The Age of Transformation and Revolt, 1780–1825 · These documents allow ... Along with the revolt that Tupac Amaru II and ... Section I The Age of Transformation and Revolt, 1780–1825

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Section I

The Age of Transformationand Revolt, 1780–1825

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The age of transformation and revoltstretched from 1780 to 1825, beginningwith peasant and slave revolts that offered

radical alternatives to the European colonialsystems (best represented by slaves taking over inthe new nation of Haiti). The era culminated withcreole-led forces seizing power in one region af-ter another in order to establish independentrepublics and forestall a complete overthrow ofthe political, economic, and social systems. Imagin-ings of nationhood, citizenship, and political rightsbegan to appear, and they motivated debate, newleaders, and mass movements. Over the course ofdecades, people from a wide array of class andethnic backgrounds chose to replace centuries-old empires with nations and imperial subjectswith citizens. However, not everything changed:Iberian-descended creoles retained many of thecolonial-era hierarchies in the new republics, andthe economies continued to depend on theexploitation of indigenous people, castas, andslaves. In fact, access to courts and legal rights toland, property, and control of children declined forindigenous people and women with the creationof independent nation states in Ibero-America.

This era of change and warfare sprang from aprolonged period of rising class-race tensions andeconomic hardship. Between 1772 and 1776,Spain’s Bourbon monarchy raised the alcabala(sales tax) from 2 percent to 4 percent and thento 6 percent. Furthermore, tax collectors installednew customs houses along the Spanish colonies’

principal trade routes and began to collect theselevies more vigorously. Officials ignored local ex-emptions and extended the taxes to indigenous-style products—like corn and textiles—angeringmost colonial residents. Royal courts and officialsfailed to resolve vigorous protests over the newfiscal measures and tax collectors and magis-trates’ increasingly frequent practices of imposingtheir cronies and other outsiders on indigenouscommunities. Indians, castas, and even Spanishcreoles began to unite more frequently in revoltagainst what they all denounced as “bad govern-ment.” Peasant rebellions also increased in bothNew Spain (Mexico) and Peru: In central Mexico,at least 142 short-term uprisings occurred,mainlyin native villages, between 1680 and 1811, andnative Andean people rose violently against colo-nial authorities over a hundred times between1720 and 1790.

As revolts intensified and grew in size towardthe turn of the century, a sense grew within bothelite and popular sectors that the governmentshould be responsive to the demands of the popu-lace. Dissatisfied subjects often identified theirprimary loyalties with administrative regions thatwould later become nation states.They imagineddifferent ways that politics might be structured,andsome envisioned breaking away from Spanish rulealtogether. Some of the earliest examples of thepotential of these new movements and ways ofthinking appeared in Peru. North of Potosí, an illit-erate Aymara Indian peasant leader, radicalized by

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2 Section I The Age of Transformation and Revolt, 1780–1825

The wounds were barely healed from thesewars when new events in Europe shatteredIberia’s hold of its colonies and forced people ofvarying ethnic and class backgrounds across theAmericas to act decisively. Napoleon Bonaparteoccupied Portugal in 1807 and Spain in 1808, forc-ing out the Bourbon monarchs in both kingdomsand placing his brother Joseph on the Spanishthrone. Creoles rejected Joseph and claimed thatsovereignty reverted to the people. Resistancegrew in places like Buenos Aires and Caracas,where provisional governments were set up in1810 claiming to govern for the deposed king. InCaracas the famous creole leader, Simón Bolívar,persuaded an 1811 congress to declare full inde-pendence; for the next fifteen years he fought anddefeated royalist forces, setting up creole rule inthe republics that would eventually become thenations of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru,and Bolivia. Chapter 2 in this section examinesBolívar’s pronouncements and plans for govern-ment and nationhood. These documents allowreaders to follow Bolívar’s thinking about how totreat different groups in society, which influencedseveral republics’ new “social contracts” withtheir citizens.

