” 252;Murdo J. MacLeod, Historia socio-economica de la America Central Espanola, 1520–1720,2a. ed. (Guatemala: Piedra Santa, 1990), 66–68, 82, 199, 202–206; Robert J. Ferry,“Encomienda, African Slavery, and Agriculture in Seventeenth-Century Caracas,”HAHR 61 (November 1981): 609–635.

43. The alcaldes mayores of Zapotitlan mention Santa Catalina (or Catarina) in1570 (Carta que Diego Garces escribio, 95–96), and again in 1579 (Descripcion de laProvincia de Zapotitlan y Suchitepequez, 72–76). The 1688 population estimate is given

Notes to Chapter 1 203

by Fray Andres Gonzalez in his “Informe sobre el estado del curato . . . por orden delobisbo Fr. Andres de las Navas y Quevedo,” CSJO, 1:55–56. Elıas Zamora Acostaprovides the multiplication rate of 1.25 for “almas de confesion” in “Conquista ycrisis demografica: la poblacion indıgena del occidente de Guatemala en el sigloXVI,” Mesoamerica 6 (Diciembre 1983): 300–301.

44. DGM, 150; Adrian Van Oss, “Pueblos y parroquias en Suchitepequez colo-nial,” Mesoamerica 5 (1984): 176–177.

45. “Carta que Diego Garces escribio,” 95–96; AGCA A1, leg. 5952, exp. 52297,A1, leg. 5963, exp. 52305, A1.24, leg. 1579, exp. 10223, A1, leg. 5976, exp.52500.

46. AGCA A, leg. 5963, exp. 52305; A1.24, leg. 1579, exp. 10223. Dependingon the source, one caballerıa contains anywhere from 105 (MacLeod, Historia socio-economica, 419) to 112 (McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 417) acres. Throughout this studyI have accepted Handy’s figure of 109.8 acres (Gift of the Devil, 69).

47. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1; B100.1, leg. 1419, exp. 33282; andAGQ, leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobreavances en sus ejidos,” 18 diciembre 1841.

48. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17, and A1.10.3, leg. 2448, exp.18809; CSJO, “Los naturales de San Cristobal Cabrican solicitan la exoneracion delos repartimientos, 1812,” 2:342–355.

49. Bernardo Belzunegui Ormazabal notes that by the end of the colonial periodover half of all the Spanish and ladino families resided in indigenous towns. See his“El problema de la tierra en Guatemala al final del perıodo colonial: datos para suestudio,” in 500 anos de lucha por la tierra: estudios sobre propiedad rural y reforma agrariaen Guatemala, ed. J. C. Cambranes (Guatemala: FLACSO, 1992), 260.

50. CSJO, “Visita Pastoral,” 1:143; AHA Padron de Pueblos, Caja T3 17, leg. 182;RLRI, Libro VI, Tıtulo III, Leyes XXI–XXII, 212; AGCA A3.62, leg. 198, exp.4011. For more on Ostuncalco’s dual municipality, see Chapter 5. Cf. Ebel, PoliticalModernization, 145–161.

51. CSJO, “Informe sobre el estado del curato...elaborado por el cura doctrineroFray Andres Gonzalez, por order del obisbo Fr. Andres de las Navas y Quevedo,”1:60; “Visita Pastoral realizada por el obispo Fr. Andres Navas y Quevedo,” 1:68.According to Jorge Lujan Munoz in “Reduccion y fundacion de Salcaja y SanCarlos Sija (Guatemala) en 1776,” ASGHG 49 (enero-diciembre 1976), 45–57, Sijawas formally established as a town in 1776.

52. AHA Cartas, bulto ano 1834, leg. 79; AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1,exp. 11; A1, leg. 6043, exp. 53336; CSJO, “Visita Pastoral realizada por el VisitadorDn. Miguel Cilieza Velasco, en representacion del Arzobispo Don Francisco JoseFigueredo y Victoria,” 1:170; AGCA A1, leg. 6057, exp. 53751; CSJO, “Informacionsobre el Curato de San Juan Ostuncalco, propcionado por el cura Joseph AntonioColomo . . . ,” 1:225; DGM, 150; AHA Padron de pueblos, Caja T3 17, leg. 182;AGCA A3.62, leg. 198, exp. 4011. Note that San Antonio Bobos changed its nameto Sibilia at the end of 1887 (RLRG, 15 diciembre 1887, 6:392).

53. AHQ Miscelaneo, bulto ano 1811, leg. 33; AGCA A1.44, leg. 2372, exp.17971; A, leg. 5955, exp. 52152; A1.21.9, leg. 5946, exp. 52046; ST, Quezaltenango,

204 Notes to Chapter 1

paq. 1, exps. 7 and 8. See also AHA Cartas, bulto ano 1835, leg. 472 “Legajo decertificaciones de matrıculas de terrenos de San Marcos.”

54. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17; ETEN, “Operacion que muestrael empalme de los ejidos de los pueblos de Quezaltenango y Ostuncalco, y la parte detierra que los indıgenas de Chiquirichapa usurpan a los de San Mateo, 1825,” 1:273–283; AGQ, 8 abril 1836; AGCA B, leg. 3267, exp. 69541; leg. 28568, exp. 248;AGQ, 22 noviembre 1856; AGCA B, leg. 28580, exp. 42; AGQ, 28 febrero, 1 marzoand 28 marzo 1860, and 11 marzo 1866; ETEN, “El Gobernador y Municipalidadde Concepcion Chiquirichapa, solicitando amparo de posecion del terreno ‘LasBarrancas,’ 1867, 1880,”1:305–308; AMSJO, 18 febrero 1885; AGQ, 15 junio 1885;AMSJO, 1 enero 1886; AGQ, leg. 53; and AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 28, exp. 8.

55. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exps. 4, 7, 8, and 11.56. AGCA A1.19, leg. 350, exp. 7263; A1, leg. 5952, exp. 52297; A1, leg. 6043,

exp. 53336; AMSJO, 20 noviembre 1873; bulto ano 1877, Libro de Actas, 15 octubre1878; AGQ, leg. 771; AMSJO, 20 agosto 1895.

57. AGCA A, leg. 6043 , exp. 53336; A1.21.9, leg. 2809 , exp. 24739; ST, Quezal-tenango, paq. 1, exp. 17; ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 2, exp. 1; AGQ, leg. 68, 25 febrero1832 and 18 febrero 1833; AMSJO, 25 febrero 1833, 20 junio 1833; AHA Cartas, bultoano 1834, leg. 79; Cartas ano 1835, leg. 472; AMSJO, 30 enero 1836; AGQ, 23 abril1836; AGCA B, leg. 3265 , exp. 69353; leg. 3267 , exp. 69499; leg. 28660, exp. 85333;AMSJO, 26 julio 1841; AGQ, 31 julio 1841; AGCA B, leg. 3268 , exp. 69765; AGQ,30 Mayo 1846; AGCA B100.1, leg. 28535, exp. 92; B, leg. 28535, exp. 92; AMSJO,6 noviembre 1846.

58. AGQ, 4 abril 1836.59. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1; AGQ, leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La

Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobre avances en sus ejidos,” 31 agosto 1841.Residents of Chiquirichapa made similar complaints about Ostuncalco’s ladinos (e.g.AMSJO, bulto ano 1830, “C. Alce. de la Municipld. de Sn. Juan Ostuncalco BernabeMonterroso” and “Ciudo Benturo Quinion”); Arturo Taracena Arriola’s Invencioncriolla, sueno ladino, pesadilla indıgena: los altos de Guatemala: de region a Estado, 1740–1850(Costa Rica: Editorial Porvenir y CIRMA, 1997), 20, 58–63, 74–75.

60. Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 20, 58–63, 74–75.61. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exps. 2, 3, 13; A1.57, leg. 395, exp. 8262;

AGQ, leg. “ano de 1836. Denuncias de los terrenos baldios del aguacate que haseel Cno. Florentin Rosal;” and Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 58–63, 74–75. Seealso AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 12, listed in the Indice de los expedientesdel Archivo de la Escribanıa del Gobierno y Seccion de Tierras (Guatemala: TipografıaNacional, 1944), 162.

62. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 2, exp. 9; AGQ, leg. 68, 29 agosto 1832 andleg. “ano de 1836. Denuncias . . . ;” AMSJO, 12 marzo 1836.

63. Jorge Gonzalez Alzate, A History of Los Altos, Guatemala: A Study of RegionalConflict and National Integration, 1750–1885 (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1994),119–149, 177–182, and 302–303; Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 10–42, 58–75.

64. Christopher H. Lutz, Historia sociodemografica de Santiago de Guatemala, 1541–1773 (Guatemala: CIRMA, 1982), 371–372; McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 12, 38.

Notes to Chapter 1 205

65. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 97–124; Taracena Arriola, Invencioncriolla, 21–22; Reeves, “Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples,” 439–444.

66. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 124–126, 144–149; Taracena Arriola,Invencion criolla, 24.

67. AGCA A1.111.31, leg. 197, exp. 3987; AMSJO, 15 and 25 enero, 11 marzo,and 26 mayo 1820.

68. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 124–126; Taracena Arriola, Invencioncriolla, 10–42, 58–63.

69. Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 38–41; Gonzalez Alzate, “History of LosAltos,” 178–182; Henry Dunn, Guatimala, or, the Republic of Central America, in 1827–8; being Sketches and Memorandum made during a Twelve Months’ Residence (New York:G. & C. Carvill, 1828), 234.

70. AHQ Miscelaneo, bulto ano 1811, “Padron General del Pueblo de Sn. JuanOstuncalco de la Provincia de Quezaltenango,” and AMSJO, bulto ano 1830, “PadronGeneral. Departamento de Quesaltenango. Municipalidad de Ostuncalco.”

71. AMSJO, 13 noviembre 1812 & 4 or 7 enero 1813; Cesareo de Armellada, Lacausa indıgena en las Cortes de Cadiz (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispanica, 1959),“Decreto CCXIV de 4 de enero de 1813,” 97–100; RLA, “N. 378 Ley 1a.,” 27enero 1825, 52–55, and “N. 379 Ley 2a.,” 26 agosto 1829, 56–59; “N. 380 Ley 3a.,”30 noviembre 1831, 59; “N. 381 Ley 4a,” 20 septiembre 1833, 59–63; “N. 383 Ley6a,” 12 abril 1834, 64–65; “N. 384 Ley 7a.,” 14 agosto 1835, 65; “N. 386 Ley 9a.,” 5diciembre 1835, 66; “N. 387 Ley 10a.,” 28 abril 1836, 66–67; “N. 388 Ley 11a.,” 13agosto 1836, 67–69; RLG, 8 septiembre 1832, 3:294–295.

72. On the thirty eight caballerıa figure, see AGCA A, leg. 6043, exp. 53336.McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 52 and 361 n. 17, provides a more exact measurementof 38.75 caballerıas for a legal ejido of one square league.

73. E.g. RLRI, Libro IIII, Tıtulo XII, Leyes VII, VIIII, XVII, and XVIII, 41,43–44, and Libro VI, Tıtulo III, Ley VIIII, 209.

74. AGCA A, leg. 6043, exp. 53336; ETEN, “Operacion que muestra el empalmede los ejidos de los pueblos de Quezaltenango y Ostuncalco, y la parte de tierraque los indıgenas de Chiquirichapa usurpan a los de San Mateo, 1825,” 1:273–283;AHA Cartas, leg. 79 “Copias de las matrıculas de tierras de varios duenos, expedidapor los Jefes Polıticos de San Marcos,” 31 enero 1834; AGCA B, leg. 3633, exp.85290.

75. AGCA A, leg. 6043, exp. 53336.76. RLG, 8 septiembre 1832, 3:294–295; RLA, “N. 381 Ley 4a.,” 20 septiembre

1833, 59–63; “N. 383 Ley 6a.,” 12 abril 1834, 64–65; “N. 384 Ley 7a.,” 14 agosto1835, 65; “N. 386 Ley 9a.,” 5 diciembre 1835, 66.

77. AGCA B, leg. 3633, exp. 85290; AHA Cartas, bulto ano 1834, leg. 79“Copias de las matrıculas de tierras de varios duenos, expedida por los Jefes Polıticosde San Marcos,” and bulto ano 1835, leg. 338 “Legajo de matriculas de terrenos dedistintos propietarios del Departamento de Totonicapan,” and leg. 472 “Legajo decertificaciones de matriculas de Terrenos de varios duenos y departamentos.”

78. RLA, “N. 387 Ley 10a.,” 28 abril 1836, 66–67, and “N. 388 Ley 11a.,” 13agosto 1836, 67–69.

206 Notes to Chapter 2

79. Censo rental refers to a form of long-term rental contract dating from colonialtimes, in which noncommunity members leased community-owned land for a periodof several years, paying an annual canon or fee based on the assessed value of theproperty in question. For more on this topic see RLA, “N. 378 Ley 1a.,” 27 enero1825, 52–55, and “N. 379 Ley 2a.,” 26 agosto 1829, 56–59; and McCreery, RuralGuatemala, 82.

80. AGCA B, leg. 3265, exp. 69355.81. See for example, Oliver LaFarge, “Maya Ethnology: The Sequence of Cul-

tures,” in The Maya and Their Neighbors, ed. Clarence L. Hay et al (New York:D. Appleton Century, 1940), 281–291. For fuller documentation of this historio-graphical trend, see the Introduction, or my Liberals, Conservatives, and IndigenousPeoples, 78 n 100.

82. E.g., W. George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutz, “Conquest and Popula-tion: Maya Demography in Historical Perspective,” LARR 29 (1994): 136; ThomasT. Veblen, “Declinacion de la poblacion indıgena en Totonicapan, Guatemala,”Mesoamerica 3 (1982): 61–65.

83. See the appendix of my dissertation, Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peo-ples, 439–444.

84. MacLeod, Historia socio-economica, 26–27, 106–107, 109–110, 177, 180, 186–188, 258–260, 290–291.

85. Thomas T. Veblen, The Ecological, Cultural and Historical Bases of Forest Preser-vation in Totonicapan, Guatemala (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1975).

86. Veblen, Ecological, Cultural, and Historical Bases, 293–294, 300–301, 313, 339–342, 346–360, and 380 n. 79.

87. Veblen, Ecological, Cultural, and Historical Bases, 293–294, 305–306, 335–337,341, 347–350, 352–353, 360–363, 365, and 379–380 n. 68 and n. 70; MacLeod,Historia socio-economica, 181.

88. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660.89. MacLeod, Historia socio-economica, 186–187.90. Elıas Zamora Acosta, Los mayas de las tierras altas en el siglo XVI: tradicion

y cambio en Guatemala (Sevilla: Diputacion Provincial de Sevilla, 1985), 218.91. RF, 8:181–182; AGCA A1.17, leg. 210, exp. 5009; A, leg. 5963, exp. 52305;

A1.17.1, leg. 2020, exp. 13999; “Relacion de Lizaurzaval y Anssola,” 318–323.

notes to chapter 2

1. David J. McCreery, in Development and the State in Reforma Guatemala, 1871–1885(Athens: Ohio State University, 1983), 1, dates the Reforma from 1871 to 1885.

2. Although Table 2.1 contains information on coffee production for the entiredepartment of Quezaltenango, the Costa Cuca was by far the largest source of coffeewithin the department: Direccion General de Estadısticas, “Informe de la DireccionGeneral de Estadıstica. 1888,” Memoria de la Secretaria de Fomento de la Republica(Guatemala: Tipografıa “La Union,” 1889).

3. San Martın’s ejido was first measured in 1744, and found to contain 346 ca-ballerıas. Later, more accurate calculations, however, uncovered 1,085 caballerıas, or

Notes to Chapter 2 207

approximately 482 sq. km (AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1). To convertfrom caballerıas to square kilometers I use Jim Handy’s figure of 109.8 acres per ca-ballerıa, on p. 69 of his Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala (Boston: South End,1984), and then the standard equivalence of 247.1 acres per sq. km. In terms of itslocation and boundaries, the ejido was bordered to the north by the territory of SanJuan Ostuncalco and Concepcion Chiquirichapa, to the east by the Rıo Ocosito,and to the west by the Rıo Naranjo and the lands of Santiago Coatepeque. AlthoughI have been unable to reestablish the southern boundary, the ejido clearly reachedinto the present-day towns of Flores Costa Cuca, Genova, El Asintal and Nuevo SanCarlos.

4. David J. McCreery, “State Power, Indigenous Communities, and Land inNineteenth-Century Guatemala, 1820–1920,” in Guatemalan Indians and the State:1540–1988, ed. Carol A. Smith (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 97, 108–109.

5. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17; A1.57, leg. 395, exp. 8262; AMSJO,15 septiembre 1830; 27 agosto 1832; bulto anos 1834–1836, “Co. Jues de primeraynsta.,” “C. G. D.,” and 12 marzo 1836; bulto anos 1842–1846, untitled documentdated 1836; 27 junio 1837; bulto anos 1840–1841, 2 agosto 1839; AGQ, leg. 68,29 agosto 1832; leg. “ano de 1836. Denuncias . . . ;” and leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. LaMunicipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobre avances en sus ejidos.”

6. AGQ, 16 febrero and 16 abril 1839; AMSJO, bulto anos 1840–1841, 2 agosto1839. See also AMSJO, 1 febrero 1837. The legislation regarding municipal gov-ernments and, in particular, alcaldes auxiliares, during this period is found in RLG,“N. 300 Ley 1a.,” 11 octubre 1825, 1:480–481, and “N. 310 Ley 11a.,” 28 septiembre1836, 1:492–503.

7. AGQ, leg. “ano de 1836. Denuncias . . . ,” 29 julio 1834; AMSJO, bulto ano1835, “C. G. D.;” and AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 13 mayo 1839.The quote is from AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin sequeja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 20 abril 1841. Unfortunately, the authors are notidentified individually.

8. AGQ, leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobreavances en sus ejidos,” 18 diciembre 1841.

9. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 18 septiembre 1839.10. AMSJO, 12 marzo 1836; 8 junio 1849; AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3,

exp. 1, 19 julio, 2 and 15 agosto, 18 and 24 septiembre, and 28 octubre 1839; B,leg. 28646, exp. 722; AGQ, leg. “ano de 1836. Denuncias . . . ;” leg. 156 “Ano de1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 3 and 8 mayo1841; leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobreavances en sus ejidos,” 3, 21, and 22 junio, and 2 julio 1841; leg. 159 “Ano de 1841.Sobre que Jose Marıa Colomo pague cantidad de pesos a los ladinos que siembran enlos terrenos de Sn. Martin Sacatepequez.” This view also is reinforced by agrimensorValerio Ignacio Rivas, in his Vindicacion que hace Valerio Ignacio Rivas (Guatemala:Imprenta del Gobierno, 1838). Rivas’ version of events is discussed below.

11. AGQ, leg. “ano de 1836. Denuncias . . . ,” 29 julio 1834 and 24 octubre 1836;AMSJO, bulto ano 1835, “C. G. D.;” and AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comunde San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 20 abril 1841.

208 Notes to Chapter 2

12. For documentation of the region’s population figures, see the appendix in mydissertation Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples: The Subaltern Roots of Na-tional Politics in Nineteenth Century Guatemala (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999), 439–444.

13. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 15 agosto, 18–19 and 24 septiembre1839; AGQ, leg. “ano de 1836. Denuncias . . . ” and leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. LaMunicipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobre avances en sus ejidos,” 3 junio, 2 julio,and 31 agosto 1841.

14. Again, see the appendix in my dissertation Liberals, Conservatives, and IndigenousPeoples, 439–444.

15. A sampling of crop damage complaints for the coast during the 1830s arefound in AMSJO, bulto ano 1830, “C. Alce. de la Municipld. de Sn. Juan OstuncalcoBernabe Monterroso;” 27 agosto 1832; bulto ano 1835, “C. G. D.;” 12 marzo and19 octubre 1836; 22 enero 1838. See also Rivas, Vindicacion, 6–7.

16. This trend, including the questionable involvement of government officials, iscaptured most succinctly in AGQ, leg. “ano de 1836. Denuncias . . . ;” AGCA B, leg.3265, exp. 69355; and Rivas, Vindicacion. See also Arturo Taracena Arriola’s Invencioncriolla, sueno ladino, pesadilla indıgena: los altos de Guatemala: de region a Estado, 1740–1850(Costa Rica: Editorial Porvenir y CIRMA, 1997), 60–62, for a listing of governmentofficials who denounced land in western Guatemala during the first decades of thenineteenth century.

17. RLA, “N. 387 Ley 10a.,” 28 abril 1836, 66–67, and “N. 388 Ley 11a.,” 13agosto 1836, 67–69.

18. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 20 abril and 4 mayo 1841; AGCA C.1, leg. 197, exp. 5260; AGCAST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 13 mayo 1839; AGQ, leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. LaMunicipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobre avances en sus ejidos,” 18 diciembre1841.

19. The Livingston Codes divided Guatemala into 12 districts, each with severalcircuits. Ostuncalco was made a circuit cabecera within the district of Quezaltenango,which meant that the town would serve as the seat for a new circuit judge. In ad-dition to the cabecera, the judge was to hear cases from all of the towns within thecircuit, which in this case included Chiquirichapa, San Martın, Siguila, Cajola, andCabrican. See the Ley Organica de la administracion de justicia por jurados en el Estado deGuatemala (Guatemala, 1836), esp. 4–15; Mario Rodrıguez, “The Livingston Codesin the Guatemalan Crisis of 1837–1838,” in Applied Enlightenment: Nineteenth CenturyLiberalism, 1830–1839 (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1955); Ralph Lee Wood-ward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821–1871 (Athens:University of Georgia, 1993), 53.

20. AGCA B86.2, leg. 1160, exp. 27284; B, leg. 3266, exps. 69365, 69377, 69414;AMSJO, 20, 22 and 30 enero, 3 and febrero 1837; Ley Organica, 14, 18; and RLG,“N. 310, Ley 11a,” 28 septiembre 1836, 1:492–503.

21. B, leg. 3266, exps. 69377, 69414; AMSJO, 22, 25, 27 and 30 enero, 3, 9, 10,19 and 21 febrero 1837. This was the first time that an agent of the national state hadever resided in the town, and the fact that a noncommunity member was appointed

Notes to Chapter 2 209

to the post definitely lowered the probability of success. Indeed, Carrera and theConservative government associated with him were much more astute in this regard,choosing local ladinos to fill the post of district administrator (see Chapter 5 below).

22. AMSJO, 2 septiembre, 13, 22 and 31 octubre, 9 noviembre 1823, and 16 and20 enero, 26 febrero, 13 and 29 marzo, and 1 abril 1824; AGCA B, leg. 3266, exps.69414, 69381; C.1, leg. 197, exp. 5260; Rivas, Vindicacion. Note that due to hisefforts on behalf of indigenous communities Rivas was eventually accused of beingan agent of Rafael Carrera and jailed.

23. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 13 mayo 1839 and C.1, leg. 197,exp. 5260. The rebellion was defeated on 24 March 1837.

24. AGCA B. leg. 3266, exp. 69381 and 69370; C.1, leg. 197, exp. 5260.25. Historian Mario Rodrıguez counts more than thirty rebellions in 1837 alone.

See his A Palmerstonian diplomat in Central America: Frederick Chatfield, Esq. (Tucson:University of Arizona, 1964), 138–139.

26. RLA, “N. 390 Ley 13a.,” 2 noviembre 1837, 70–72. Note, however, that thelimit of thirty eight caballerıas remained in force.

27. Rivas neglects to mention the exact date that he was hired (Vindicacion, 1–7),but Colomo was contracted on 7 Agosto 1837 (AGQ, leg. 159 “Ano de 1841. Sobreque Jose Maria Colomo pague cantidad de pesos a los ladinos que siembran en losterrenos de Sn. Martin Sacatepequez”).

28. Rodas served as Quezaltenango’s jefe polıtico (or Gefe Departamental, as theoffice was called at that time) from the very beginning of 1835 through February1837, when it appears that he moved to Guatemala City as a delegate to the statelegislature. He also may have served as jefe polıtico in 1834, but I do not haveexplicit information on him prior to January 1835. See AMSJO, 19 enero and 11mayo 1835; AGCA B, leg. 3266, exp. 69377; and Montufar, Resena historica, 2:347.The state of Los Altos declared its independence from Guatemala in early February1838, and lasted until late January 1840. See Jorge Gonzalez Alzate, A History of LosAltos, Guatemala: A Study of Regional Conflict and National Integration, 1750–1885 (Ph.D.diss., Tulane University, 1994), 379, 415–417. Aside from Macario Rodas, anothergovernment official who denounced land within San Martın’s ejido was Jose MarıaGalvez, a member of the new Los Altos state. In addition, Felix Morales, the Juezde Circuito of Ostuncalco (see above), also denounced land on the coast, althoughit appears to have been west of San Martın, under the administrative jurisdiction ofSan Marcos. On Galvez, see AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 17 junio1839; and Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 114. Morales is listed in AGQ, leg. “ano de1836. Denuncias . . . ”

29. Rivas, Vindicacion, 6.30. Although Rivas does not reveal the identity of Quezaltenango’s magistrado eje-

cutor, it appears that Manuel Pineda de Mont occupied the post at the time (AMSJO,10 junio and 11 noviembre 1837).

31. Rivas, Vindicacion, 6–7. Unfortunately, Rivas never names San Martın’s offi-cials, presumably because they were indigenous. Neither does he make clear whythe magistrado ejecutor would jail Ostuncalco’s juez de paz. The implication seems tobe that the magistrado suspected Galindo, as well as Ralda, of conspiring with the

210 Notes to Chapter 2

revolutionary sanmartineros, perhaps in approving the latter’s actions against Robles’cattle, either before or after the fact.

32. Rivas, Vindicacion, 6–17.33. This according to Rivas (Vindicacion, 11–14).34. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 13 mayo 1839.35. Rivas, Vindicacion, 9–15.36. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 4 and 8

mayo 1841; leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobreavances en sus ejidos,” 24 mayo 1841. Twentyone reales convert to two pesos, fivereales (8 reales = 1 peso).

37. Rivas, Vindicacion, 5.38. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 13 mayo 1839.39. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 3 and 8

mayo 1841; leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobreavances en sus ejidos,” 3 junio 1841; leg. 159 “Ano de 1841. Sobre que Jose MariaColomo pague cantidad de pesos a los ladinos que siembran en los terrenos de Sn.Martin Sacatepequez.”

40. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 15 agosto, 18, 19 and 24 septiembre,1839. Among these were Manuel Orellana, Zenon Mazariegos, Maximo Castillo,Juan de Dios de Leon, Mariano Castillo, and the children of Jose Rivas.

41. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 3, 5 and8 mayo 1841; leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequezsobre avances en sus ejidos,” 24 mayo and 3 junio 1841; leg. 159 “Ano de 1841. Sobreque Jose Maria Colomo pague cantidad de pesos a los ladinos que siembran en losterrenos de Sn. Martin Sacatepequez.”

42. Padre Orellana died sometime between July 1834 and December 1835(AMSJO, 11 julio 1834; AGCA B83.2, leg. 3594, exp. 82505).

43. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 3 mayo1841 (quotation); leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequezsobre avances en sus ejidos,” 3 junio 1841.

44. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 3 mayo1841. Orellana recalls that Paz spoke through municipal secretary Ralda, and Peres,the interpreter.

45. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 3 mayo1841.

46. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 3 mayo1841.

47. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 28 octubre 1839; AGQ, leg. 159“Ano de 1841. Sobre que Jose Maria Colomo pague cantidad de pesos a los ladinosque siembran en los terrenos de Sn. Martin Sacatepequez;” AGCA B100.1, leg.1419, exp. 33282.

48. Gonzalez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 397–399 and 412–421; and Woodward,Rafael Carrera, 114–118.

49. RLA, “N. 390 Ley 13a.,” 2 noviembre 1837, 70–72. Cf. Cesareo de Armellada,La causa indıgena en las Cortes de Cadiz (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispanica,1959), 46.

Notes to Chapter 2 211

50. No new land laws were even decreed under Carrera until September 1845,and this simply reiterated the stipulations of the last Liberal statute. See RLA,“N. 392 Ley 15a.,” 19 septiembre 1845, 73.

51. Eric R. Wolf, “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoamerica andCentral Java,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13 (Spring 1957): 1–18. For fullerdocumentation of the debates surrounding Wolf ’s concept, see my Liberals, Conser-vatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 115 n 56.

52. Two approaches that emphasize the contested nature of community politicsand indigenous society are Florencia E. Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making ofPostcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California, 1995), 11, 64–86,324–330; and Steve J. Stern, The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power inLate Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1995), 194–202.

53. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 4 and 8 mayo 1841.

54. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 4 and 8 mayo 1841; leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de SanMartin Sacatepequez sobre avances en sus ejidos,” 24 mayo, 3, 12, 21, and 22 junio, 2julio, 31 agosto, and 18 diciembre 1841; AGCA B, leg. 3268, exps. 69734 and 69700.

55. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 4 mayo 1841.

56. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 4 mayo 1841. The first quote is from Andres, the second fromMartın.

57. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 20 and 21 abril, 4 mayo 1841; leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd.de San Martin Sacatepequez sobre avances en sus ejidos,” 12 junio and 2 julio 1841.

58. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 20 abril 1841.

59. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 20 abril 1841.

60. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 20 abril 1841.

61. The four witnesses were Antonio Ramırez, Francisco Gomez (“maestro decoro”), Antonio Gomez (“mayor de la iglesia”), and Sebastian Guzman (“segundofiscal”) (AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 21 abril 1841).

62. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 8 mayo 1841.

63. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 8 mayo 1841.

64. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 8 mayo 1841.

65. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 8 mayo 1841.

66. AGCA B, leg. 3637, exp. 85868. Although I did not find evidence that explic-itly corroborated the number of possessions Maximo Castillo claimed on the coast,

212 Notes to Chapter 2

it is clear that he did have at least one finca within San Martın’s boundaries at thetime of this conflict. The same was true for both his father and his brother, whoshared the name Gregorio Castillo. As this conflict unfolded, Maximo, under theadvice of his father, placed the finca in the hands of an indigenous resident of Con-cepcion Chiquirichapa, Pascual Perez, with the understanding that for the time beingPascual would continue to pay Maximo half of the annual earnings that he derivedfrom the property (AMSJO, bulto ano 1855, “Libro del Juez Preventivo,” 26 octubre1853.

67. AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra suGdor. i Alcaldes,” 4 mayo 1841.

68. AGQ, leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequezsobre avances en sus ejidos,” 24 mayo 1841.

69. AGQ, leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequezsobre avances en sus ejidos,” 24 mayo 1841, and passim.

70. AGQ, leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequezsobre avances en sus ejidos,” 2 julio 1841.

71. AGQ, leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequezsobre avances en sus ejidos,” 2 julio, 31 agosto, and 18 diciembre 1841; AGCA B,leg. 3268, exp. 69700; ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 28 octubre 1839. Recallthat San Martın’s officials did not immediately challenge the intruders because theyhad lost their title in a fire in 1811, and they were afraid that armed with only themeasurement itself their claims would be denied.

72. AGQ, leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequezsobre avances en sus ejidos,” 3 junio and 18 diciembre 1841. The presidential decreeis from the second set of documents, although a copy also may be found in AGCAB, leg. 3269, exp. 69911.

73. AMSJO, 8 junio 1849.74. AGQ, leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez

sobre avances en sus ejidos,” 31 agosto 1841; AMSJO, bulto ano 1856, “Lista de losYndivids. qe. havitan en la Costa y terrenos de S. Martin.”

75. AMSJO, 5 enero 1850.76. AMSJO, 7 febrero 1852.77. Two examples are Simon Ocheita and Perfecto Galindo. See AMSJO, bulto

ano 1856, “Lista de los Yndivids. qe. havitan en la Costa y terrenos de S. Martin;”19 diciembre 1852; 9 enero 1841.

78. AMSJO, 16 mayo, 14 junio, 1 julio, 29 julio, and 18 octubre 1853; 28 abril and11 noviembre 1854; “Libro de Actas,” 21 septiembre 1855.

79. AMSJO, bulto ano 1863, leg. 13 “Padron de los contrivuyentes ladinos decomunidad, que deben satisfaserla, tanto del ano pasado los qe. no la pagaron, cuantola que corresponde al corriente de 1863.”

80. AMSJO, 5 enero 1863.81. AMSJO, 17 enero and 27 and 28 febrero 1866.82. AGQ, 4 abril 1839; AMSJO, 2 agosto 1839; 24 marzo 1840; 2 enero 1846;

7 enero 1848; bulto ano 1865, “Libro de Actas,” 20 diciembre 1864; 9 diciembre1867; 4 enero 1869.

Notes to Chapter 2 213

83. San Jose Pie de la Cuesta, also referred to as Las Marıas, became Colomba (seediscussion below). El Asintal was precursor to the town of the same name (FrancisGall, ed., Diccionario geografico de Guatemala, 4 vols. (Guatemala: Instituto GeograficoNacional, 1976–1983), 1:151). Finally, Taltut and El Zapote became Genova andFlores Costa Cuca, respectively (on Genova, see AMSJO, bulto ano 1868, “SenorAlcalde 1o. de San Juan Ostuncalco;” 9 marzo 1869; and Gall, Diccionario, 1:461;on Flores, see AMSJO, 16 octubre 1862 and Gall, Diccionario, 2:118). El Zapote wassettled by residents of the highland ladino town San Antonio Bobos from at least theearly 1860s.

84. Recall, from the introduction, that this included the towns of Cabrican, SanAntonio Bobos, Cajola, Siguila, Chiquirichapa, San Martın, and finally Ostuncalcoitself. See chapter 5 for more on the development of the district.

85. AMSJO, 3 abril and 16 noviembre 1847; 5 octubre 1849; 8 abril 1853; 23diciembre 1858; 26 marzo 1859; bulto ano 1865, “Libro de Actas,” 16 abril 1866; 25abril 1866; AGCA B, leg. 28606, exp. 267; AMSJO, 20 and 26 febrero and 11 marzo1869; bulto ano 1869, leg. 34 “Recibos de jornals. de Culpan.”

86. Recall that a square league amounted to approximately 38 caballerıas.87. AMSJO, 15 octubre 1855; AGCA B, leg. 28568, exp. 233. The Corregidor’s

comments are found in the second source.88. AGCA B, leg. 28568, exp. 233; leg. 28572, exps. 72 and 96.89. AMSJO, 19 marzo 1854.90. AMSJO, 26 septiembre 1854; “Libro de Actas en que la Municipalidad del

Pueblo de Ostuncalco debera continuar asentando las actas de sus respectivos acuerdosen el ano de 1854 (hasta 1862),” 16 junio 1855; Procesos judiciales (criminales), exp.“Criminal Ano de 1855. Contra del indigena Manuel Ramirez, por presunciones desedicion contra las autoridades de Sn. Martin,” 22 junio 1855 (contains the quotedmaterial); AGQ, leg. “No. 262. Visita Departamental. Ano 1855,” 13 junio 1855.

91. During the course of the investigation, which began in late December, 1856,San Martın’s alcalde auxiliar for the coast, Francisco Lopes, claimed that he hadreceived 15 pesos from the sansebastianos to use community land, and that he hadpassed on 13 of these pesos to then governor Peres. The former governor, however,vociferously denied the allegation. Unfortunately, the existing documentation doesnot indicate how the case was resolved (AGQ, “Sor. Comte. Gral. de los Departs.de los Altos, Corregr. de el de Quezalto. Juzgado Prevento. del Distrito de S. JuanOstuncalco,” 18 diciembre 1856; AMSJO, 18, 19 and 31 diciembre, 1856). The res-ignation of governor Peres is covered in AMSJO, 16 and 27 octubre 1856; and AGQ,“Sor. Corregr. del Departamto.,” 17 octubre 1856. As for San Jose Pie de la Cuesta,little work actually was completed on the new town even as late as March 1857, thepoint at which San Martın’s opposition caused the project to be canceled (AMSJO,4 and 17 enero, 31 marzo and 30 abril 1856; AGQ, leg. “Corregimiento del Depar-tamento de Quezaltenango. Copiador de Oficios y Ordenes del Corregimiento pr.los Sres. Mntros. del Supmo. Gobierno y otros funcionos. Ano de 1856,” 20 enero1857; AGCA B, leg. 28568, exp. 233).

92. AGCA B, leg. 28568, exp. 233.93. AGCA B, leg. 28572, exp. 96.

214 Notes to Chapter 2

94. There is a vast amount of documentary evidence for this. Here are just fourexamples: AMSJO, 27 enero 1852; 12 mayo and 16 octubre 1862; 26 marzo 1863.

95. See the sources from the previous notes, as well as AGQ, leg. 262 “VisitaDepartamental. Ano 1855,” 13 junio 1855; leg. 521 “Medidas de los terrenos deSan Francisco Miramar, hecho por Herman Au, Agrn. Licdo. 1871, 1873 y 1874,”15 junio 1859 and passim; AMSJO, “Libro de Actas . . . ,” 16 junio 1855; Procesosjudiciales (criminales), 22 junio 1855 and 9 marzo 1869.

96. Gall, Diccionario, 3:83, 794.97. “Tıtulo C’oyoi,” transcribed in K’iche’ and translated into English in Quichean

Civilization: The Ethnohistoric, Ethnographic, and Archaeological Sources, ed. Robert M.Carmack (Berkeley: University of California, 1973), 300–301 and 335–337; “Tıtulosde la casa Izquin-Nehaib, senora del territorio de Otzoya,” or “Tıtulo Nijaib I,” 71–96, esp. 77–78, and “Tıtulo Real de Don Francisco Izquin-Nehaib” or “Tıtulo NijaibII,” 96–117, esp. 101–103, both transcribed in Cronicas Indıgenas de Guatemala, ed.Adrian Recinos (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 1957). See also Gall, Diccionario,3:426–427; and Elıas Zamora Acosta, Los mayas de las tierras altas en el siglo XVI: tradiciony cambio en Guatemala (Sevilla: Diputacion Provincial de Sevilla, 1985), 344.

98. This according to the “Carta que Diego Garces escribio a la Real Audienciade Guatemala . . . ,” transcribed in Pedro Carrasco, Sobre los indios de Guatemala(Guatemala: Ministerio de Educacion, 1982), 89–97. See esp. 93–95. Note that SanSebastian may have also been an estancia of Quezaltenango (Elıas Zamora Acosta, “Elcontrol vertical de diferentes pisos ecologicos: aplicacion del modelo al Occidentede Guatemala,” Revista de la Universidad Complutense 27 (1979): 264–265; cf. ZamoraAcosta, Los mayas, 343).

99. “Pueblos y parroquias en Suchitepequez colonial,” Mesoamerica 5 (1984): 172,175.

100. San Felipe’s ejido size is listed variously as 37.5 and 38.25 caballerıas (AGCAB, leg. 28590, exps. 206 and 220). In fact, McCreery notes that altogether Zunil’sresidents titled a total of 68 caballerıas in the area of San Felipe (Rural Guatemala,144). On San Martın Zapotitlan, see AGCA ST, Quezaltenango paq. 1, exp. 15.