In Mexico, the 1808 Napoleonic invasionsparked rebellion and loyalist reaction. On theone hand, royalists seized control of the colonialgovernment on behalf of the deposed king. On theother hand, critics of monarchal rule began toplot. One group of plotters included the creolepriest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla; when his fellowconspirators were detected and captured,he ranghis church bells and called on his parishioners tojoin him in launching a rebellion. Mexicancampesinos (rural farmers and agricultural work-ers), long frustrated with late colonial policies,were primed to come together under a leaderand take advantage of the apparent divisionsamong creoles.Thus, in 1810, central Mexico’s in-digenous and mestizo peasants rose up first underthe banners of Father Hidalgo y Costilla and thencontinued fighting under the command of amestizo parish priest, José María Morelos. Theopening chapter on Morelos focuses on his visionfor an alternative to Spanish rule; he appealed to

repeated abuses, drew on democratic communalcustoms of decision making to fight back. In Cuzco,Tupac Amaru II, an educated and Hispanicized in-digenous elite, and his wife, Micaela Bastidas, drewon a colonial revival of enthusiasm for the pre-Hispanic Incas to rally Indians and non-Indians tofight the imperial state’s impositions.Divided loyal-ties, however, led royalist Indian nobles, terrifiedcreoles, and Spaniards to combine forces to defeatthe rebels. Nevertheless, Andean peoples contin-ued to imagine alternatives to foreign domination.Even in the very regions where indigenous leadersand their allies were defeated in the 1780s,Marión’schapter demonstrates that non-elite Andean peo-ples continued participating in politics and rejoinedthe fight against foreign rule in later struggles.

Along with the revolt that Tupac Amaru II andMicaela Bastidas started in Peru, the Haitian Rev-olution (1791–1804) exemplified the potentialand transformative nature of these early move-ments. The revolution in the French Caribbeanplantation colony of Saint Domingue (later Haiti)played a huge role in how Iberian creoles and peo-ple of African heritage viewed independence.Withthe outbreak of the French Revolution (1789),French colonists fell to fighting each other overthe ideas of The Revolution.These divisions pro-vided slaves and ex-slaves an opportunity to re-volt in 1791; they cast off their chains of servitudeand demanded rights as French citizens, destroy-ing the plantation system in the process. Eventu-ally the military and political leadership of PierreDominique Toussaint L’Ouverture and JeanJacques Dessalines helped definitively end slavery,defeat slave owners and a succession of Europeanpowers, and secure full independence. In 1804,Haiti became the second republic in the Americasand the first one ruled by non-Europeans (albeitmostly those of middle or elite sectors). For slaveowners and creoles, Haiti represented the explo-sive potential of revolt from below and the dan-ger of elite divisions, opening the way for radicalrevolution. Throughout the Americas, includingthe United States, these hopes and fears influ-enced political and economic decisions. Thesefirst anticolonial rebellions proved to be the mostradical, and they shook the colonial world.


Dated July 20,1810, this watercolor depicts creole revolutionary general and statesman Simón Bolívar (1783–1830)literally liberating slaves. Initially, Bolívar saw no contradiction between independence from Spain and continuingslavery, but he changed his mind by the second half of the 1810s. Bolívar offered male slaves liberty if they joinedhis rebel army, but many slaves refused to pursue this perilous route to freedom. After the independence, heexpressed fears that Afro-Latin American demands for equality would impose non-white rule and exact revengeon creoles. Nevertheless, Bolívar advocated gradual emancipation, resulting in abolition in Venezuela, Peru, andEcuador in the 1850s. Full emancipation required an extended struggle, involving slave resistance, to overcomethe opposition of slave owners and merchants. How is the liberation of the slaves portrayed here? What is therelationship between the slaves and the liberators? What message might this work of art have conveyed in 1810?How does that message relate to the actual progress of slave emancipation in Ibero-America?Source: Casa-Museo, 20 de Julio de 1810, Bogota, Colombia/The Bridgeman Art Library International.

Section I The Age of Transformation and Revolt, 1780–1825 3

both progressive creoles and poor campesinos.Creoles and Spanish officers commanded a coali-tion of militias that eventually suppressed therevolt in 1815, although resistance in many areaswas never fully stamped out.

Brazil followed a different path to independ-ence. First, the colony provided a refuge for thePortuguese monarchy and court, fleeing Napoleon;from 1807 until 1821, the Portuguese Crown ruledits empire from Rio de Janeiro. During this time,commerce flourished with the opening up of trade,and the colony developed key institutions likebanks, universities, and printing houses. Braziliancreoles welcomed these changes, although theyresented Britain’s domination of trade. When in1808 the French were driven from Iberia, an

assembly of Portuguese liberals wrote a new con-stitution demanding the return of the monarchy,the reinstatement of Lisbon’s trade monopoly, androlling back Brazilian autonomy.Brazil’s landownersand urban professionals opposed this “recoloniza-tion” and succeeded in persuading the princeregent, Dom Pedro, to remain in Brazil. Theyconvoked a Constituent Assembly and created anindependent monarchy in Brazil (1822–1889). Inthe following years, debates over many issues con-tinued, among them slavery and the status of freepeople of color. Schultz’s chapter brings to life oneof the assembly debates in 1823 over race andcitizenship in the Empire of Brazil. Although somefighting occurred,Brazil avoided the protracted anddestructive wars fought in Mexico and the Andes.



Furthermore, Brazil’s creoles prevented any funda-mental change in the socioeconomic structure inthe new nation.

The letters, decrees, and accounts collectedin this section reveal how political thought andactions functioned at many levels of society andhow many people within these American societiesceased to think in terms of subjects and empiresand began to think and act as citizens of nations.Military service in creole-led independence move-ments allowed many mestizo men to secure statusas citizens alongside their creole commanders.Indians, women, and blacks, however, fared muchworse,because colonial-style hierarchies enduredand became central organizing principles in thenew Latin American republics. As the colonialperiod waned and anticolonial and independencestruggles spread, indigenous, creole, and mestizo

elites began to envision politics and society afterEuropean rule. Race relations loomed large intheir thoughts, and most independence leaderscalled for an end to colonial racial divisions andthe establishment of equality before the law. Inpractice, however, independence prolongedlegally sanctioned racial inequalities, despite theexistence of more egalitarian alternatives. Thegroups that defended alternative national visionscontinued their struggles by resisting elite impo-sitions.Historian John Tutino summed up this shiftby stating “As the colonial rule ended the con-tested process of nation-building began.”1

1John Tutino, “The Revolution in Mexican Independence: Insur-gency and the Renegotiation of Property, Production, and Patri-archy in the Bajío, 1800–1855,” The Hispanic American HistoricalReview 78, no. 3 (August 1998): 367.


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Chapter 1

Father José María Morelosand Visions of Mexican

Independence

Erin E. O’Connor, Bridgewater State College

Parish priests leading a violent, multiethnicuprising to overthrow the Spanish colonialgovernment might surprise many readers. Offi-

cially, the Catholic Church was supposed to supportcolonization and keep the populace loyal and obedientto the Crown and its colonial administrators. Fathers

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Morelos

Hidalgo

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and José María Morelos ofNew Spain (soon to become Mexico) did just theopposite, and their bid for independence earned themenduring fame as the first leaders to imagine and fightfor a Mexican nation. Although the priests’ actions mayhave been more extreme than those of other religious



officials in the colonial era, there was a long history ofpriests in colonial Spanish America who were con-cerned with the plight of the poor and exploited. Still,Hidalgo and Morelos adhered to a more radical visionthan other socially concerned priests, calling for an endto slavery and tribute, and reforms that would estab-lish Mexico as an independent and representativegovernment. This chapter introduces readers to one ofthe most important surviving documents from thisfirst struggle for Mexican independence: Morelos’s1813 “Sentiments of the Nation,” in which he out-lined his vision for the national government he hopedto establish.