101. AGCA B, leg. 28596, exp. 131; AGQ, leg. 262 “Visita departamental. Ano1855,” 11 marzo 1865 and 27 marzo 1867; and AMM, 19 abril 1869.

102. AGCA C.1, leg. 4, leg. 66; ST, Quezaltenango paq. 4, exp. 5; and AHACartas, leg. 338 “Legajo de matriculas de terrenos de distintos propietarios del de-partamento de Totonicapan,” 4 abril 1835. See also Benson Saler, The Road fromEl Palmar: Change, Continuity and Conservatism in a Quiche Community (Ph.D. diss.,University of Pennsylvania, 1960), 28–30.

103. RLG, “N. 450, Ley 20a.,” 4 mayo 1853, 1:760–761. Note that a quintal equals100 lbs. (McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 419).

104. AGCA B, leg. 28590, exp. 206.105. AGCA B, leg. 28576, exp. 156; leg. 28586, exp. 219; leg. 28590, exps. 206 and

220. Incidentally, these documents tell a similar, if less detailed, story for nearby SanMartın Zapotitlan, where ladinos also usurped town lands by constituting a bogusladino municipalidad.

106. AGCA B, leg. 28576, exp. 156; leg. 28586, exp. 219; and leg. 28587, exp. 18.

Notes to Chapter 2 215

107. AGCA B, leg. 28576, exp. 156; and leg. 28586, exp. 219.108. AGCA B, leg. 28576, exp. 156; leg. 28586, exp. 219; leg. 28587, exp. 18; leg.

28590, exps. 206 and 220.109. AGCA B, leg. 28590, exp. 220.110. AGCA B, leg. 28590, exp. 220.111. AGQ, 9 and 14 agosto 1863.112. AGCA B, leg. 28595, exps. 39 and 50; Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los

Altos,” 521–536; McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 165–166.113. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 165.114. AMM, 20 octubre 1865 and 19 abril 1969; AGQ, leg. “165. Civiles ano de

1859. Juan Perez, Manuel Pernape, Bartolo Siq y la Municipd. del Palmar pr. mutuosperjuicios en sus poseciones,” noviembre 1859; 20 julio and 3 agosto 1866; leg. 272“Visita Departamental. Ano 1855,” 27 marzo 1867; leg. 993 “Civil Ano de 1874. ElCno. Mariano Henriquez, solicita en venta dos caballerias de los terrenos baldios delPalmar, situadas al occidente del rio Nima;” and leg. 475 “Ano 1874. Solicitudes delterreno del Palmar;” AGCA ST, Quezaltenango paq. 4, exp. 5; and B, leg. 28645,exp. exps. 648, 653, and 654.

115. AMM, 20 octubre 1865 and 19 abril 1969; and AGQ, leg. 272 “Visita De-partamental. Ano 1855,” 27 marzo 1867.

116. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 249.117. Many scholars, for example, argue that without private land titles, incipient

coffee planters could not gain the credit necessary to establish themselves. See CiroF. S. Cardoso, “Historia economica del cafe en Centroamerica (siglo XIX): estudiocomparativo,” Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos 4 (Enero–Abril 1975): 14; ThomasR. Herrick, Desarrollo economico y polıtico de Guatemala durante el perıodo de Justo RufinoBarrios (1871–1885) (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria de Guatemala/EDUCA,1974), 27–29; and Robert G. Williams, States and Social Evolution: Coffee and theRise of National Governments in Central America (Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina, 1994), 41, 164. Such an argument is belied by the dramatic growth ofcoffee exports prior to 1871 (see Table Intro.1), as well as by the details of Quezal-tenango’s Costa Cuca. Moreover, the very authors who make these claims go onto provide contradictory evidence. Williams states, with regard to “short-term croploans,” that “for long-term investments such as coffee cultivation, the system wasinadequate” (164). Yet this conclusion seems to contradict his earlier comment that“[t]he most regular source of finance [for the coffee boom] followed the colonialpattern of short-term loans, using future crops, not improved land, as security. . . . Astrade ties with Europe and North America were regularized . . . a more abundantsource of short-term finance began to be tapped. . . . Finance capital began to flowinto Central America through trade channels. Coffee import houses in the industrial-ized countries would borrow from banks or advance their own funds to export housesin Central America. The export houses would then advance funds to large growersor merchant intermediaries, who would make loans to smaller growers. As modernprocessing mills were built, they became a conduit for credit to growers. The collateralat each step was coffee to be delivered at harvest time . . . ” (154, emphasis added. See also155, 165, 193, 237, 242, 258). Likewise, Cardoso writes that coffee could not fully

216 Notes to Chapter 3

develop under the Conservatives because they were unable to impose the necessaryreforms in land tenure and agricultural credit, among other things. Thus the coffeerevolution had to await the Liberal revolution (14). Later on, however, Cardoso notesthat even after the Liberals took power, future harvests, not property, continued tobe among the most common methods by which cafetaleros secured credit (34).

118. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 163–164.119. Lowell Gudmundson and Hector Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 1821–1871:

Liberalism before Liberal Reform (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1995), 1, 93.Historian Todd Little-Siebold makes a persuasive argument for “decaffeinating”Guatemala’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century historiography in “Guatemala andthe Dream of a Nation: National Policy and Regional Practice in the Liberal Era,1871–1945” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1995), esp. 253–279.

120. Data from Ostuncalco support such a conclusion. A review of some 200land title requests that followed the issuance of Decree 170 in 1877 reveals that44 were from indigenous residents of the town, while another 49 could not beassociated with one ethnic group or another (AMSJO Tıtulos supletorios, bulto anos1878–1889). Given the advanced state of decay in which I found these solicitudes Ipresume that this is but a fraction of the true number requesting title to communityland.

notes to chapter 3

1. AGCA B, leg. 28586, exp. 205.2. David J. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University

Press, 1994), 130. For LaFarge, see “Maya Ethnology: The Sequence of Cultures,”in The Maya and Their Neighbors, ed. Clarence L. Hay, et al (New York: D. AppletonCentury, 1940), 283–287 and passim.

3. Lovell, “Surviving Conquest: The Maya of Guatemala in Historical Perspec-tive,” LARR 23 (1988): 37–39. For other examples, see the Introduction, or myLiberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples: The Subaltern Roots of National Politics inNineteenth Century Guatemala (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999),178 n 3.

4. Barrios issued a circular on the subject of mandamientos or forced labor draftson November 3, 1876 (AMSJO). His definitive “Reglamento de jornaleros” wasemitted April 3, 1877 (LIG, “Decreto Gubernativo No. 177,” 35–42).

5. David J. McCreery, Debt Servitude in Rural Guatemala, 1876–1936, HAHR 63(November 1983): 736, 755–756; and Rural Guatemala, 283–288, 323.

6. Greg Grandin affirms this point for the K’iche’ communities of eastern Quezal-tenango during the late colonial period. See The Blood of Guatemala: A History ofRace and Nation (Durham: Duke University, 2000), 32–33.

7. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 109.8. “Relacion de Ignacio de Urbina,” BAGG 2 (Abril 1937): 316–318, and

“Relacion de Gregorio Lizaurzaval y Anssola,” BAGG 2 (Abril 1937): 318–323.9. The information referred to in this and subsequent paragraphs is found in

AMSJO Correspondencia, beginning with the bulto for years 1808–1819, and,excepting 1848, continuing through all subsequent bultos until 1870. Of special

Notes to Chapter 3 217

importance are the notebooks in which Ostuncalco’s ladino alcalde kept the detailsof each agreement. These exist for 1853–4, 1855, 1862, 1863, 1867, 1868, and 1870,and I have tabulated 327 of their debt-related entries in a spreadsheet database. Thenotebooks are titled as follows for each year: “Libro en que se cientan las razonesde las personas que ponen plazas para satisfacer deudas y no otorgan obligaciones”(1854); “Libro en que se asientan las rasones de las personas que ponen plasos parasatisfaser deuda” (1855); “Cuaderno de deudores para el ano de 1862;” “Libro deConocimientos y Razones” (1863); “Libro de Razones del Juzgado 1o.” (1867);“Libro de Conosimientos del Juzgado 1o. Municipal” (1868); and “Libro deConocimientos del Juzgado 1o.” (1870).

10. For example, of the 327 tabulated debts mentioned in the notes above, almost64% fell between March and July.

11. Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic ofGuatemala, 1821–1871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 390–391.

12. This calculation is based on 220 of the 327 tabulated debts mentioned inthe preceding notes for which the creditor’s name was listed. Gender could not bedetermined for slightly more than 6% of these 220 creditors.

13. A similarly gendered profile of fiadores emerged from AGQ, leg. 112 “Anode 1836,” 29 febrero 1836. This document lists aguardiente patent holders and theirfiadores in the department of Quezaltenango, which at that time included much ofpresent-day San Marcos. Although 58 of the 72 individually held patents pertainedto women, 68 of the 72 corresponding fiadores were men.

14. “Relacion de Ignacio de Urbina,” 316–318, “Relacion de Gregorio Lizaurzavaly Anssola” (4 noviembre 1765), 318–323.

15. Christopher H. Lutz, Historia sociodemografica de Santiago de Guatemala,1541–1773 (Antigua: CIRMA, 1982), 335–342, 356 n. 13. See also Robert M.Carmack, “Social and Demographic Patterns in an Eighteenth-Century Censusfrom Tecpanaco, Guatemala,” in The Historical Demography of Highland Guatemala,eds. Robert M. Carmack, John Early, and Christopher Lutz (Albany: Institute forMesoamerican Studies, State University of New York, 1982), 146–147.

16. AMSJO, 27 septiembre 1819; 8 enero 1821; 21 enero 1828; 19 septiembre 1851;“Civil. Juzgado Prevento. del Distrito de S. Juan Ostuncalco. Ano de 1856. Sobreaveriguar que bienes dejo Sebastian Dias y en poder de que persona existen;” bultoano 1865, “Senor Juez Preventivo de este Distrito.”

17. AMSJO, 15 diciembre 1820; 12 septiembre 1834; 26 julio 1839; 7 julio 1841;bulto ano 1851, “Libro de Cargo i data de la Cofradia de la Sma. Trinidad.”

18. Eight reales comprised a peso.19. AMSJO, 4 agosto and 15 octubre 1851, and “Libro de cargo i data de la Cofradia

de la Sma. Trinidad;” 5 febrero 1855; “Civil. Ano de 1862. Contra la Senora AntoniaLepe por deuda del finado su esposo Maximo Castillo Ocampo a la Senora PaulinaGarcia.”

20. AMSJO, 19 noviembre 1817; 10 junio 1833; bulto ano 1851, 20 julio 1850;“Juzgado Prevento. del Distrito de S. Juan Ostuncalco. Civil ano de 1855. El Sor.Francisco Samora solicita se siga una informacion, de haber pagado al Presbo.Dn. Antonio Chinchia los cien pesos que estaban en su poder de la cofradia deConcepcion;” 7 mayo 1865; 11 marzo and 23 mayo 1867; 13 marzo 1868.

218 Notes to Chapter 3

21. Wage information was derived from several dozen archival sources. The lowis found in AMSJO, 26 febrero 1821; the high in AGCA B, leg. 28590, exp. 206.

22. E.g., AMSJO, 16 febrero 1863; 20 diciembre 1866.23. Examples of this are legion. AMSJO, 9 agosto 1821, is typical.24. This paragraph is based on a synthesis of numerous documents found in Corre-

spondencia bultos of the AMSJO. It would be impossible to list them all here. Instead,I will cite one or two examples where appropriate. The following two documentsexemplify the use of indebted labor in highland wheat and livestock productionprior to 1830: AMSJO, 1 agosto 1821; 11 mayo 1827.

25. AGCA A1.57, leg. 395, exp. 8262 and ST Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17, andpaq. 2, exp. 9.

26. AMSJO, “Co. Jues de primera ynsta.” (1835); 9 octubre 1841; 19 enero and 7febrero 1852.

27. AMSJO, “Libro de Conocimientos y Razones qe. Comienza Hoy 19 de Mayode 1863.”

28. AMSJO, 7 junio 1830.29. AMSJO, “Civil. Juzgado Prevento. del Distrito de S. Juan Ostuncalco. Ano

de 1856. Sobre averiguar que bienes dejo Sebastian Dias y en poder de que personaexisten.”

30. AMSJO, 9 septiembre 1824.31. See, e.g., McCreery, “Debt Servitude,” 754 and passim.32. AMSJO, 9 septiembre 1824; 10 junio 1833; 25 enero and 11 marzo 1834; ano

1849, 24 noviembre 1849; 13 agosto 1850; and 1 diciembre 1855.33. McCreery, “Debt Servitude,” 754 and Rural Guatemala, 279–280.34. AMSJO, 5 abril 1823.35. AMSJO, 8 enero 1821; 6 julio, 8 agosto, and 12 octubre 1855; AGCA B, leg.

28568, exp. 248. Sol Tax and Robert Hinshaw make a similar observation for thetwentieth century: “Land is not readily sold by Indians, but it is not infrequentlypawned to tide families over financial crises. Land sold to Ladinos generally does notreturn to Indian hands, although considerable Ladino-owned acreage may be rentedby Indians. See their “The Maya of the midwestern highlands,” in Handbook of MiddleAmerican Indians, vol. 7, ed. E. Z. Vogt (Austin: University of Texas, 1969), 86.

36. Usury received attention from state authorities only occasionally. Examplesinclude AMSJO, 6 marzo 1826; 10 junio 1833; and 11 marzo 1836.

37. Morris Siegel, “Effects of Culture Contact on the Form of the Family in aGuatemalan Village,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 72 (1945): 56. Furtherdocumentation for this point can be found in my Liberals, Conservatives, and IndigenousPeoples, 200 n 40.

38. A good example of this debate is the Summer/Fall 1981 special issue of LatinAmerican Perspectives, entitled “Dependency and Marxism” (8:30–31). For a fullerdiscussion of the associated literature, see my Liberals, Conservatives, and IndigenousPeoples, 201 n 41.

39. See, e.g., Colin Henfrey, “Dependency, Modes of Production, and theClass Analysis of Latin America,” Latin American Perspectives 8 (Summer and Fall1981): 17–54. This disagreement found its way into arguments over Wallerstein’s

Notes to Chapter 3 219

“world-system,” as Steve J. Stern shows in “Feudalism, Capitalism, and the World-System in the Perspective of Latin America and the Caribbean,” American HistoricalReview 93:4 (October 1988), 846–848, and as exemplified by Robert Miles, Capital-ism and Unfree Labour: Anomaly or necessity? (London: Tavistock, 1987), 56–69.

40. Tom Brass, “Coffee and Rural Proletarianization: A Comment on Bergad,”Journal of Latin American Studies 16 (1984):143–152; and Laird W. Bergad, “On Com-parative History: A Reply to Tom Brass,” Journal of Latin American Studies 16(1984):153–156; Tom Brass, “The Latin American Enganche System: Some Revision-ist Reinterpretations Revisted,” Slavery and Abolition 11 (1990): 74–103; and AlanKnight, “Mexican Peonage: What Was It and Why Was It?,” Journal of Latin AmericanStudies 18 (May 1986): 41–74, and “Debt Bondage in Latin America,” Slavery andOther Forms of Unfree Labour, ed. Leonie J. Archer (New York: Routledge, 1988),102–117. For a fuller discussion of this debate in the historiography of Latin America,see my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 202 n 43.

41. Knight, “Mexican Peonage,” 46 and 56.42. Knight, “Mexican Peonage,” 45–46 and Knight, “Debt Bondage,” 108–110.43. Knight, “Debt Bondage,” 111 and Knight, “Mexican Peonage,” 42–43; John

Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico (Austin: University of Texas, 1990 [1910]). OnTurner’s reporting in American Magazine and other US periodicals between 1909 and1910, see Sinclair Snow, “Introduction,” Barbarous Mexico, ix–xxii.

44. In making such an argument, Knight is not without his detractors. See par-ticularly the work of Tom Brass: “Of Human Bondage: Campesinos, Coffee andCapitalism on the Peruvian Frontier,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 11 (1983): 82–84; “Unfree Labour and Capitalist Restructuring in the Agrarian Sector: Peru andIndia,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 14 (1986): 51–52.

45. AMSJO, bulto ano 1830, “Padron General. Departamento de Quesaltenango.Municipalidad de Ostuncalco;” bulto ano 1852, “Padron Grl. de Ladinos y de indi-genas” and “Padron General Munisipd. de Consepcion Chiquirichapa pr. orden delSenor Dn. Juan Ygnacio Yrigollen, Cmte. Grl. de los Altos y Coregidor de Quesalte-nango;” Direccion general de estadısticas, Censo general de la republica de Guatemala,levantado el ano de 1880 (Guatemala: Tip. de “El Progreso,” 1881), and Censo generalde la republica de Guatemala, levantado en el 26 de febrero de 1893 por la Direccion generalde estadıstica y con los auspicios del presidente constitutional, general Don Jose Marıa ReinaBarrios (Guatemala: Tip. “Nacional,” 1894); AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp.17.

46. Commenting on the twentieth century, Tax and Hinshaw write in “The Mayaof the midwestern highlands” that “[w]here subsistence depends on constant, hardwork, incapacitating illness is as much feared for its economic consequences as forthe spiritual and physical jeopardy implied” (93).

47. AMSJO, 24 enero 1821; 24 febrero 1830.48. AMSJO, “Padron General. Departamento de Quesaltenango. Municipalidad

de Ostuncalco,” 1 agosto 1830. Jornaleros averaged 28.9 years, vs. 36.5 for labradores.Unfortunately, this hypothesis cannot be compared against other data from the pre-1871 period because subsequent censuses generally did not include the relevantinformation, or if they did, it was so haphazard as to render it useless.

220 Notes to Chapter 3

49. Douglas E. Brintall, Revolt Against the Dead: The Modernization of a MayanCommunity in the Highlands of Guatemala (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979),83; Benson Saler, The Road from El Palmar: Change, Continuity and Conservatism in aQuiche Community, (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1960), 97–98; CharlesWagley, Economics of a Guatemalan Village (Menasha, WI: American AnthropologicalAssociation, 1941), 67.

50. AMSJO, 11 mayo 1827; 2 febrero 1834; 3 agosto 1850.51. Examples include: AMSJO, 27 junio 1837; bulto anos 1840–1841, “De el

Alcald. 1o. de Ostuncalco. Al Senor Sesilio Garsia Alcald. de La Costa del Sur en elAsintal;” 23 septiembre 1847; 30 enero and 28 marzo 1852; and 7 mayo 1859.

52. The problem of distance was especially singled out by several Costa Cucaplanters in 1879 (AGCA B, leg. 28670, exp. 285). For examples dating from be-fore 1871, see AMSJO, 27 junio 1837; “Juzgado 1o. Municipal de San Juan Ostun-calco. Libro de Razones,” 18 febrero 1867; bulto ano 1869, “Senor Alcalde de SanJuan.”

53. AMSJO, “De el Alcald. 1o. de Ostuncalco. Al Senor Sesilio Garsia Alcald. deLa Costa del Sur en el Asintal;” 9 junio 1854; 10 julio, 26 septiembre, and 12 octubre1867.