The Hidalgo-Morelos movement resulted from acomplex set of political, economic, and social factorsin early nineteenth-century New Spain. Initially, creoleresponses to the 1808 Napoleonic takeover of theSpanish throne were mixed. Although some powerfulMexico City creoles remained loyal to the Crown, othercreole elites plotted to rise up against the colonialgovernment. One such plot was underway in the Bajíoregion north of Mexico City in 1810. When authori-ties discovered the plot, one of the main conspirators,Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, made a preemptivecall to arms in his now-famous Grito de Dolores (Cry ofDolores) on September 16, 1810. A well-educatedcreole parish priest in the town of Dolores, Hidalgoexpected other creoles to join his protest when he madehis call to arms. Instead, indigenous and mestizocampesinos answered his call, and his army quicklyswelled to tens of thousands.

The agrarian poor in the Bajío consisted mainly ofworkers on large estates with some autonomous peas-ant communities mixed in. Racially, this was mostly amestizo region, and even indigenous peoples livingthere were fairly Hispanicized in their language, cus-toms, and dress. Although it had not been one of themore tumultuous regions during the colonial period,eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century changesmade the Bajío potentially volatile. Eighteenth-century population growth put pressure on peasantsand rural workers, who competed with each other forlimited land and jobs. These problems were com-pounded in the early nineteenth century when estateowners expelled some resident workers following aseries of crop failures. Former estate workers resentedboth regional elites and the colonial system that failed

to provide them with relief. Hidalgo’s proposalsoffered a more tolerable government system thatwould provide tangible benefits for the poor, such asthe abolition of slavery and tribute, and land reform.For creole elites, the Hidalgo insurrection brought tolife their greatest fears: that the exploited majoritymight rise up against their so-called superiors. Creoleand Spanish elites set aside their differences andbanded together to defeat the insurgents. In March of1811, loyalist forces captured and executed Hidalgo,but his army marched on.

Father José María Morelos took charge of themovement after Hidalgo’s death until his owncapture and execution in 1815. Morelos, sometimesreferred to as a mestizo and at other times as an Afro-mestizo, was born to a poor family and worked as amuleteer before studying to become a priest. Hejoined Hidalgo’s cause in 1811 and rose to promi-nence as an intelligent and able leader. Morelos tried,with some success, to bring greater order to the com-mitted but largely undisciplined rebel forces. Lesseffectively, he also attempted to draw more middle-and upper-class creoles into the movement. Creole elitesconsidered the insurrection an unruly “Indian” mob,despite Morelos’s attempts to win them over withfamiliar political ideals. In December 1815, loyalistforces caught and executed Morelos, bringing an endto the first phase of Mexican independence. Whenindependence finally came to the nation in 1822,under the military and political leadership of theSpanish officer Agustín Iturbide, it was a profoundlyconservative movement that proposed to establish amonarchy and maintain the colonial social hierarchy.

The document “Sentiments of the Nation”allows readers to explore the political ideals throughwhich Morelos attempted to broaden his supportbase. Although Morelos failed to win over moderateswith “Sentiments,” and royalist forces defeated theuprising, Hidalgo and Morelos strongly influencedthe course of Mexican history. The central issue ofland reform that drew so many poor campesinos intotheir armies remained unresolved throughout thenineteenth century, and land conflicts worsened overthe long term. Nineteenth-century presidents andMexico’s congress focused on ideals of equalitybefore the law and emulation of European models inpolitics and the economy while simultaneously


Father José María Morelos and Visions of Mexican Independence 7

pursuing policies that allowed large estates to ex-pand at the expense of indigenous and mestizo peas-ants. Rising campesino frustrations with unresponsivegovernments resulted in a true social revolution inMexico from 1910 to 1940. Though the 1910 Mex-ican Revolution fell far short of its promises to therural poor, it produced land and labor laws that, atleast initially, benefited the Mexican poor.

As Mexican politics and society changed from1821 to 1940, the images of Hidalgo and Morelosalso transformed. In order to claim Hidalgo andMorelos as rightful heroes of the independence period,yet without questioning the elitism of nineteenth-century nation state formation, nineteenth-centuryartists played down the more radical elements of themovements. They often portrayed Hidalgo and More-los alone, rather than with the poor followers whomade up the majority of the movement. They alsopresented the two leaders in poses similar to those inportraits of more conservative independence leaders inLatin America. Consider the first image of Hidalgo,an 1895 etching from the publication Patria e inde-pendencia. Hidalgo is standing at a desk, surroundedby books and papers to emphasize his scholarly back-ground. In the second image, a “Mexican School”painting of the nineteenth century, Morelos waspresented in a calm pose in full and formal attire. Incontrast, the image of Hidalgo from Mexico’s era ofrevolutionary state building emphasized the radicaland insurgent nature of these movements and her-alded the leaders as avenging. It was also painted byone of the most famous muralists in early twentieth-century Mexico, José Clemente Orozco. The muralin which the Hidalgo image appears is located inGuadalajara’s Palacio de Gobierno (governmentpalace). Hidalgo appears quite different in thetwentieth-century image than in the nineteenth-century portrait, for it was precisely his role in lead-ing Mexico’s poor in a radical movement that made

him an ideal hero during the process of revolution-ary state building.

The document and images in this chaptercapture the complexity of Mexican independence. Inparticular, they show that Mexico’s rural poor wereneither fully included in this radical independ-ence movement nor were they summarily defeatedat its conclusion. In Mexico, as elsewhere in LatinAmerica, poor non-Europeans were aware of politicsand engaged with the struggles and ideals of theirtimes, but they would have to wait at least a centuryto see elements of their own versions of liberty andjustice implemented.

Questions to Consider:1. What kind of government did Morelos

envision? How did he propose that citizenship,rights, and obligations be determined in thenew nation?

2. Historians often comment on ways thatMorelos infused this document with elementsof colonial-style hierarchy.Where do you findsuch elements in the document? What do youmake of the tension between equality and hierarchy in the document?

3. Morelos led a very different kind of move-ment than Bolívar. How similar or differentwere his political ideas? Did the two leaders’ideas correspond clearly to the kinds ofmovements they led? Why or why not?

4. Look carefully at the painting of Morelos. Towhat extent is Morelos’s Afro-mestizo heritageapparent in this nineteenth-century portrait?Why?

5. Consider the radical messages of therevolutionary-era painting of Hidalgo. To whatextent do you see this radicalism reflected in“Sentiments of the Nation”?



11. That the fatherland shall never belong to us norbe completely free so long as the government isnot reformed. [We must] overthrow all tyranny,substituting liberalism, and remove from oursoil the Spanish enemy that has so forcefullydeclared itself against the Nation.

12. That since good law is superior to all men, thoselaws dictated by our Congress must oblige con-stancy and patriotism, moderate opulence andindigence, and be of such nature that they raisethe income of the poor, better their customs,and banish ignorance, rapine, and robbery.

13. That the general laws apply to everyone, with-out excepting privileged bodies, and that suchbodies shall exist within accordance with theusefulness of their ministry.

14. That in order to dictate a law, Congress mustdebate it, and it must be decided by a pluralityof votes.

15. That slavery is proscribed forever, as well as thedistinctions of caste, so that all shall be equal;and that the only distinction between oneAmerican and another shall be that betweenvice and virtue.

16. That our ports shall be open to all friendly for-eign nations, but no matter how friendly theymay be, foreign ships shall not be based in thekingdom. There will be some ports specified forthis purpose; in all others, disembarking shallbe prohibited, and 10% or some other tax shallbe levied upon their merchandise.

17. That each person’s home shall be as a sacred asy-lum wherein to keep property and observances,and infractions shall be punished.

18. That the new legislation shall forbid torture.19. That the Constitution shall establish that the

12th of December be celebrated in all thevillages in honor of the patroness of our lib-erty, the Most Holy Mary of Guadalupe. Allvillages shall be required to pay her monthlydevotion.

20. That foreign troops or those of another king-dom shall not tread upon our soil unless it be toaid us, and if this is the case, they shall not bepart of the Supreme Junta.

José María Morelos,“Sentiments of the Nation”2

1. That America is free and independent of Spainand of all other Nations, Governments, orMonarchies, and it should be so sanctioned, andthe reasons explained to the world.