54. AMSJO, 7 octubre 1846; 2 febrero 1855.55. AMSJO, 12 octubre 1869.56. Knight, “Debt Bondage,” 108.57. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 40–41, 69–75. The censuses of 1840 and 1847

both state that there were no haciendas in the district of Ostuncalco (AGQ, “Distritode Ostuncalco. Depto. de Quesalto.,” 25 noviembre 1840; AGCA B, leg. 28539, exp.125). San Antonio Bobos and Maclen, for example, originally titled as haciendas,were granted pueblo status soon after 1800 (AHA, Caja ano 1834, leg. 79; AGCA ST,Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exps. 7, 8, and 11; A3.62, leg. 198, exp. 4011; A1.44, leg.2372, exp. 17971; AHQ, ano 1811, leg. 33). According to McCreery, the haciendaVasquez (aka Zacualpa, per AGCA A, leg. 5955, exp. 52152) was taken over by theindigenous community of San Pedro Sacatepequez sometime in the early decades ofthe 19th century (Rural Guatemala, 61). Finally, the combination of capellanıa debt andpressure from the indigenous residents of both Ostuncalco and Santa Cruz Cajolaended in the apparent disintegration of the haciendas Veinte Palos and Los Granados(AGCA A, leg. 6043, exp. 53336; A, leg. 6045, exp. 53351; ST, Quezaltenango, paq.1, exps. 4 and 11).

58. See especially articles 22–24 of RLG, “N. 314. Ley 15a.,” 2 octubre 1839,1:504–511.

59. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 167; J. C. Cambranes, Coffee and Peasants inGuatemala: The Origins of the Modern Plantation Economy in Guatemala, 1853–1897(Stockholm: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1985), 98, 104–105; Woodward,Rafael Carrera, 431–432.

60. AGCA B, leg. 28586, exp. 205; leg. 28625, exp. 307; leg. 28628, exps. 43 and51. In addition, this information derives from several dozen documents located in theAMSJO Correspondencia, bultos 1857–1859, 1860–1862, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866,1868, 1869, 1870, and 1871.

Notes to Chapter 3 221

61. AGCA B, leg. 28586, exp. 205; leg. 28625, exp. 307; leg. 28628, exps. 43 and51.

62. AGCA B, leg. 28628, exp. 43.63. AGCA B, leg. 28628, exp. 51.64. AGCA B, leg. 28628, exp. 51.65. I have not included 1858 or 1871 in this calculation because they were partial

years: AGQ, leg. 382 “1859. Estados que manifiestan el numero de individuos quetrabajan en el Camino de esta ciudad para Patio de Bolas;” “Estado y Presupuestoque presenta el Comicionado de la Obra del Camino carretero y de herradura qe. seabre de esta Ciudad para Patio de Bolas, numero de individuos qe. concurrieron altrabajo diario, abono de sus jornales, y expresion de los trabajos hecho en . . . 1865;”AGQ, 8 mayo 1859; AMSJO documents from bultos dated 1857–1871 mentionedin the notes above.

66. E.g., AMSJO, 28 julio 1863.67. AGCA B, leg. 28586, exp. 205.68. Barrios issued Decree 177 on April 3, 1877. See DIG, 35–42.69. For example, Woodward writes in his recent work on Rafael Carrera, that

“[d]ebt peonage and the use of vagrancy laws to exploit cheap labor . . . were notwidespread until the latter third of the nineteenth century in Guatemala, althoughthey occurred considerably earlier in Mexico. We find their beginnings, nonetheless,in Guatemala as early as the 1840s” (425).

70. AMSJO, 22 abril 1870. The reorganization and expansion of municipal andregional governing structures will be treated in more detail in Chapter 5.

71. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 168–169; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 431–432,581–582 n. 47.

72. AMSJO, 19 agosto 1874.73. The jefe departamental was the Liberal successor to the corregidor. The quote

is from the “Circular” issued 3 noviembre 1876 by the personal secretary of Pres.Barrios (AMSJO).

74. “Secretaria Particular del Jeneral Presidente. Circular. Guatemala,” AMSJO, 3noviembre 1876.

75. DIG, 35–42.76. AMSJO, 31 mayo 1880; 25 junio 1881; 4 agosto 1884; 27 marzo and 27 junio

1885.77. AMSJO, 14 febrero 1885; leg. “Cartas particulares,” 14 septiembre 1885.78. AGQ, “Lista general de los mosos . . . ,” Fincas La Bolsa (Costa Cuca), Damieta

(Costa Cuca), Nueva Austria (Costa Cuca; comparison for years 1894–1896),Quenene (El Palmar), and San Antonio (El Palmar).

79. AMSJO, 10 diciembre 1871; bulto ano 1872, 8 agosto 1871; 30 mayo 1873;bulto ano 1875, leg. 2, “Libro de Actas de la Municipalidad,” 2 enero 1874; AGCAB, leg. 28634, exp. 317. The alcaldes auxiliares are described in Chapter 2.

80. AGCA B, leg. 28670, exp. 285.81. On Conservative designs for San Jose Pie de la Cuesta, see Chapter 2.82. AGCA B, leg. 28650, exp. 452; leg. 28646, exp. 722; leg. 28644, exp. 540; leg.

28684, exp. 747; AMSJO, 28 octubre and 24 diciembre 1874; 24 febrero 1875; 1 enero

222 Notes to Chapter 3

and 22 febrero 1882; leg. “Notas de varios juzgados,” 15 enero 1887; 2 noviembre1887; RLRG, 10 abril 1882, 3:214; 10 febrero 1885, 4:323; 21 mayo and 26 agosto1889, 8:52, 126.

83. AMSJO, 25 noviembre 1871; 1 junio 1874; 6 julio 1885; leg. “Notas de par-ticulares,” 6 febrero 1886; 7 febrero 1889; 2 septiembre 1891.

84. AMSJO, leg. “Notas de la Jefatura Polıtica,” 4 octubre 1886; 2 octubre 1888;10 enero 1891; 7 abril 1892.

85. AMSJO, 10 enero 1891. Railroad wages ran 4 reales per day at a time whenthe typical finca wage was 3 reales (AMM, bulto ano 1889, 17 mayo 1890).

86. AMSJO, 20 octubre 1876; bulto ano 1885, 29 enero 1881; 11 enero 1882; leg.“Notas de particulares,” 24 enero 1886; 16 junio 1890; 11 septiembre 1891.

87. AMSJO, 6 and 12 julio and 24 agosto 1871.88. AGQ, “Lista general de los mosos . . . [1894].;” AMSJO, “El que suscribe cer-

tifica . . . [1897].” The figure of 224 days is based on a daily wage of three reales, avalue consonant with the documentation for the 1890s.

89. AGQ, 7 mayo 1892; AMSJO, leg. “Libro copiador de la Jefatura Polıtica,”29 agosto 1892 & 2 septiembre 1891.

90. See Charles Gibson’s The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of theValley of Mexico, 1519–1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), 255, for a simi-lar argument, as well as Juan Martınez Alier’s comments in “Relations of Productionin Andean Haciendas: Peru,” Land and Labour in Latin America: Essays on the Devel-opment of Agrarian Capitalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, eds. KennethDuncan and Ian Rutledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1977), esp. 147–148.

91. Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 432.92. Debt and wage information prior to 1871 is from AMSJO Correspondencia,

beginning with the bulto for years 1808–1819, and, excepting 1848, continuingthrough all subsequent bultos until 1870. For more on how this documentation wasanalyzed, see the notes at the start of this chapter. Information on the 1890s is fromAGQ, “Lista general de los mosos . . . [1894], as well as numerous other sources fromAMSJO Correspondencia, bultos 1890 to 1897. McCreery, “Debt Servitude,” chartswages at about three reales in 1875 and about four reales in 1900.

93. DIG, 35–42; AMSJO bulto ano 1879, leg. “Libro que contiene dos partes. 1a.de remisiones de mosos a las fincas. 2a. debe i haber de los fondos municips.;” leg.“Notas de la Jefatura,” 27 octubre 1883; leg. “Notas de la Jefatura,” 3 enero 1887.

94. AMSJO, leg. “Libro Copiador de Circulares de la Jefatura Polıtica, 1876–1878,”27 octubre 1877; AGQ, 6 noviembre 1878.

95. AMSJO, bulto ano 1879, leg. “Libro que contiene dos partes. 1a. de remisionesde mosos a las fincas. 2a. debe i haber de los fondos municips.;” 12 marzo and 7septiembre 1883; AMM 23 septiembre and 3 noviembre 1882.

96. AGQ, leg. 382. 1859. Estados que manifiestan el numero de individuos quetrabajan en el Camino de esta ciudad para Patio de Bolas;” AMSJO, 8 abril 1863; 15marzo 1865; 25 enero and 11 febrero 1870; 27 septiembre 1883; 14 enero 1885; 20and 26 abril 1889.

97. AMSJO, 1, 3, 13, and 30 octubre 1888; 6, 20, and 29 septiembre and 3 octubre1892; AGQ, leg. 382. 1859. Estados que manifiestan el numero de individuos quetrabajan en el Camino de esta ciudad para Patio de Bolas.”

Notes to Chapter 4 223

98. For a full discussion of these problems, see my Liberals, Conservatives, and In-digenous Peoples, 236–239.

99. Oscar H. Horst, “La utilizacion de archivos eclesiasticos en la reconstruccionde la historia demografica de San Juan Ostuncalco,” Mesoamerica 22 (diciembre 1991):220, 222.

100. One final caveat: readers should note that even though the number of indi-viduals involved in 1859 and 1888/1892 were similar in relative terms, the durationof each mandamiento contingent was greater in the Liberal period. In 1859 each con-tingent worked for six days, while after 1877 a contingent might be sent for 7 to30 days. See AGQ, leg. 382. “1859. Estados que manifiestan el numero de indi-viduos que trabajan en el Camino de esta ciudad para Patio de Bolas,” and DIG,35–42.

101. Given the state of these archives it is almost certain that I found documenta-tion for only a portion of the actual number of mandamientos. Equally likely, however,is the probability that I did not recognize the names of all of the officials or theirfamily members who received mandamientos.

102. E.g., AMSJO, 27 septiembre 1883; 14 enero 1885; 27 marzo 1887; 20 and 26abril 1889; AGQ, 11 octubre 1892.

103. AMSJO, leg. “Libro copiador de la Jefatura Polıtica,” 29 agosto and 4 di-ciembre 1892.

104. AMSJO, 28 noviembre 1892; AGQ, 29 octubre 1892 and 2 octubre 1893.105. AMSJO, 31 octubre 1892; AGQ, 19 noviembre 1892; AMM bulto ano 1893,

leg. “Libro de habilitaciones de mozos de mandamientos.” Note that the municipalidadesalso demanded additional fees for themselves during this same period.

106. Knight, “Mexican Peonage,” 58–59; “Debt Bondage,” 111.107. Knight cites McCreery, “Debt Servitude” (“Mexican Peonage,” 58 n. 72).108. McCreery, “Debt Servitude,” esp. 736, 755–756. The quote is from Rural

Guatemala, 323, but also see 223–225.109. Knight, “Debt Bondage,” 111.110. AMSJO, 22 enero 1873; 13 julio 1884; 6 febrero 1885; 25 febrero 1887; 2 mayo

1889; 11 enero 1886; 18 abril and 31 mayo 1895; cf. Oliver LaFarge and DouglasByers, The Year Bearer’s People (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1931), 82.

notes to chapter 4

1. Elisha Oscar Crosby, Memoirs of Elisha Oscar Crosby: Reminiscences of Californiaand Guatemala from 1849–1864 (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1945), 94–95, 97; Jorge Gonzalez Alzate, A History of Los Altos, Guatemala: A Study of RegionalConflict and National Integration, 1750–1885 (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1994), 418–421; Hazel Ingersoll, “The War of the Mountain: A Study of Reactionary PeasantInsurgency in Guatemala, 1837–1873” (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University,1972), 245–47; John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas,and Yucatan, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1969 [1841]), 1:218, 230–38, 2:205–209;Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala,1821–1871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 120–22.

2. Ingersoll, “War of the Mountain,” 335, 337.

224 Notes to Chapter 4

3. Ingersoll, “War of the Mountain,” 332–342.4. Revisionists who suggest the possibility of popular—even indigenous—support

for the Liberal insurgency of the late 1860s and early 1870s include Jean Piel, Sajcabaja:muerte y resurreccion de un pueblo de Guatemala, 1500–1970 (Guatemala: Seminario deIntegracion Social, 1989), esp. 315; and Todd Little-Siebold, “Guatemala and theDream of a Nation: National Policy and Regional Practice in the Liberal Era, 1871–1945 (Chiquimula, San Marcos)” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1995), 99.

5. AGQ, leg. 96 “Criminales ano de 1854. Yncidentes sobre varios procedimien-tos del Comiciondo. politico Dn. Manuel Larrave, Juez preventivo del Distrito deOstuncalco. Venidos del Juzgdo. de 1ra. insta. de este Departamento,” 24 octubre1854 (contains quotations); AMSJO, 31 julio 1854.

6. AGQ, leg. 96 “Criminales ano de 1854. Yncidentes sobre varios procedimien-tos . . . ,” 24 and 25 octubre 1854.

7. AGQ, leg. 96 “Criminales ano de 1854. Yncidentes sobre varios procedimien-tos . . . ,” 24 octubre 1854 (contains quotations); AMSJO, 31 julio 1854.

8. See Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, “Woman, Culture, and Society: A TheoreticalOverview,” in Woman, Culture, and Society, eds. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo andLouise Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford University, 1974), for a pioneering formulationof the domestic/public spheres model. For further discussion of the literature on thistopic, see my “Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples: The Subaltern Rootsof National Politics in Nineteenth Century Guatemala” (Ph.D. diss., University ofWisconsin-Madison, 1999), 256 n 8.

9. AMSJO, “Padron General. Departamento de Quesaltenango. Municipalidad deOstuncalco,” 1 agosto 1830. For a much more thorough discussion of this padron, seechapter 1.

10. The household classifications (nuclear, extended, consanguineal, and non-family) discussed in the remainder of this paragraph and the one that follows are basedon Pedro Carrasco, “Family Structure of Sixteenth-Century Tepoztlan,” in Processand Pattern in Culture: Essays in Honor of Julian H. Steward, ed. Robert A. Manners(Chicago: Aldine, 1964), 189–196. Nuclear households are defined by the presence ofa single married couple. The couple still may be dependent on a surviving parent, andthe house may contain other people as well. Extended or “joint-family” householdscontain two or more related couples. Consanguineal and non-family households, bycontrast, are devoid of a married couple. In the former, however, members are relatedby blood. Like Carrasco, I distinguish family from simple household based on thepresence of blood or marriage ties among the common residents. Thus while a familynecessarily makes up part or all of a household, a household need not contain a family.

11. There were no extended-family ladino households.12. Only one yerno or son-in-law and one cunado or brother-in-law are identified

outright in the padron. An additional handful of men, probably no more than six,could have been related to the male family head via their marriage to a daughter orsister of the latter.

13. AMSJO, 15 septiembre 1850; 27 enero 1852; “Lista de los Yndivids. qe. hav-itan en la Costa y terrenos de S. Martin,” 1856; 16 octubre 1860. Also, the tıtulossupletorios mentioned in chapter 2 (AMSJO Tıtulos supletorios, 1878–1889), and the

Notes to Chapter 4 225

following agricultural censuses list a significant number of ladina landholders: Junio1886, “Borradores del Censo levantado en esta jurisdiccion del producto de cosechasde sementeras del ano ppdo;” 6 julio 1889, “Listas de los Senores ladinos e indıgenasque pocean el numero de cuerdas de terreno; y los cuales son los que se ven a lavuelta. La Victoria. 1889;” enero 1891 (various); 1 julio 1892, “Estadıstica Agrıcolade la Republica de Guatemala;” junio 1895 (various); ano 1897, “Cuadro que de-muestra la situacion de la agricultura en la Villa de Ostuncalco, Departamento deQuezaltenango,” and junio 1897 (various); 30 noviembre 1898, “Estadıstica Agrıcolade la Republica de Guatemala. Cuadro que demuestra la Produccion Agrıcola delMunicipio de Ostuncalco Departamento de Quezalto.”

14. Robert M. Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala: The Quiche-Mayas ofMomostenango (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1995), 81.

15. Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 80, 155.16. Morris Siegel, “Effects of Culture Contact on the Form of the Family in a

Guatemalan Village,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 72 (1945): 56–58;Charles Wagley in Economics of a Guatemalan Village (Menasha, WI: American An-thropological Association, 1941), 67, and The Social and Religious Life of a GuatemalanVillage (Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association, 1949), 11–15, 37–41;Oliver LaFarge, Santa Eulalia, The Religion of a Cuchumatan Indian Town (Chicago:University of Chicago, 1947), 22–26; LaFarge and Douglas Byers, The Year Bearer’sPeople (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1931), 87.

17. AMSJO, bulto ano 1864, “Sr. Juez Preventivo del Distrito de Ostunco.”18. AMSJO, 26 julio 1864. Other examples include leg. “Juzgado 1o. Municipal

de San Juan Ostuncalco. Libro de Conosimientos del Juzgado 1o. Municipal. Anode 1868,” 18 mayo 1868; leg. “Libro de Conocimientos del Juzgado 1o. para el anode 1870,” diciembre 1870.

19. AMSJO, 23 julio 1824.20. See the appendix with population figures in my dissertation, “Liberals, Con-

servatives, and Indigenous Peoples,” 439–444.21. AGCA A3.62, leg. 198, exp. 4011.22. Ley Organica de la administracion de justicia por jurados en el Estado de Guatemala

(Guatemala, 1836), published on 12 marzo 1836; RLG, “N. 314. Ley 15a,” 2 octubre1839, 1:504–511, esp. article 25, and “N. 567. Ley 11a,” 5 diciembre 1839, 2:51–63,esp. article 73.

23. AMSJO, bulto ano 1864, “Sr. Juez Preventivo del Distrito de Ostunco.”24. AMSJO, 26 julio 1864.25. AMSJO Tıtulos supletorios, 1878–1889. Another eight tıtulos supletorios were

submitted by women of indeterminable ethnicity.26. See the agricultural censuses cited in the notes above, as well as: AMSJO,

bulto ano 1871, “Cuadro que demuestra la situacion de la agricultura en la Villade Ostuncalco, Departamento de Quezaltenango,” and bulto ano 1873, “Cuadroque muestra la situacion de Agricultura en la Villa de Ostuncalco, Departamento deQuezaltenango.”

27. Robert Glasgow Dunlop, Travels in Central America (London: Longman,Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847), 337; J. W. Boddam-Whetham, Across Central

226 Notes to Chapter 4

America (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1877), 21, 44, 63, 203; Helen J. Sanborn,A Winter in Central America and Mexico (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1886), 116–117;LaFarge and Byers, The Year Bearer’s People, 59.

28. Sol Tax and Robert Hinshaw, “The Maya of the midwestern highlands,” inHandbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 7, ed. E. Z. Vogt (Austin: University ofTexas, 1969), 84.

29. AMSJO, bulto ano 1851, leg. “Libro de Actas del Ano de 1850,” 31 diciembre1851.

30. Aguardiente is an alcohol distilled from raw sugar similar to rum.31. See the text and notes below for documentation.32. The sources on which these comments are based are too numerous to list here.

They are discussed and cited at length in chapter 3. See Greg Grandin, The Blood ofGuatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University, 2000), 38–39,on women and debt in the city of Quezaltenango.

33. AMSJO, 1836, hojas sueltas; “Ano de 1855. Jusgado 1o. Libro en que se asientanlas rasones de las personas que ponen plasos para satisfaser deuda,” 28 junio 1855; and18 abril 1863.

34. Boddam-Whetham, Across Central America, 44; Douglas E. Brintall, RevoltAgainst the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands ofGuatemala (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979), 78–80; Carmack, Rebels of High-land Guatemala, 156; Dunlop, Travels in Central America, 337; Henry Dunn, Guatimala,or, the Republic of Central America, in 1827–8; being Sketches and Memorandum made duringa Twelve Months’ Residence (New York: G. & C. Carvill, 1828), 72–73; Stephens, Inci-dents of Travel, 1:58–59, 65; Tax and Hinshaw, “Maya of the midwestern highlands,”84; and Wagley, Social and Religious Life, 46.

35. AMSJO, 13 enero 1823, 30 julio 1824, 2 enero 1825, 9 febrero 1830, 21 mayo1849, and 26 octubre 1863.

36. “Relacion de Ignacio de Urbina,” BAGG 2 (Abril 1937): 316–317, and“Relacion de Gregorio Lizaurzaval y Anssola” BAGG 2 (Abril 1937), 318–323,respectively; AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17. Cf. Dunn, Guatimala, 223,who notes, based on an 1823 “Memorial” written by Guatemala’s Consulado de Com-ercio, that children as well as women participated in spinning cotton thread.

37. Tax and Hinshaw, “Maya of the midwestern highlands,” 77–79; Cultural andHistorical Geography of Southwest Guatemala (Washington: Government Printing Of-fice, 1947), 63–64; Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 68–71, 158.

38. LaFarge and Byers, The Year Bearer’s People, 16–17, 51, and LaFarge, SantaEulalia, 5, 36; Tracy Bachrach Ehlers, “Debunking Marianismo: Economic Vulnera-bility and Survival Strategies among Guatemalan Wives,” Ethnology 30 (January 1991):7–8; Cherri M. Pancake, “Fronteras de genero en la produccion de tejidos indıgenas,”in La Indumentaria y el tejido a traves del tiempo, eds. Linda Asturias de Barriosy Dina Fernandez Garcıa (Guatemala: Ediciones del Museo Ixchel, 1992), 119–128, and “Las fronteras de genero reflejadas en los estudios de tejedores indıgenas,”267–280.

39. David J. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University,1994), 278.

Notes to Chapter 4 227

40. Sanborn, Winter in Central America, 166–167; E. Bradford Burns, EadweardMuybridge in Guatemala, 1875: The Photographer as Social Recorder (Berkeley: Universityof California, 1986); Boddam-Whetham, Across Central America, 84–85. Cf. HeatherFowler-Salamini, “Gender, Work, and Coffee in Cordoba, Veracruz, 1850–1910,”in Women of the Mexican Countryside, 1850–1990, eds. Heather Fowler-Salamini andMary Kay Vaughan (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1994), esp. 55 and 64–65, forthe case of Veracruz, Mexico.

41. AMSJO, 28 enero 1868; 20 febrero 1870; 8 febrero 1892; 29 noviembre 1897.LaFarge and Byers note that Jacalteca women frequently were hired to pick coffee(The Year Bearer’s People, 59).

42. AMSJO, bulto ano 1869, “Sr. Alc. D. Simion Castillo;” 9 enero 1871; 18octubre 1878; 13 julio 1884; 20 septiembre 1885; leg. “Notas de la Jefatura,”1 octubre 1885; leg. “Notas de particulares,” 27 enero 1886; 29 julio and 2 noviembre1887; 8 diciembre 1890; 5 febrero 1891; 14 septiembre 1895; AGQ, 10 noviembre1885; 9 julio 1891.

43. AMSJO, 27 enero 1873; leg. “Notas de particulares,” 6 marzo 1886; 28 mayo1892.

44. Direccion general de estadısticas, Censo general de la republica de Guatemala,levantado el ano de 1880 (Guatemala: Tip. de “El Progreso,” 1881); LaFarge and Byers,The Year Bearer’s People, 58–59; Christine Eber, Women and Alcohol in a Highland MayaTown: Water of Hope, Water of Sorrow (Austin: University of Texas, 1995), 22.

45. Direccion general de estadısticas, Censo general de la republica de Guatemala,levantado en el 26 de febrero de 1893 por la Direccion general de estadıstica y con los auspi-cios del presidente constitutional, general Don Jose Marıa Reina Barrios (Guatemala: Tip.“Nacional,” 1894).

46. This calculation is approximate because the census does not list age data bygender. I divided the 3924 children below fifteen by two to produce 1962. Thisfigure was then subtracted from the total number of women (3905), resulting in1943. The accuracy of this figure is not all that important because the magnitude ofthe difference is all that I am trying to indicate.

47. Evidence of aguardiente’s importance to the national treasury in the decadepreceding the Liberal insurgency is found in an 1863 listing of the monthly quotasthat were to be paid by the monopolist of each town of the department of Quezal-tenango for the following two years (AMSJO, 9 septiembre 1863). All told, theentire department was scheduled to generate 23,292 pesos per year, at a time whenGuatemala’s annual budget amounted to approximately 900,000 pesos (Woodward,Rafael Carrera, table 23, 410). Although this amounts to only 2.6%, if we considerthat Guatemala counted 14 departments and several additional territories by 1863,then aguardiente revenues en toto may have comprised a quarter or more of thenational budget.

48. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 176–177. Liberal insurgents pledged to abolishthe alcohol monopoly at least as early as 1867. See Ingersoll, “War of the Mountain,”337. Granados and his cohorts (including Barrios) formally promised to put an endto it on 8 May 1871. An English translation of their manifesto is published in PaulBurgess, Justo Rufino Barrios: A Biography (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1926), 75 n. 4–78.

228 Notes to Chapter 4

On June 11th they also abolished the prohibition on “Comiteco” rum from Chiapas(RLRG, “Decreto Num. 3,” 1:3.

49. RLRG, “Decreto Num. 15,” 25 agosto 1871, 1:12–13; “Decreto Num 19,” 16octubre 1871, 1:15–23; “Reglamento para la Administracion de aguardiente y chichaen la Republica,” 25 octubre 1871, 1:29–34; “Decreto Num 175,” 24 febrero 1877,2:51–67; “Decreto Num 236,” 2 marzo 1879, 2:253–254; “Reglamento complemen-tario del decreto numero 236,” 4 abril 1879, 2:256–275; “Decreto Num. 303,” 18enero 1884, 4:133–134; “Reglamento para los depositos, edificios de centralizaciony fabricas de aguardiente,” 24 julio 1891, 10:123–139.

50. In the case of Mexico City, Michael C. Scardaville estimates 1600 drinkingestablishments at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the majority of whichwere illegal. See his “Alcohol Abuse and Tavern Reform in Late Colonial MexicoCity,” HAHR 60 (November 1980): 646–647.

51. Cf. Scardaville, “Alcohol Abuse,” 668–669 and passim.52. William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages

(Stanford: Stanford University, 1979), 38, 53. Cf. Scardaville, “Alcohol Abuse,” 653and passim.

53. Eber, Women and Alcohol, 22.54. Eber, Women and Alcohol, 19–20.55. Julio Cesar Pinto Soria, “El valle central de Guatemala (1524–1821): un analysis

acerca del origen historico-economico del regionalismo en Centroamerica,” Anuariode Estudios Centroamericanos 14 (1988): 84, 87, 101 n. 136.

56. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 99; Pinto Soria, “El valle central,” 86.57. He also briefly mentions another case from nearby Ixtahuacan. Pinto Soria,

“El valle central,” 101 n. 130.58. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 87–88.59. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 124–126, 144–149, 258. Cf. Arturo

Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, sueno ladino, pesadilla indıgena: los altos de Guatemala:de region a Estado, 1740–1850 (Costa Rica: Editorial Porvenir y CIRMA, 1997), 24–42.

60. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 17 junio 1839.61. An arroba is equivalent to approximately twenty five pounds.62. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1; B, leg. 3268, exp. 69700; AMSJO,

bulto anos 1840–41, 2 agosto 1839 and 24 marzo 1840; AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841.El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 20 abril 1841; leg.155 “Ano de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobre avances en susejidos,” 12 junio, 31 agosto and 18 diciembre 1841; and “Distrito de Ostuncalco.Depto. de Quezaltenango,” 25 noviembre 1840.

63. The property used by Pinto Soria to exemplify the trapiches of Guatemala’sbackwater areas during the colonial period included a total land area of four ca-ballerıas. It was owned by a Spanish family, and, as stated in the text, they cultivatedonly 0.125 caballerıas with sugar cane. The trapiche also included six oxen and threemules and/or horses. Its total value in 1712 was estimated at 225 pesos (“El vallecentral,” 86–87).

64. AMSJO, 23 enero and 1 junio 1841; Pinto Soria, “El valle central,” 88. SantaTeresa el Asintal also counted 147 cuerdas of land cultivated in corn and otheragricultural products, plus 13 oxen and other assorted livestock.

Notes to Chapter 4 229

65. AGQ, “Distrito de Ostuncalco. Depto. de Quezaltenango,” 25 noviembre1840; Pinto Soria, “El valle central,” 91.

66. AGQ, “Cuadro estadıstico del Departamento de Quezaltenango correspon-diente al ano de 1877,” 27 abril 1878; Jorge Lujan Munoz, Economıa de Guatemala1750–1940: antologıa de lecturas y materiales, 2 tomos (Guatemala: Universidad de SanCarlos, 1980), 1:205. Note that the 1887 figure includes refined as well as raw (panela)sugar. Coatepeque was transferred from the department of San Marcos to Quezalte-nango at the beginning of 1885. See RLRG, “Se segrega el pueblo de Coatepequedel departamento de San Marcos y lo anexa al de Quezaltenango,” 9 enero 1885,4:310.

67. AMSJO, 1 febrero 1837. The identification of Gregorio Castillo as Ostun-calco’s first alcalde in early 1837 is found in AMSJO, 27 enero 1837.

68. AMSJO, 23 enero 1841 (on Castillo’s trapiche); and 27 agosto 1832; bultoano 1835, “Co. Jues de primera ynsta.;” bulto anos 1842–47, “En el Pueblo deOstuncalco” (1836); 27 junio 1837; bulto anos 1840–1841, “De el Alcald. 1o. deOstuncalco. Al Senor Sesilio Garsia Alcald. de La Costa del Sur en el Asintal;”18 agosto, and 9 octubre 1841.

69. AGCA A1.111.31, leg. 197, exp. 3987; AMSJO, 15 and 25 enero, 11 marzo,and 26 mayo 1820.

70. AMSJO, 4 enero 1864; AGCA B, leg. 28617, exp. 78.71. AMSJO, 7 mayo 1869; AGCA B, leg. 28617, exp. 78; AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de

1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 4 mayo 1841.72. AGQ, 1838, “Cno. Gefe Politico departaml. de la Ciudad de Quesalto.;”

AMSJO, 12 and 15 julio and 23 diciembre 1856; 23 octubre 1858; 7 mayo 1869;Procesos Judiciales (criminales), 29 julio 1857; AGCA B, leg. 28617, exp. 78.

73. AMSJO, 1 marzo 1841; 21 enero 1859; 27 and 28 noviembre 1863.74. E.g., AMSJO, 10 junio 1826; 6 noviembre 1833; 13 octubre 1849; 31 julio 1854;

10 mayo 1859; AGQ, leg. “No. 96. Criminales ano de 1854. Yncidentes sobre variosprocedimientos del Comiciondo. politico Dn. Manuel Larrave, Juez preventivo delDistrito de Ostuncalco. Venidos del Juzgdo. de 1ra. insta. de este Departamento,” 24octubre 1854.

75. Ostuncalco’s assistant Corregidor or encargado is first mentioned in AGQ, leg.156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,”20 abril 1841. The legal justification for this position is provided in article 25 ofRLG, “N. 314. Ley 15a,” 2 octubre 1839, 1:504–511. The Juez Preventivo was firstappointed in 1853, per AMSJO, 20 julio 1853, and authorized by articles 73–81,section 4, chapter 2, of RLG, “N. 567. Ley 11a,” 5 diciembre 1839, 2:51–63.

76. AHQ, Garita informes, various years.77. AGQ, leg. 96 “Criminales ano de 1854. Yncidentes sobre varios procedimien-

tos . . . ,” 7 agosto 1854; AMSJO, 6 mayo 1856.78. AMSJO, 11 marzo 1820; 27 junio 1829; 1830, “C. Alce. de la Municipld. de

Sn. Juan Ostuncalco Bernabe Monterroso;” 6 noviembre 1833; 1841, “De el Alcald.1o. de Ostuncalco. Al Senor Sesilio Garsia Alcald. de La Costa del Sur en el Asintal;”9 enero 1852; 10 mayo 1859; AGQ, 1836, “Denuncias;” leg. 155 “Ano de 1841. LaMunicipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobre avances en sus ejidos,” 24 mayo 1841.

79. AMSJO, 11 marzo 1820.

230 Notes to Chapter 4

80. With regard to the area over which ladino authorities attempted to enforceaguardiente statutes, note that no clandestinistas were recorded for Cabrican, Huitan,or San Martın Sacatepequez in the documentation used to construct Table 4.1,which covered the years 1862 to 1886. Yet other evidence suggests that clandestineaguardiente was rampant in these municipalities.

81. AGQ, leg. No. 164 “Segunda Representacion de las mujeres del comun delQuezaltenango solicitando se suprima el sistema del Estancos en aquella ciudad, y serestablesca el de Patentes del Aguardiente del pais,” 1841.

82. McBryde, in Cultural and Historical Geography, notes that even in the 1930scertain indigenous communities, “though they drink as much rum as any of theirneighbors, have decreed prohibition of the sale or manufacture of intoxicating liquor,apparently to keep out the Ladinos who would control its production, which isregimented by national law” (16).

83. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 87.84. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 88.85. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 141–148.86. AGCA A1.111.31, leg. 197, exp. 3987.87. AGCA A4, leg. 5802, exp. 48992 (1763); A1.111.31, leg. 197, exp. 3987 (1810);

CSJO, “Piden destitucion del gobernador comunal Gregorio Marroquın por altivo,”1 diciembre 1639, 2:581, and “Los naturales de San Cristobal Cabrican solicitan laexoneracion de los repartimientos,” 18 septiembre 1812, 2:342–355.

88. AMSJO, 15 mayo 1824.89. AMSJO, 10 junio 1826.90. AMSJO, 10 junio 1826.91. AMSJO, 6 junio 1827; 27 junio 1829; 11 septiembre 1834; 3 febrero 1848.92. AGQ, leg. 68 “Gobierno Departml. de Quesaltenango. Libro Copiador de

Municipalidades en San Marcos,” 11 septiembre and 8 noviembre 1832; AMSJO, 6noviembre 1833; 19 junio and 11 septiembre 1834.

93. AMSJO, 27 junio 1829.94. RLG, “N. 878. Ley 5a,” 10 junio 1833, 2:471–472.95. The aguardiente monopoly was reestablished on 28 mayo 1834. See RLG, “N.

881. Ley 8a,” 2:475. The quotations are from AMSJO, 11 julio 1834.96. AMSJO, 11 septiembre 1834.97. RLG, “N. 882. Ley 9a,” 29 octubre 1834, 2:474–475; “N. 883. Ley 10a,” 31

diciembre 1834, 2:475–478; “N. 884. Ley 11a,” 7 mayo 1835, 2:478–479; “N. 886.Ley 13a,” 16 agosto 1835, 2:479–480.

98. AGQ, leg. 112, 29 febrero 1836.99. AGQ, “Cno. Gefe Politico departaml. de la Ciudad de Quesalto” (Junio 1838).100. LIG, 24 (transcribed decree dated 25 noviembre 1839); RLG, “N. 888. Ley

15a,” 10 diciembre 1839, 2:480–481; “N. 348. Ley 15a,” 14 diciembre 1839, 1:605–606.

101. AMSJO, 19 and 27 febrero, and 1 marzo, 1841.102. AMSJO, 3 febrero 1848; 13 and 30 octubre 1849; 22 marzo, 1, 12, and 23

junio, 2 julio, 1 agosto, and 15 septiembre 1850.103. AMSJO, 13 octubre 1849; 23 junio 1850; 1 febrero 1851; RLG, “N. 903. Ley

30a,” 21 agosto 1851, and “N. 904. Ley 31a,” 10 marzo 1852, 2:499–503.

Notes to Chapter 4 231

104. On the assistant Corregidor, see AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Co-mun de San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes,” 20 abril 1841, and RLG,“N. 314. Ley 15a,” 2 octubre 1839, 1:504–511. On the Juez Preventivo, see AMSJO,20 julio 1853, and articles 73–81, section 4, chapter 2, of RLG, “N. 567. Ley 11a,”5 diciembre 1839, 2:51–63.

105. E.g., AMSJO, 1 enero and 2 julio 1850; 5 and 9 enero and 26 junio 1852; 6julio and 26 octubre 1854.

106. AMSJO, 7 enero 1854; 12 septiembre and 5 octubre 1864; Procesos criminales(judiciales), 8 junio, 5 and 29 julio, and 12 octubre 1857; AGQ, 25 and 26 enero1856.

107. AMSJO, 15 octubre 1858.108. AGQ, 26 enero 1856; AMSJO, 12 septiembre and 5 octubre 1864.109. AGQ, 26 diciembre 1856.110. AMSJO, 2 enero and 31 julio 1854; AGQ, leg. 96 “Criminales ano de 1854.

Yncidentes sobre varios procedimientos . . . ,” 24 octubre 1854.111. AMSJO, Libro de Actas, 10 and 26 agosto and 1 and 2 octubre 1855; 1 octubre

1855.112. AMSJO, 28 noviembre 1855; AGCA B, leg. 28582, exp. 195; leg. 28586, exp.

218.113. AMSJO, 19 marzo and 13 noviembre 1856; AGCA B, leg. 28572, exp. 70;

AGQ, 12 enero and 25 abril 1857. A new Juez Preventivo was appointed in July 1857(AMSJO, Libro de Actas, 4 julio 1857; AGQ, 31 julio 1857).

114. AMSJO, 19 junio 1863.115. AMSJO, bulto ano 1863, “Sr. Juez Prevo. del Disto.;” 9 septiembre 1863.116. AMSJO, 22 septiembre 1868; 7 mayo 1869; 30 enero 1871; AGCA B, leg.

28617, exp. 78.117. AMSJO, bulto ano 1863, “Sr. Juez Prevo. del Disto.”118. AMSJO, 6 julio, 8 agosto, and 19 and 28 septiembre 1855; AGQ, 12 octubre

1855.119. AMSJO, 7 enero 1854; Procesos judiciales (criminales), 29 julio 1857.120. AMSJO, 13 diciembre 1855; 5 enero 1864; 11, 27 and 28 noviembre 1863.121. Ingersoll, “War of the Mountain,” 337; Wayne M. Clegern, Origins of Liberal

Dictatorship in Central America: Guatemala, 1865–1873 (Niwot: University Press ofColorado, 1994), 112, 116; Burgess, Justo Rufino Barrios, 75 n. 4–78, 81; Woodward,Rafael Carrera, 436; RLRG, “Decreto Num. 3,” 1:3; AMSJO, Libro de Actas, 18junio 1871.

122. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 545–7, 554–9; Taracena Arriola,Invencion criolla, 404; Burgess, Justo Rufino Barrios, 81; AGQ, leg. 164 “SegundaRepresentacion de las mujeres del comun del Quezaltenango solicitando se suprima elsistema del Estancos en aquella ciudad, y se restablesca el de Patentes del Aguardientedel pais,” 1841; McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 176–7; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 343;Manuel Pineda de Mont, in the footnote dated 1 April 1872, in RLG, “N. 915. Ley42a,” 31 enero 1865, 2:520–4.

123. RLRG, “Decreto Num. 15,” 25 agosto 1871, 1:12–13; “Decreto Num 19,”16 octubre 1871, 1:15–23; “Reglamento para la Administracion de aguardientey chicha en la Republica,” 25 octubre 1871, 1:29–34; “Decreto Num 175,” 24

232 Notes to Chapter 5

febrero 1877, 2:51–67; “Decreto Num 236,” 2 marzo 1879, 2:253–4; “Reglamentocomplementario del decreto numero 236,” 4 abril 1879, 2:256–275; “Decreto Num.303,” 18 enero 1884, 4:133–4; “Reglamento para los depositos, edificios de central-izacion y fabricas de aguardiente,” 24 julio 1891, 10:123–139. See also Burgess, JustoRufino Barrios, 177 n. 5; and McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 176–7.

notes to chapter 5

1. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660; A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502; A1.21.9, leg.5946, exp. 52048 and leg. 5955, exp. 52152; A1.19, leg. 350, exp. 7263; CSJO, “Pidendestitucion del gobernador comunal Gregorio Marroquin por altivo [ano 1639],”2:581, and “Indio principal Gregorio de Quinones Marroquın pide exoneracion delpago del tributo, 1639,” 2:144–5. It should be noted that not all cacique families wereas self-interested as the Barrios de San Millans. Descendants of the Marroquın linewere among those who petitioned the Crown on behalf of the town to return at leasta portion of Zacualpa in 1686 (AGCA A1.21.9, leg. 5950, exp. 52115). ConcepcionChiquirichapa apparently harbored deep resentment over Gabriel the elder’s sale ofZacualpa to Spaniards, and its officials continued to blame Ostuncalco for the lossas late at the eighteenth century (CSJO, “Testimonios del pueblo de Chiquirichaparelacionados con el visitador Francisco Gomez de la Madriz, 1701,” 2:496a–496c).

2. McCreery’s Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1994),34–53; Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, sueno ladino, pesadilla indıgena: los altos deGuatemala: de region a Estado, 1740–1850 (Costa Rica: Editorial Porvenir y CIRMA,1997), 10–42, 376; Todd Little-Siebold, “Guatemala and the Dream of a Nation:National Policy and Regional Practice in the Liberal Era, 1871–1945 (Chiquim-ula, San Marcos)” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1995), 53; RF, 8:180–191; DGM,141–152; AGCA A1.17, leg. 210, exps. 5002–5018; A3.62, leg. 198, exp. 4011; andAHQ Miscelaneo, bulto ano 1811, leg. 33 “Resumen gral. de los hombres q. en docePueblos contiene la Prova. de Quesaltenango entre Espanoles y Ladinos y las vestiasq. estos tienen q. todo se extracta en cita;” Jorge Gonzalez Alzate, “A History of LosAltos, Guatemala: A Study of Regional Conflict and National Integration, 1750–1885” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1994), 69–126, 172–177, 192–193, 643–647;Jorge Lujan Munoz, “Fundacion de Villas de ladinos en Guatemala en el ultimotercio del siglo XVIII,” Revista de Indias 145–146 (Julio-Diciembre 1976): 51–81,and “Reduccion y fundacion de Salcaja y San Carlos Sija (Guatemala) en 1776,”ASGHG 49 (Enero-Diciembre 1976): 45–57; Christopher H. Lutz, “EvolucionDemografica de la Poblacion No Indıgena,” and “Evolucion Demografica de laPoblacion Ladina,” both in Historia general de Guatemala, ed. gen. Jorge Lujan Munoz(Guatemala: Editorial Amigos del Paız, 1993–1994), 2:249–258 (esp. 250–256), and3:119–134, respectively.

3. RLRI, Libro IIII, Tıtulos VII and XII, and Libro VI, Tıtulos I and III. Seealso the discussion in Lujan Munoz, “Fundacion de Villas,” 52–54 and “Reducciony fundacion,” 45–47; as well as Magnus Morner, “La polıtica de segragacion y elmestizaje en la audiencia de Guatemala,” Revista de Indias 95–96 (1964): 137–151.

Notes to Chapter 5 233

4. Ladino councils, particularly those that emerged during the independencestruggle, tend to be referred to as ayuntamientos. Nevertheless, I will continue touse cabildo for the sake of clarity.

5. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 100–101, 172–177; Lujan Munoz,“Reduccion y fundacion,” 51–53; Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 78–80; AGCAA3.62, leg. 198, exp. 4011.

6. These generalizations do not entirely hold for the somewhat ambiguous case ofSan Marcos/San Pedro Sacatepequez. Recall, too, that Salcaja falls within the patternof northern-tier towns.

7. Ostuncalco’s dual-municipality system continued until 1927, when, accordingto Roland H. Ebel, Political Modernization in Three Guatemalan Indian Communi-ties (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1969), 151–156, separate indigenous munic-ipal councils were abolished by national decree. Quezaltenango’s indigenous andladino municipalidades co-existed at least through the end of the nineteenth century(RLRG, 29 enero 1884, 4:142–143, and 21 agosto 1886, 5:151; AHQ Miscelaneo,2 febrero 1893), and Robert M. Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala: The Quiche-Mayas of Momostenango (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1995), notes that nearbyMomostenango maintained indigenous and ladino municipal councils into the twen-tieth century (98, 126, 136–7, 170). According to AGQ, “Aprobacion de Alcaldes,”as of December 1840 the towns of Tacana and Tejutla also had dual indigenousand ladino municipal governments. In addition, the document lists both ladino andindigenous alcaldes for Santiago Coatepeque, San Antonio Sacatepequez, and SanPedro Sacatepequez, but without indicating whether these towns had two separatemunicipal councils, or one that was integrated.

8. Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 93–94, 126; Nancy M. Farriss, MayaSociety under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity, 1984), 236; Kevin Gosner, “Conceptualizacion de comunidad y jer-arquıa: enfoques recientes sobre la organizacion polıtica maya colonial en el alti-plano,” Mesoamerica 22 (Diciembre 1991): 158–9; Charles Gibson, The Aztecs underSpanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810 (Stanford:Stanford University, 1964), 176; Marcello Carmagnani, “Local Governments andEthnic Government in Oaxaca,” in Essays in the Political, Economic, and Social His-tory of Colonial Latin America, ed. Karen Spalding (Newark, DE: Latin AmericanStudies Program, 1982), 117–119; Peter Guardino, Peasants, Politics, and the Formationof Mexico’s National State: Guerrero, 1800–1857 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1996),29–30, 93; Mario Rodrıguez, The Cadiz Experiment in Central America, 1808–1826(Berkeley: University of California, 1978), 40–42; AMSJO, 2 febrero and 17 di-ciembre 1808, 30 diciembre 1809, 20 diciembre 1810; Gonzalez Alzate, “History ofLos Altos,” 172–177; Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 78–80.

9. Political Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy, Promulgated at an Assembly of theGeneral and Extraordinary Cortes, held at Cadiz, March 19, 1812, trans. Daniel Robinson,Esq. (London: J. J. Stockdale, 1813), esp. articles 1–26 (1–12) & 313–320 (76–77);“Primera Constitucion del Estado de Guatemala,” CG, esp. articles 46–49 (292–293) & 165–166 (315–316); RLG, “N. 311. Ley 12a.,” 25 abril 1837, 1:503; “N. 314.Ley 15a.,” 2 octubre 1839, 1:504–511; “N. 76. Ley 23a.,” 26 abril 1844, 1:116–121;

234 Notes to Chapter 5

“N. 321. Ley 22a.,” 21 septiembre 1845, 1:572–574; “N. 322. Ley 23a.,” 16 noviembre1847, 1:574–575; AMSJO, 4 octubre 1841; and RLRG, “Decreto Numero 242,” 30septiembre 1879, 2:283–294. The evidence for Ostuncalco consists of the minutes ofyearly municipal elections from 1808 to the 1890s found in AMSJO Correspondencia,sometimes in what is left of the Libros de Actas, and supplemented by AGQ, 5diciembre 1848, 4 diciembre 1859, and 8 diciembre 1883.

10. Guardino, in particular, discusses the contradictory nature of the municipalcouncil as both agent of the state and organ of local democracy: Peasants, Politics, 29,82–108.

11. Many authors have employed this term to describe the dual nature ofcommunity-level authorities and other mediators in Latin American society. See my“Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples: The Subaltern Roots of NationalPolitics in Nineteenth Century Guatemala” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999), 342 n 22, for further documentation.

12. Murdo J. Macleod, Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720(Berkeley: University of California, 1973), 157, 245–248, 266, 273, 287, 291–292,294, 330, 333; Timothy Anna, “The Independence of Mexico and Central America,”in Cambridge History of Latin America, v. 3, ed. Leslie Bethell (New York: CambridgeUniversity, 1985), 77–79; Ralph Lee Woodward, Central America: A Nation Divided,2nd. ed. (New York: Oxford University, 1985), 38, 90–95.

13. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 2–3, 16–17, 124–126, 144–149, 170–173, 195–217, 258; Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 24, 30–31, 42–49, 55–56, 78–82.

14. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 104–105, 192–193; “Estado de laPoblacion, Rentas y Administracion del Arzobispado de Guatemala. Ano de 1805,”Boletın del Archivo Historico Arquidiocesano 1 (Julio 1989): 108–113; AHQ Miscelaneo,bulto ano 1811, leg. 33 “Resumen gral. de los hombres q. en doce Pueblos con-tiene la Prova. de Quesaltenango entre Espanoles y Ladinos y las vestias q. estostienen q. todo se extracta en cita;” Little-Siebold, “Guatemala and the Dream,” 310,334.

15. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 152–305; Taracena Arriola, Invencioncriolla, 17–112. A published example of regionalist sentiment is Jose Suasnavar’s “In-forme que sobre la ereccion de un Estado compuesto con los pueblos de Los Altos dioal govierno S. de la nacion en 27 de Abril de 1824,” ASGHG 37 (Enero-Diciembre1964): 111–122.

16. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 244–273; AHQ Miscelaneo, bultoano 1821, leg. no. 80. “Actas de adhesion al Imperio Mexicano de la Villa Nuevade San Marcos, Totonicapan, Retalhuleu, Huehuetenango, Santiago Tejutla, Salcaja,Ostuncalco, Sn. Sebastian Quezaltenango, Chiquimula, Sn. Pedro Sacatepequez,Santiago Patzicıa;” Rodrıguez, Cadız Experiment, 155–160.

17. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 243–291. Quezaltenango’s ladinocouncil is quoted on p. 267 n 40; Gordon Kenyon, “Mexican Influence in Cen-tral America, 1821–1823,” HAHR 41 (May 1961): 175–205, esp. 183 and 187–190;Rodrıguez, Cadız Experiment, 156–166.

18. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 258–265, 288; Taracena Arriola,Invencion criolla, 87; Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 121–122, and Historiasocial de los quiches (Guatemala: Ministerio de Educacion, 1979), 229–243.

Notes to Chapter 5 235

19. David J. McCreery, “Atanasio Tzul, Lucas Aguilar, and the Indian Kingdom ofTotonicapan,” in The Human Tradition in Latin America: The Nineteenth Century, eds.Judith Ewell and William Beezley (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1989),39–58; AGCA C.1, leg. 22, exp. 528; B11.6, leg. 201, exp. 4632; Carmack, Historiasocial, 229–230, 241.

20. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 307–329, Taracena Arriola, Invencioncriolla, 115–119; Alejandro Marure, Bosquejo Historico de las revoluciones de CentroAmerica desde 1811 hasta 1834 (Guatemala: Tipografıa de El Progreso, 1877 [1837]),182, 185 (quotations); AHQ Libros de Actas, “Libro Numero 5: Principiado el 23de Agosto de 1826; Terminado el 18 de Setiembre de 1826” and “Libro Numero 6:Principiado el 19 de Setiembre de 1826; Terminado el 13 de Julio de 1827,” entriesdated 11 septiembre through 27 octubre 1826; Miscelaneo, leg. no. 19. “Oficios delComandanto Gral. de las Armas, y del Jefe Dptal.,” 26, 27, 29 and 31 octubre 1826;AMSJO, 12 septiembre, 19, 21, 29 and 31 octubre 1826; and El Indicador 106 (13Noviembre 1826): 425–426.

21. AMSJO, 29 abril, 21 junio, and 8 octubre 1824.22. AMSJO, febrero, 3 and 20 marzo, 12 mayo, 8 junio, 26 julio, 4 and 11 agosto,

1 octubre, and 29 noviembre 1830.23. AMSJO, 9 enero, 25 febrero, 1 marzo, 11 and 27 abril 1833. The quotation is

from 11 abril 1833. Cf. Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 339–366.24. See chapter 2 for more on this subject.25. Greg Grandin describes a similar trajectory for the city of Quezaltenango in

The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University,2000), 78.

26. The codes were printed in Guatemala in 1836 under the title Ley Organica dela administracion de justicia por jurados en el Estado de Guatemala.

27. See the opinion of Alejandro Marure, Efemerides de los hechos notables acaecidosen la republica de Centro America desde el ano de 1821 hasta el de 1842 (Guatemala: Min-isterio de Educacion Publica, 1956 [1885]), 151; Lorenzo Montufar, Resena historicade Centroamerica, 7 tomos (Guatemala: Tipografıa de “El Progreso, 1878–87), 2:339–349; and Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic ofGuatemala, 1821–1871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 61.

28. AGCA B86.2, leg. 1160, exp. 27284; B, leg. 3266, exps. 69365, 69377, 69414;AMSJO, 20, 22 and 30 enero, 3 and febrero 1837; Ley Organica, 14, 18; RLG,“N. 310, Ley 11a,” 28 septiembre 1836, 1:492–503.

29. AMSJO, 22 enero 1837.30. AMSJO, 30 enero 1837.31. AMSJO, 3 febrero 1837.32. AMSJO, 25 enero 1837; leg. “Libro que lleba el que subscribe de las multas

que . . . aplicados pr. los Jueces de este Pueblo de San Juan Ostunco. comencado el27 de Enero del ano de 1837.”

33. AGCA B, leg. 3266, exp. 69414. Note that the piece of land referred to hadbeen a point of contention between Ostuncalco’s indigenous and ladino residentsfor almost two decades. See chapter 2 for more detail.

34. On the Carrera Revolt, see Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 49–101; and HazelIngersoll’s extremely useful Ph.D. dissertation, “The War of the Mountain: A Study

236 Notes to Chapter 5

of Reactionary Peasant Insurgency in Guatemala, 1837–1873” (George WashingtonUniversity, 1972), esp. 45–203.

35. Los Altos became the sixth state or province of the Central American Feder-ation. See Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 113–122

36. This event is narrated in a letter dated 8 October 1839 by Joaquın Duran, thesecretary of Guatemala’s chief-executive, to officials of the State of Los Altos, andtranscribed in Montufar’s Resena historica, 3:405–407.

37. Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 372–376, 402; Lowell Gudmundson andHector Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 1821–1871: Liberalism before Liberal Reform(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1995), 89–92. On the importance of religion tonation-building in the aftermath of Spanish colonialism see Douglass Creed Sullivan-Gonzalez, “Piety, Power, and Politics: The Role of Religion in the Formation ofthe Guatemalan Nation-State, 1839–1871” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1994),3–26, 134–137, 248–249.

38. Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 307–325, 326 n 2, 372–383, 402; Gudmund-son and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 83; Ingersoll, “War of the Mountain,”148 n 103, 181; Steven Paul Palmer, “A Liberal Discipline: Inventing Nations inGuatemala and Costa Rica, 1870–1900” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1990),45–46; Sullivan-Gonzalez, “Piety, Power,” 195; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 81, 86–92,221.

39. Legal basis for the comisionado polıtico is established in article 25 of RLG,“N. 314. Ley 15a.,” 2 octubre 1839, 1:504–511. Juez preventivos were authorized andgoverned by articles 73–81 of RLG, “N. 567. Ley 11a.,” 5 diciembre 1839, 2:51–63.After mid-century there was much confusion over the respective characteristics ofthese two offices because, as was true of Ostuncalco, the same individual frequentlyhad been vested with both titles. See RLG, “N. 333. Ley 34a.,” 5 febrero 1864,1:583; AMSJO, 8 and 19 enero 1876. Ostuncalco’s comisionado polıtico first appearsin the documentation in early 1841 (AGQ, leg. 156 “Ano de 1841. El Comun deSan Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes). The additional powers of the juezpreventivo are added ca. 1853 (AMSJO, bulto anos 1852–1854).

40. AGQ, 4 abril 1839; AMSJO, 2 agosto 1839; 24 marzo 1840; 2 enero 1846; 5enero and 23 septiembre 1847; 7 enero 1848; 12 enero 1849; bulto ano 1865, “Librode Actas,” 20 diciembre 1864; 9 diciembre 1867; 4 enero 1869.

41. Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 137; AMSJO, 26 agosto 1852; 10noviembre 1823; 31 agosto 1829; RLG, “N. 1,041. Ley 9a.,” 30 octubre 1832,2:674–680; “N. 1,045. Ley 13a.,” 3 julio 1837, 2:682–683; “N. 1,047. Ley 17a.,”16 enero 1838, 2:683–684; Alejandro Marure, Catalogo de las leyes promulgadas en elestado de Guatemala, desde su ereccion en 15 de setiembre de 1824 hasta el 5 de octubre de1841 (Guatemala: Imprenta de La Paz, 1841), 56–64; AGCA C.1, leg. 197, exp. 5260;B, leg. 3266, exp. 59387; AHQ Miscelaneo, leg. no. 3. “Documentos relaciona-dos con los succesos del restablecimiento del Estado de Los Altos,” 11 and 12 julio1848.

42. AGQ, 13 julio 1854; AMSJO, 28 abril and 13 julio 1855; 5 enero 1863.43. AMSJO, 11 and 21 enero and 17 noviembre 1854; 31 enero 1855; AGQ, 30

enero 1856; 23 febrero and 16 junio 1857.

Notes to Chapter 5 237

44. AHQ Miscelaneo, leg. no. 2 “Oficios del Corregidor,” 17 junio 1853; Librosde Actas, “Libro Numero 37: Iniciado el 5 de Diciembre de 1852; Finalizado el 9 deAgosto de 1853,” 17 junio 1853; AGQ, 26 junio 1853; AMSJO, 27 junio 1853.

45. AGCA B, leg. 28560, exp. 106; RLG, “N. 1.092. Ley 13a.,” 16 septiembre 1852,3:47–53; AMSJO, 28 diciembre 1851; 25 agosto and 16 octubre 1852; 5 and 8 julio1853; 22 abril and 24 mayo 1854; bulto ano 1855, leg. “Libro de Visitas del Corregidordesde 1851 a 1867,” 4 junio 1860. The 1851 decree called for schools to be establishedin Ostuncalco, San Antonio Bobos, San Martın Sacatepequez, Cantel, and Salcaja.

46. The boy’s school is discussed in AGQ, 25 noviembre 1840; AGCA B, leg.28539, exp. 125; leg. 28560, exp. 106; AMSJO, 27 agosto 1847; 7 septiembre 1852;15 diciembre 1852; bulto ano 1854, “Estado de los Alumnos q. forman la Escuelade esta Cabecera de San Juan Ostuncalco;” 20 octubre 1855; bulto ano 1855, “Librode Visitas del Corregidor desde 1851 a 1867,” 4 junio 1860. The school for girlsis covered in AGCA B, leg. 28582, exp. 195; AGQ, 9 and 15 junio 1866; AMSJO,4 septiembre 1855; bulto ano 1855, “Libro de Visitas del Corregidor desde 1851 a1867,” 4 junio 1860 and 20 marzo 1867; 24 and 31 enero, 2 agosto 1862; 31 octubre1863; bulto ano 1864, “Estado general que manifiesta los ingresos y egresos de losfondos de propios y arvitrios de la Municipalidad de Ostuncalco;” 14 enero 1864;bulto ano 1865, Libros de Actas, 16 abril and 20 junio 1866; 20 enero, 28 febrero, 11agosto and 31 diciembre 1870; 12 febrero 1871.

47. AGCA B, leg. 28560, exp. 106; AMSJO, bulto ano 1854, “Estado de losAlumnos q. forman la Escuela de esta Cabecera de San Juan Ostuncalco;” 20 enero1870.

48. Wayne M. Clegern, Origins of Liberal Dictatorship in Central America: Guatemala,1865–1871 (Niwot, CO: University of Colorado, 1994), 45–56, 95–101, 148–150; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 351–370; J. C. Cambranes, Coffee and Peasants inGuatemala: The Origins of the Modern Plantation Economy in Guatemala, 1853–1897(Stockholm: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1985), 90.

49. Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 13 (source of quotation), 402–405; Ingersoll,“War of the Mountain,” 344; Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 643.

50. Robert G. Williams, States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of NationalGovernments in Central America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1994),211–223.

51. Palmer, “Liberal Discipline,” 174, 181.52. See Francisco A. Scarano’s “The Jıbaro Masquerade and Subaltern Politics in

Puerto Rico,” American Historical Review 101 (December 1996): 1398–1431. Thequotes are from p. 1399.

53. AMSJO, 8 enero 1821.54. Provincial liberalism in the Central American, and especially Guatemalan,

context, is discussed in Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 82–89;Palmer, “Liberal Discipline,” 82–85; Gonzalez Alzate, “History of Los Altos,” 16–17,170–173, 298–299, 351–353; Ingersoll, “War of the Mountain,” 211–212; TaracenaArriola, Invencion criolla, 12–49, 132–144, 154–158, 305–306.

55. “Ley Constitutiva de la Republica de Guatemala, decretada por la AsambleaNacional Constituyente en 11 de diciembre de 1879,” CG, 423–443. Earlier Liberal

238 Notes to Chapter 5

formulations of citizenship had included literacy, but this restriction was eased overthe course of the 1870s: RLRG, “Decreto Num. 39. Reglamento de eleccionesdirectas de diputados a la Asamblea Constituyente,” 11 diciembre 1871, 1:60–68; 30Noviembre 1874, 2:75–76; “Decreto Num. 144. Reglamento de elecciones directasde diputados a la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente,” 21 octubre 1875, 2:160–167;“Decreto Numero 242,” 30 Septiembre 1879, 2:283–294.

56. The quotation is from article 16 of the “Ley Constitutiva de la Republica,” CG,423–443. Conservative-era legal protections for the indigenous majority were basedon the idea that “[t]o establish and maintain the social equilibrium, the law supportsthe weak against the strong, and for this reason those persons who, due to their sex,age or present incapacity, lack sufficient learning to recognize and defend their ownrights, receive special protection in all nations, even those less cultured. Therefore,the majority of indıgenas finding themselves in this situation, the law should protectthem so that they can improve their education, avoid being defrauded of that whichpertains to them as a group or individual, and that they are not bothered in thoseactivities and customs learned from their ancestors that are not contrary to acceptablenorms” (RLG, “N. 172. Ley 13a.,” 5 diciembre 1839, 1:230–235). Among otherthings, Conservative law re-instituted sections of the Spanish RLRI, lowered thecourt costs for indigenous plaintiffs, and reestablished the offices of the Protector andthe Interprete de Indios (LIG, 17 agosto 1839, 22–23; 5 octubre 1851, 30; 31 octubre1851, 18; RLG, “N. 189. Ley 12a.,” 29 marzo 1845, 1:244–245; “N. 192. Ley 15a.,” 8noviembre 1851, 1:246; “N. 123. Ley 33a.,” 3 agosto 1854, 192–193). How carefullythe Conservative state actually hewed to the letter of these protective laws is open toquestion, but they were anathema to the Liberals, who abolished them for good withtheir overhaul of the judicial system in 1880 (see the “Ley organica y reglamentaria delPoder Judicial,” issued as Decreto Numero 257, RLRG, 17 febrero 1880, 2:435–457).

57. Helen J. Sanborn, Winter in Central America (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1886),149.

58. Patriarchal references abound in Reforma-era documents, and just as Lib-eral officials frequently employed the “hijos del paıs” metaphor for “the people,”community-level petitioners frequently invoked some variation of the father-figuremetaphor—e.g., “padre y protector”—when writing to the president. Two examplesare: AMSJO, 21 marzo 1878; and AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 29, exp. 7. See alsoPaul Burgess, Justo Rufino Barrios: A Biography (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1926), 140–141; Cambranes, Coffee and Peasants, 279–280; Carmack, Historia social, 264; Palmar,“Liberal Discipline,” 235; and John M. Watanabe, “Entitling Ethnicities: Land, Lo-cality, and Identity in Two Maya Land Titles from Western Guatemala, 1879–1891,”in Indigenous Perceptions of the Nation-State in Latin America, eds. Lourdes Giordaniand Marjorie M. Snipes (Williamsburg: College of William and Mary, 1995), 163.

59. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 238–255; Cambranes, Coffee and Peasants, 272–297; AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 29, exp. 7.

60. AGCA B, leg. 28670, exp. 292; leg. 28674, exp. 186; AMSJO, 13 mayo1880. San Miguel Totonicapan, too, was allowed to keep its indigenous corpora-tion: AGCA B, leg. 28699, exp. 1030. The 1879 municipal reform law is printed inRLRG, “Decreto Numero 242,” 30 septiembre 1879, 2:283–294.

Notes to Chapter 5 239

61. Grandin, Blood of Guatemala, especially chapters 5, 6, and 8.62. Although I do not have data for the entire department of Quezaltenango in

the late 1830s, in 1811 the corregimiento counted roughly 5,000 ladinos, excludingthe region of San Marcos, and that figure climbed to nearly 9,800 by 1852, andmore than 20,000 by 1880. The ladino population of the district/department of SanMarcos showed little increase for the period 1811–1852, rising from about six toseven thousand, but by 1880 it had jumped to almost 24,000 (AHQ Miscelaneo,bulto ano 1811, leg. 33 “Resumen gral. de los hombres q. en doce Pueblos contienela Prova. de Quesaltenango entre Espanoles y Ladinos y las vestias q. estos tienenq. todo se extracta en cita;” “Padron del Valle de Bovos;” “Padron General del Pueblode Sn. Juan Ostuncalco;” Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 378; and Censo general dela republica de Guatemala, levantado el ano de 1880).

63. In the words of historian Arturo Taracena Arriola, “El Guatemalteco era(y sigue siendo para muchos) el ladino” (Invencion criolla, 408). For overall populationfigures, see McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 346.

64. See the table in Taracena Arriola, Invencion criolla, 411 n. 5, for a num-ber of examples primarily from the department Quezaltenango, but including alsothe departments of Huehuetenango, Quiche, Retalhuleu, San Marcos, Solola, Su-chitepequez, and Totonicapan; McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 256–257; Cambranes,Coffee and Peasants, 284, 287.

65. RLA, 22 julio 1873, 85–86, and 13 mayo 1874; and RLRG, 17 octubre 1873,201–202; AGQ, leg. 630 “Ano 1877. Los indigenas poseedores de los terrenos deTalculan, contra los vecinos de Bobos por avances de estos en sus mismas posesiones;”leg. 599 “1877. Patrocinio Ybarra contra los vecinos de Bobos, por avances y provi-dencia de la Jefatura cortandolos,” octubre 1877; 15 octubre 1877; leg. 2102 “Civil.Terrenos Ano 1883. Bonifacio Lopez solicitando certificacion de la concesion quede un lote de terreno se le hizo en los de la Costa Cuca,” mayo 1883; 3 agosto1883; leg. 1565 “Administrativo ano de 1888. Asunto de Tierras. Los milicianos deSibilia sobre que se les reparta un terreno que posee en Coatepeque la Sra. ZeferinaBarrios;” AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 10, exp. 5; B, leg. 28816, exp. 73; AMSJO,bulto ano 1879, unnamed legajo containing documents dating from 4 mayo 1878to 26 octubre 1880; 26 noviembre 1888; 24 octubre and 27 noviembre 1889; “Librode sessiones,” 11 and 20 febrero and 9 mayo 1890; 22 diciembre 1890; and ETEN,“Milicianos de Ostuncalco, ‘Rıo Negro’—‘Saquichilla,” 2:425–455.

66. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 6, exp. 2; paq. 9, exp. 13; paq. 19, exp. 19;B, leg. 28658, exp. 108; B leg. 28816, exp. 73; C.1, leg. 293, exp. 7837; AGQ, leg.2096 “1883. Terrenos. Patrocinio Castillo I Aureliano Perez se quejan de que deorden de Comandante Local de San Carlos Sija les han quitado una porcion de susrespectivos terrenos. . . . ;” AGQ, 13 enero, 25 and 31 mayo 1877; Carmack, Historiasocial, 248–249; Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 364–265; ETEN, “Milicianos de SanCarlos Sija, ‘El Eden,’ Cajola—Quezaltenango, 1886 [1883],” 2:719–734.

67. AMSJO, 11 enero 1886; 31 mayo 1895. The establishment and evolution ofOstuncalco’s nineteenth-century cantons is covered in literally hundreds of docu-ments, and they cannot be cited adequately here. See Grandin’s Blood of Guatemala,135–136, for a similar discussion of Quezaltenango.

240 Notes to Chapter 6

68. These payments were referred to as derechos or aranceles among other things.See below for the example of fees associated with the Liberal labor regimen thatwere paid to municipal officials.

69. AMSJO, 24 abril 1890. See Grandin’s discussion in the Blood of Guatemala,especially 121–122. Carmack, in Historia social, discusses the growth of indigenousmilitia membership under Liberal rule in Momostenango (257–259, 277 and passim).

70. Decree 177 is reprinted in LIG, 35–42.71. State railroad projects, for example, paid 4 reales per day at a time when the

typical finca wage was 3 reales (AMM, bulto ano 1889, 17 mayo 1890).

notes to chapter 6

1. See Alejandro Marure, Efemerides de los hechos notables acaecidos en la republica deCentro America desde el ano de 1821 hasta el de 1842 (Guatemala: Ministerio de Edu-cacion Publica, 1956 [1885]), 151; Lorenzo Montufar, Resena historica de Centroamerica,7 tomos (Guatemala: Tipografıa de “El Progreso,” 1878–87), 2:339–349; Hazel Inger-soll, The War of the Mountain: A Study of Reactionary Peasant Insurgency in Guatemala,1837–1873 (Ph.D. diss, George Washington University, 1972), 75; and Ralph LeeWoodward’s Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821–1871(Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 61.

2. Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 60–94.3. On the possible existence of an alliance between Carrera and the western Maya,

see Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 220 n. 49; and Carol A. Smith, “Origins of theNational Question in Guatemala: A Hypothesis,” in Guatemalan Indians and the State:1540–1988, ed. Carol A. Smith (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 80–82, and “FailedNationalist Movements in 19th–Century Guatemala: A Parable for the Third World,”in Nationalist Ideologies and the Production of National Cultures, ed. Richard G. Fox(Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1990), 154, 162.

4. Marcelo Molina, Esposicion a la Convencion de los Estados Centro-Americanos,protestando Contra La Usurpacion del de Los Altos. La Dirige el Lic. Marcelo Molina,Gefe que fue del mismo estado (Mexico: Impreso por Ignacio Cumplido, 1841), 22–26;Jorge Gonzalez Alzate, A History of Los Altos, Guatemala: A Study of Regional Conflictand National Integration, 1750–1885 (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1994), 383–421;Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 238–239; and Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 113–117.

5. E.g., John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, andYucatan, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1969 [1841]), 1:225–226. See also the opinionof Robert Glasgow Dunlop, Travels in Central America (London: Longman, Brown,Green, and Longmans, 1847), 87–90; E. G. Squier, Travels in Central America, 2 vols.(New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1853), 429–430, and The States of Central America(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1858), 514–515; Mario Rodrıguez, A Palmerstoniandiplomat in Central America: Frederick Chatfield, Esq. (Tucson: University of Arizona,1964), 138–139; and Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 77–113. On the expulsion ofArchbishop Casaus, see Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 37–38, and passim.

6. Rodrıguez cites this figure in A Palmerstonian diplomat, 138–139.

Notes to Chapter 6 241

7. Memorias del General Carrera, 1837 a 1840, ed. Ignacio Solıs, prologo Francis PoloSifontes (Guatemala: Serviprensa Centroamericana, 1979 [1906]), 20. Apparently,Carrera’s pronouncement was issued in early June, 1837 (21–22 n. 8).

8. This according to Hazel Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 114.9. William J. Griffith, Empires in the Wilderness: Foreign Colonization and Devel-

opment in Guatemala, 1834–1844 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1965);Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 51–52.

10. Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 78–87, 114.11. Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico’s National State: Guerrero, 1800–1857

(Stanford: Stanford University, 1996), 6–7, 41, 44–45, 54–58, and passim. HistorianAnn Jefferson suggested to me the importance that cross-class alliances may haveplayed in Carrera’s success. See her dissertation on eastern Guatemala at the beginningof the nineteenth century for further investigation of this topic: The Rebellion of Mita,Eastern Guatemala, in 1837 (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 2000).

12. Michael F. Fry, Agrarian Society in the Guatemalan montana, 1700–1840 (Ph.D.diss., Tulane University, 1988), 46–59, 98–99, 106, 112, 167–175, 221–222; Christo-pher H. Lutz, “Evolucion demografico de la poblacion no indıgena” (249–258) and“Evolucion demografica de la poblacion ladina” (119–134), in Historia general deGuatemala, ed. gen. Jorge Lujan Munoz (Guatemala: Editorial Amigos del Paıs, 1993& 1994), volumes 2 and 3, respectively; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 62, 69, 83; andStephens, Incidents of Travel, 80–85.

13. For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press, 1969),100.

14. Jack L. Amariglio, Stephen A. Resnick, and Richard D. Wolff, “Class, Power,and Culture,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson andLawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1988), 487–501. The quotationis from p. 488.

15. Amariglio, Resnick, and Wolff, “Class, Power, and Culture,” 488.16. E.g., see the “Commentary and Debate” in LARR volume 31 (1996): 111–

157, spurred by Mitchell A. Seligson’s “Thirty Years of Transformation in theAgrarian Structure of El Salvador, 1961–1991,” LARR 30 (1995): 43–74.

17. Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in ModernMexico (Durham: Duke University, 1994).

18. Knight’s essay is entitled “Weapons and Arches in the Mexican RevolutionaryLandscape” (24–66), and the quotation is from p. 26.19. For a pioneering and wide-ranging discussion of this theme within the Latin

American context, see the essays in Steve J. Stern’s edited Resistance, Rebellion, andConsciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison: Universityof Wisconsin, 1987). The quoted phrase is from his introduction, “New Approachesto the Study of Peasant Rebellion and Consciousness: Implications of the AndeanExperience,” 3–25. Thompson’s foundational work in this regard is “The MoralEconomy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 50(February 1971): 76–136. Scott’s relevant works are The Moral Economy of the Peasant(New Haven: Yale University, 1976), and Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms ofPeasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University, 1985).

242 Notes to Chapter 6

20. Use of hegemony as a method of historical and political analysis traces back tothe work of Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. See Selections from the Prison Note-books of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith(New York: International Publishers, 1971), written ca. the early 1930s, especiallythe “Notes on Italian History,” 52–120.

21. Knight, “Weapons and Arches,” 42.22. The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (London: Basil

Blackwell, 1985). See also Sayer’s comments in “Everyday Forms of State Formation:Some Dissident Remarks on ‘Hegemony,” in Everyday Forms of State Formation,367–377, from which the quotation is taken (368–369). Although Scott rightly hascriticized the use of false consciousness, he is completely mistaken when he equatesit with “hegemony,” as he does in both Weapons of the Weak and Domination and theArts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University, 1990).

23. “Reflections on the Ruins: Everyday Forms of State Formation in Nineteenth-Century Mexico,” 69–106. The quotations are from p. 70.

24. “Dissident Remarks,” 374–377. On the fragility of hegemony as “end point,”see also William Roseberry, “Hegemony and the Language of Contention,” in Ev-eryday Forms of State Formation, 355–366, but esp. 358.

25. Sayer, “Dissident Remarks,” 374.26. James C. Scott, “Forward,” in Everyday Forms of State Formation, vii–xii. The

quotations are from xi. See also Roseberry, “Hegemony and the Language of Con-tention,” 358–361.

27. This does not discount the likely existence of a third group of ambiguous orambivalent intermediaries, with one foot in both camps.

28. Lowell Gudmundson and Hector Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 1821–1871:Liberalism before Liberal Reform (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1995), 93.

29. The Momostenango rebellion is covered best in Robert M. Carmack’s Historiasocial de los quiches (Guatemala: Ministerio de Educacion, 1979), 245–269. On theRemincheros, see Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 346–351.

30. See Paul Burgess, Justo Rufino Barrios: A Biography (Philadelphia: Dorrance,1926), 90–132, for a blow-by-blow description of the Liberal attack on the Church,which, by and large, was directed by Barrios.

31. For an illuminating comparision, see Francisco A. Scarano’s discussion of thejıbaro in Puerto Rico, in “The Jıbaro Masquerade and Subaltern Politics in PuertoRico,” American Historical Review 101 (December 1996): 1398–1431. For a usefuloverview of how the term “ladino” has been employed in Guatemala over thecenturies, see Arturo Taracena Arriola, “Contribucion al estudio del vocablo ‘ladino’en Guatemala (S. XVI–XIX),” Historia y Antropologıa: ensayos en honor de J. DanielContreras R., ed. Jorge Lujan Munoz (Guatemala, 1982), 89–104. An interesting casestudy is Jorge Lujan Munoz’s “Los caciques-gobernadores de San Miguel Petapa(Guatemala) durante la colonia,” Mesoamerica 1 (1980): 56–77.

32. United Nations Historical Clarification Commission, Guatemala: Memory ofSilence: Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification (February 25, 1999), article124. See also articles 108–123.

Notes to Chapter 6 243

33. Berkeley: University of California, 1995.34. Guardino, Peasants, Politics, 5 and passim.35. Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 274.36. From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in

Andean Peru (Durham: Duke University, 1997).37. Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991

(Durham: Duke University, 2000), 6.38. Jeffrey L. Gould, To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of

Mestizaje, 1880–1965 (Durham: Duke University, 1998), 242.39. Gould, To Die in This Way, 179–181, 199.40. As both Mallon and Thurner demonstrate, Peru’s “inclusive moments”—

e.g., the War of the Pacific and the subsequent Atusparia rebellion—were moreapparent than real. Populist and supra-regional mediators along the lines of VicenteGuerrero, Juan Alvarez, or even Rafael Carrera failed to materialize in Peru, andthus subaltern resistance remained largely local in focus and limited in its impact. SeeMallon, Peasant and Nation, 139–140, 178, 185–199, 207–217, 221–241, 247–248,274–275, 311–317; and Thurner, From Two Republics, 54–98, 140–143, 151–152. Seealso Nelson Manrique’s Yawar Mayu: Sociedades terratenientes serranas, 1879–1910 (Lima:DESCO, 1988), 50 and passim.

41. The most significant exception discussed by Gould is the “Indian-ConservativeAlliance” of the early twentieth century, in which General Emiliano Chamorrofigured prominently in connection with the indigenous communities of Matagalpaand Boaco (To Die in This Way, 43ff ).

42. See Tristan Platt, Estado boliviano y ayllu andino: tierra y tributo en el norte depotosı (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1982), esp. 37 n. 16, 73, and passim; and“The Andean Experience of Bolivian Liberalism, 1825–1900: Roots of Rebellionin 19th-Century Chayanta (Potosı),” Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in theAndean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed. Steve J. Stern (Madison: Universityof Wisconsin, 1987), 280–323.

43. Gonzalez Alzate, “A History of Los Altos;” Arturo Taracena Arriola’sInvencion criolla, sueno ladino, pesadilla indıgena: los altos de Guatemala: de region a Estado,1740–1850 (Costa Rica: Editorial Porvenir y CIRMA, 1997); and Greg GrandinThe Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University,2000).

44. Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala, 6, 18, 126, 130ff.45. Grandin excerpts the following passage from Eduardo Galeano Paıs ocupada:

“The indigenous bourgeoisie of Quetzaltenango . . . is the exception that highlightsthe situation in which the descendants of the Maya live.” See The Blood of Guatemala,ix, and also Grandin’s discussion on pp. 26–53 & 130–131.

46. On the indigenismo of early twentieth-century Guatemala and Miguel AngelAsturias, see John Beverley and Marc Zimmerman, Literature and Politics in the CentralAmerican Revolutions (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 144–171, but esp. 144–152;Gerald Martin, introduction to Men of Maize, by Miguel Angel Asturias. Trans. andcoord. Gerald Martin (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1993), xi–xxx; Virginia

244 Notes to Chapter 6

Garrard-Burnett, “Indians are Drunks and Drunks are Indians: Alcohol and Indi-genismo in Guatemala, 1890–1940,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 19 (2000),342–346; and Jim Handy, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and AgrarianReform in Guatemala, 1944–1954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1994),49–50. On Asturias’ life, see Arturo Taracena Arriola, “El camino politico de MiguelAngel Asturias,” Mesoamerica 38 (Diciembre 1999), 86–101.

Index

aguardiente, 14, 31, 32, 54, 77, 104–106,112, 116–135, 150, 170–171, 182–183;alcohol police, 130–134; free trade, 124,147; monopoly licences, 8, 104, 116,118–119, 123–135, 171, 183

Almolonga, 21Althusser, Louis, 176, 177Alvarado, Leonor de, 23Alvarado, Pedro de, 19–23Arce, Manuel Jose, 147Audiencia, 18–20, 26, 180

Barillas, Manuel Lisandro, 156Barrios de San Millan, Gabriel (governor),

140Barrios, Justo Rufino, 3–4, 13–15, 35, 39,

72–75, 91, 93, 97, 100, 102, 110, 156,160, 162, 170

Barrundia, Juan (governor of Guatemala),147

Boddam-Whetham, J. W., 111, 114Bosque y Artiaga, Juan Antonio del

(agrimensor), 28, 42, 50, 57–58Buenabaj, 30, 162Burbano de Lara, Martın (padre), 59–62Burns, E. Bradford, 6, 7

cabildo (see also town council), 137–144cacao, 20, 25–28cacicazgo, 26caciques, 140

Cadiz: Constitution, 148; Cortes, 32–33Cambranes, J. C., 7Cantel, 21, 129Cardenas, Luıs (appellate judge), 1Carmack, Robert, 18, 21–22, 108, 112–113,

153, 162Carrera, Rafael, 3, 6, 13, 15, 47, 50, 57,

61–63, 67, 73, 91, 103, 123–124, 130,137, 149, 151–152, 159, 167–168,170–172, 174–175, 183, 190

Carrera Revolt, 2–3, 135, 145, 151,170–173, 175–176, 180–181, 184

Cascara, Francisco (corregidor), 53, 54, 56,58

Castillo, Maximo, 43–44Castillo, Nicolas, 118–119Castillo Ocampo, Maximo, (encargado),

54–56Catholic Church, 9, 121, 147, 150, 172,

174–175, 181, 185cattle ranching, 13, 30, 32, 38, 44, 47, 49,

52, 64–65, 70, 85, 134, 152, 182Cerna, Vicente, 8, 14, 68–69, 74, 104,

168Champerico, 156Chiantla, 154Chiapas (Mexico), 117, 187Chiquimula (department of ), 40, 176cholera, 172, 174Clegern, Wayne, 8Coatepeque, 60, 119

246 Index

coffee, 3–4, 6, 8, 12–14, 28, 39, 60, 63–69,72, 75, 77, 79–81, 84–85, 89–90, 92, 99,100, 113–114, 116, 138, 152, 155–156,159–160, 162–164, 168–169, 171, 182,184, 189, 190–191; exportation, 4, 6, 64,69, 163–164, 184

Colomba Costa Cuca, 60, 95Colomo, Jose Marıa, 46–50, 54–55Colotenango, 117Concepcion Chiquirichapa, 10, 12, 18, 20,

24, 28, 30, 33, 46, 60–61, 81, 90, 98,129–130, 133–134, 148

Conservatives, 3–4, 6–15, 39, 41, 50, 61–63,67–70, 73–75, 81, 89–92, 94–101, 104,106, 116, 124, 127, 130, 133, 135–138,152–156, 159–163, 168, 170–172,181–185, 190

contribucion territorial (land tax; see alsoland ), 34

Corrigan, Philip, 178, 184Cortes y Larraz, Pedro (archbishop), 27, 29Costa Cuca (see also costa del sur), 12, 13, 39,

42, 56, 63, 67, 70, 71, 90, 92, 94, 95, 96,99, 101, 114, 118, 119, 153, 155, 162, 182

costa del sur (southern coast or Pacificpiedmont), 9, 11–14, 20–22, 24–28,30–32, 35–39, 41–42, 44, 47–49, 56–57,59–60, 62–65, 67–68, 70–72, 75, 79–80,84–85, 87–90, 92–95, 98–101, 104, 114,116–119, 122, 148, 153, 160–163, 166,174, 182; Costa Cuca, 12–13, 39, 42, 56,63, 67, 70–71, 90, 92, 94–96, 99, 101,114, 118–119, 153, 155, 162, 182;forasteros, 27

cotton, 25–27, 31–32, 37, 76, 77, 112–113,138, 145

Cuchumatanes, 22, 84, 108, 113Cueva, Francisco de la, 23, 38

debt, 13–14, 72, 74–102, 104, 112, 171;credit, 13, 77, 79, 81, 83, 96, 101, 112,161, 182; fiadores, 77–78, 81, 87, 112;habilitaciones, 76, 87, 91, 93–98, 100,166, 182; libretos (passbooks), 93, 98;mozos fugos, 88, 94, 101; peonage,74–75, 81, 83–85, 88–89, 91–93, 96, 98,99

de la Cadena, Marisol, 188dependency theory, 84Dunlop, Robert, 111

Eber, Christine, 117Ehlers, Tracy, 113ejido (see also land ), 13, 28, 30, 32–35, 37,

39, 42-55, 57, 60, 62–66, 81–82, 108,118, 134, 160

El Asintal, 12, 60, 118El Palmar, 63–68, 70, 119El Quiche (department of ), 11, 40,

182El Suj (Palestina de los Altos, aldea of

Ostuncalco), 133, 165encomienda, 19, 23Escobar, Catalina, 126, 127Escuintla (department of ), 40, 127

fiadores (see also debt and women), 77–78, 81,87, 112

Flores Costa Cuca, 12, 60Flores, Cirilo (vice governor of Guatemala),

147Flores, Juan Bautista, 42, 57forasteros (see also costa del sur), 27Fuentes y Guzman, Francisco, 23, 118

Galindo, Leandro (regidor), 104–106,132

Galvez, Mariano (governor of Guatemala),2, 15, 45–48, 73, 138, 149, 151, 153, 159,161, 167, 170–175, 184

Garces, Diego (alcalde mayor of Zapotitlan),25–27

Garcıa Pelaez, Francisco de Paula(archbishop), 60

Genova, 12, 60Gonzalez Alzate, Jorge, 7–8, 117, 125Gould, Jeffrey, 189–190, 192Grandin, Greg, 161, 165, 191Great Britain, 32Guardino, Peter, 176, 187–188, 192Guatemala City, 2–3, 8–11, 31, 50, 55, 62,

77, 111, 116, 137, 141, 144–147, 149,151–152, 155, 159, 163, 166–168,171–172, 176, 180–185, 190–191

Gudmundson, Lowell, 8, 15, 69, 183Gúsman, Francisco (governor), 61

habilitaciones (see also debt), 76, 87, 91,93–98, 100, 166, 182

haciendas (see also land ), 2, 29, 38, 59–60,84, 88, 176

Index 247

hegemony, 177–179, 181, 184, 187household types, 79–81, 107–108Huehuetenango (department of ), 40, 84,

117, 127, 182Huitan, 21, 24, 29, 30

indigenismo, 188, 190, 192

Joseph, Gilbert M., 177–178Juares, Nicolas, 10, 158

K’iche’ (Maya): 13, 18–23, 25, 30, 38, 61,64–65, 67, 113, 123, 154, 192; Achıes,18–19

Knight, Alan, 84–85, 88–89, 92, 99, 177

ladinization, 9, 144, 156, 168, 185ladinos, 1, 10–11, 15, 17–18, 29–32, 35,

41–49, 52–59, 61, 64–66, 68–71, 82, 95,107, 109, 112, 115, 118–125, 129, 133,137, 141–146, 151–153, 155–159, 162,168, 174, 185, 191–192; crop damage (seealso land ), 43–44, 51, 53–54, 56, 58;nationalism, 138, 190; settlement ofwestern highlands, 31, 142, 145

LaFarge, Oliver, 73, 111, 113land: composicion, 33–34, 42, 141;

contribucion territorial (land tax), 34;crop damage (see also ladinos), 43–44, 51,53–54, 56, 58; ejido, 13, 28, 30, 32–35, 37,39, 42–53, 55, 57, 60, 62–66, 81–82, 108,118, 134, 160; haciendas, 2, 29, 38, 59–60,84, 88, 176; milpa agriculture, 13, 18, 24,26, 28, 37–38, 44, 47, 52, 64–65, 71,73–74, 83, 85, 101; patrilineal inheritance,108–110; realengos, 51; rental, 34, 42–43,49, 54–55, 57, 61–62, 65–66, 69, 72;surveying, 28, 42–43, 45–48, 50, 55, 58;tierras frıas, 25, 28, 30, 35, 36

Larrave, Manuel (juez preventivo), 104–106,132

Liberals, 3–4, 6–10, 12, 15, 41, 50, 68–70,72–73, 91–92, 100–101, 116, 135–138,149, 152, 156, 159–163, 168, 170–171,182–186, 190; 1871 revolution, 3–4, 6–7,10, 13–14, 35, 39, 41, 63, 68–69, 72–75,77, 87–88, 90–91, 96, 100–101, 104, 110,116, 135–136, 156, 159, 161, 163, 165,167–168, 170, 181–183, 185, 190;

provincial ideology, 8–10; Reforma, 3–4,6–9, 13, 15, 39, 41, 62, 68, 70–72, 75,100, 116, 136–138, 155, 157, 159, 161,163, 170–171, 180–186

Lindo-Fuentes, Hector, 8, 15, 69, 183Livingston Codes, 2, 45, 149, 153, 161,

172–174Lopes, Aniseto, 126–127, 158Los Altos (state of ), 7, 9, 46–47, 48, 50,

52, 62, 137, 146, 148, 151, 155–156, 159,162, 168, 171–172, 176, 183, 185,190–191

Lovell, W. George, 73Lutz, Chris, 78

Maclen, 29Malacatan, 141, 154Mallon, Florencia E., 178–179, 186–188mandamientos, 14, 74–75, 89–91, 93,

96–100, 102, 155, 166, 171, 182–183mayeques (serfs), 26McBryde, Felix, 112McCreery, David, 7, 9, 41, 67–69, 73–74,

76, 81, 88, 99–100, 113–114, 116–117,124–125, 141

Mercedarians (Order of Mercy), 12, 23mestizaje, 2, 188mestizos, 29, 117–118, 137, 141, 145, 152,

157–158, 167, 188–189Mexico, 12, 26–27, 84, 99, 116–117, 146,

152, 167, 171, 176–177, 186–192; empireof, 146, 167

Meza, Lorenzo (agrimensor), 48, 50, 52, 55,57–58

militias, 59, 118, 153–154, 162, 166, 183milpa agriculture (see also land ), 13, 18, 24,

26, 28, 37–38, 44, 47, 52, 64–65, 71,73–74, 83, 85, 101

Momostenango, 21, 30, 64–65, 97–98, 108,113, 153–154, 162, 184

Morales, Felix (circuit court judge), 1–2,45–46, 149–150, 174

Morazan, Francisco, 151–152, 172mozos fugos (see also debt), 88, 94, 101municipalidad (see also town council), 11, 42,

49–50, 56, 59–62, 65–66, 72, 77, 94, 96,98, 103, 110, 111, 119, 121–122, 126–130,132–134, 138–139, 141, 143, 147–150,153, 158, 165

Muybridge, Eadweard, 114

248 Index

national identity (see also ladinos), 10, 12,138, 188–190, 192

Nejapa Tepintepeque, 25Nicaragua, 189–192Nuevo San Carlos, 12Nugent, Daniel, 177–178

Orellana, Jose Marıa (padre), 49, 80, 128,158

Orellana, Manuel, 49–50overdetermination, 176–177

Pacheco, Narciso (corregidor), 66, 133Pancake, Cherri, 113Paxoj, 24, 30Paz, Andres (governor), 49–55, 58Peru, 186–190, 192Peten (department of ), 40, 127Pie de la Cuesta de la Laja (aldea of

Ostuncalco), 72Pineda, Juan de, 25–26Pinto Soria, Julio, 117–118population, 107–109, 112, 115Portocarrero, Pedro, 23principales (see also town council), 11, 49,

51–53, 60–61, 72, 82, 129, 130, 134, 139,143, 150

proletarianization, 8, 84–85, 88–89, 92, 99public/private spheres (see also women),

106–107, 122

Quezaltenango, 1–3, 10–14, 17–26, 28–32,34–43, 45–48, 50, 53, 58, 60, 63–64, 66,70, 72–74, 76–78, 80–85, 88–91, 94–98,100–101, 103, 108–109, 111–112, 114,117–119, 122–123, 125–126, 128–134,140–142, 145–155, 158, 161, 165,172–174, 176, 182, 190–192

Quiche (department of ), 11, 40, 182

Ralda, Cayetano and Matilde, 104–106, 132Ralda, Irinea, 105–106, 132Ralda, Miguel (municipal secretary), 47, 49,

60realengos (see also land ), 51Recinos, Adrian, 21Reforma (see also Liberals), 3–4, 6–9, 13, 15,

39, 41, 62, 68, 70–72, 75, 100, 116,136–138, 155, 157, 159, 161, 163,170–171, 180–186

repartimiento: de brazos, 76; de mercancıas,76, 112

Retalhuleu, 11–13, 20, 25, 27–28, 40, 60,64, 66, 155

Rıo Blanco, 141Rıo Naranjo, 30Rıo Samala, 18, 21–22, 25, 30Rivas, Valerio Ignacio (agrimensor), 45–48Rivera, Manuel (fiscal), 1Robles, Gertrudis, 47–48Rodas, Macario (jefe politico), 46–47Rodrıguez, Mario, 2

Salcaja, 31, 141San Antonio Bobos (see also Sibilia), 12, 29,

31, 59, 141–142, 154, 162San Antonio Palopo, 113San Antonio Suchitepequez, 64San Bartolo Aguas Calientes, 97, 154San Carlos Sija, 29, 31, 61, 119, 141–142,

154, 162San Cristobal Cabrican, 12, 24, 29–30,

133–134, 140San Cristobal Totonicapan, 30San Felipe, 63–67, 104San Geronimo Cuyamesumba, 25San Jose Pie de la Cuesta, 60–61, 95San Juan Olintepeque, 24San Juan Ostuncalco, 1, 2, 11–12, 17–36,

38–39, 41–47, 49, 54, 59, 60–62, 64,71–73, 76–78, 80–82, 85, 87–90, 94–95,97–98, 102, 104–116, 118–123, 125–135,140–142, 147–151, 153–155, 158,161–162, 165, 171, 173–174, 176, 182,192; aldea El Suj (Palestina de los Altos),133, 165; aldea Pie de la Cuesta de la Laja,72; aldea Sechicul, 131

San Lorenzo, 141–142San Marcos, 1, 30–31, 40, 61, 89, 92,

141–142, 149, 182San Martın Sacatepequez, 12–14, 24, 28, 30,

35, 39, 41–67, 69–71, 90, 95, 104,109–110, 118, 129–130, 134–135, 148,153, 160, 174, 182

San Martın Zapotitlan, 63–67San Mateo, 30San Miguel Acatan, 108, 113San Miguel Ixtahuacan, 21San Miguel Sigüila, 12, 24, 33, 46, 88,

133–134, 150

Index 249

San Miguel Totonicapan, 141San Pablo, 141San Pedro Sacatepequez, 25–26, 30, 42, 154San Sebastian, 61, 63–64, 66–67Sanborn, Helen, 111, 114Santa Catalina Retalhuleu, 12, 20, 25–27Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan, 21, 151Santa Cruz Cajola, 12, 24, 30, 33, 46, 133,

150, 162Santa Eulalia, 108, 113Santa Marıa Chiquimula, 21Santa Marıa Magdalena, 12, 25, 27–28, 81Santiago Atitlan, 25Santiago Chimaltenango, 108Santiago de los Caballeros, 31, 78, 141Sayer, Derek, 178–179, 184Scott, James C., 177–179Sechicul (aldea of Ostuncalco), 131sheep, 28, 32, 37–38, 76Sibilia (see also San Antonio Bobos), 12, 21Siegel, Morris, 84Soconusco, 21–22, 27Solola (department of ), 34, 40, 50, 90, 172,

182state formation, 7, 9–10, 17–18, 167–168,

170–171, 178, 186–187Suasnavar, Jose (jefe polıtico), 126Suchitepequez (department of ), 11, 13,

26–27, 40, 64, 66, 70, 89, 127sugar, 13, 30–32, 41, 44, 49, 58, 64, 70,

79–80, 85, 92, 99, 112, 116–119, 122–123,138, 152, 182

Tacana, 141Taracena Arriola, Arturo, 141, 155Tax, Sol, 111Taylor, William, 116–117Tejutla, 141–142textiles, 14, 31–32, 112–113, 115, 145

Thurner, Mark, 188tierras frıas (see also land ), 25, 28, 30, 35–36Todos Santos Cuchumatan, 113Totonicapan (department of ), 11, 21, 34,

37–38, 46, 64, 78, 146, 154, 182town council, 11, 17, 29–30, 41, 42, 44,

49–51, 56, 59–62, 65–66, 72, 77, 94, 96,98, 103, 110–111, 119, 121–122, 126–130,132–134, 137–144, 147–150, 153, 158,161, 165; auxiliaries, 101–102, 153, 163,165; principales, 11, 49, 51–53, 60–61,72, 82, 129–130, 134, 139, 143, 150

Urrutia, Jose Miguel (juez preventivo), 131Utatlan, 18, 21–22

Van Oss, Adrian, 64Vargas, Manuel, 48Vasquez Ysara, Pedro (alcalde), 48, 51, 53–55Veblen, Thomas, 37Verapaz, 40, 89, 172, 176, 182Vixben, 24, 30

wheat, 31, 36–38, 73, 76–79, 112Williams, Robert, 7Wolf, Eric, 51women, 14, 31, 54, 77–78, 106–120,

122–123, 126, 129, 131, 135, 177;clandestinistas, 105–106, 123; fiadoras,112; public/private spheres, 106–107, 122,136

Woodward, Ralph Lee, 7–8, 77, 92wool, 14, 31–32, 37, 76, 112–113

Xacana, 24, 30

Zaculeu, 21, 22Zunil, 21, 64