2. That the Catholic Religion is the only one,without tolerance of any other.

3. That all the ministers of the Church shall sup-port themselves exclusively and entirely fromtithes and first-fruits (primicias), and the peopleneed make no offering other than their owndevotions and oblations.

4. That Catholic dogma shall be sustained by theChurch hierarchy, which consists of the Pope,the Bishops and the Priests, for we must destroyevery plant not planted by God: minis plantatisquam nom plantabir Pater meus Celestis Cradi-cabitur. Mat. Chapt. XV.

5. That sovereignty springs directly from thePeople, who wish only to deposit it in their rep-resentatives, whose powers shall be divided intoLegislative, Executive, and Judiciary branches,with each Province electing its representative.These representatives will elect all others, whomust be wise and virtuous people . . .

6. [Article 6 is missing from all reproductions ofthis document.]

7. That representatives shall serve for four years, atwhich point the oldest ones will leave so thatthose newly elected may take their places.

8. The salaries of the representatives will be suffi-cient for sustenance and no more, and for nowthey shall not exceed 8,000 pesos.

9. Only Americans3 shall hold public office.10. Foreigners shall not be admitted, unless they

are artisans capable of teaching [their crafts],and are free of all suspicion.

2Source: From Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson, eds.,The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham: DukeUniversity Press, 2002), pp. 189–191.3Source: This article referred to the fact that Morelos did not wantpeninsulares, or men born in Spain, to hold public office in thenew nation.


Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla mural by Jose Clemente.Source: PhotoEdit Inc.

Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla.Source: Picture Desk, Inc./Kobal Collection.

Father José María Morelos and Visions of Mexican Independence 9

sufficient to pay the costs of the war and thesalaries of public employees.

23. That the 16th of September shall be cele-brated each year as the anniversary of the cryof independence and the day our sacredliberty began, for on that day the lips of theNation parted and the people proclaimedtheir rights, and they grasped the sword sothat they would be heard, rememberingalways the merits of the great hero, señor donMiguel Hidalgo y Costilla, and his compañero,don Ignacio Allende.

21. That there shall be no expeditions outside thelimits of the kingdom, especially seagoingones. Expeditions shall only be undertaken topropagate the faith to our brothers in remoteparts of the country.

22. That the great abundance of highly oppressivetributes, taxes, and impositions should beended, and each individual shall pay fivepercent of his earnings, or another equallylight charge, which will be less oppressivethan the alcabala [sales tax], the estanco [crownmonopoly], the tribute, and others. This smallcontribution, and the wise administration ofthe goods confiscated from the enemy, shall be Chilpancingo, 14 September 1813


Father José María Morelos.Source: Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City, Mexico/The Bridge-man Art Library International.


Suggested Sources:There are few primary source documents availableby either Hidalgo or Morelos beyond “Sentiments.”A short (paragraph-long) series of reforms thatHidalgo decreed in 1810 is available in BenjaminKeen, Robert Buffington, and Lila Caimari, eds., LatinAmerican Civilization: History and Society, 1492 to thePresent, 8th ed. (Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 2004),

267. Other short documents can be found in JosephM.Gilbert and Timothy J.Henderson,eds.,The MexicoReader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham, NC: DukeUniversity Press, 2002) in the chapter on independ-ence, including conservative views, such as Iturbide’s“Plan of Iguala” and Lucas Alamán’s description of theHidalgo followers’ siege of Guanajuato.

There are excellent scholarly studies of Mexicanindependence viewed from below. See John Tutino’spioneering study, From Insurrection to Revolution inMexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), inwhich he discusses how threats to campesino secu-rity led to their support for the Hidalgo-Morelosinsurrection. For an update of some of Tutino’s analy-sis that discusses the role of gender in the insurrec-tion, see his article “The Revolution in MexicanIndependence: Insurgency and the Negotiation ofProperty, Production, and Patriarchy in the Bajío,1800–1855,” Hispanic American Historical Review 78,no. 3 (1998): 367–418. For the foundations of agrar-ian protest in early nineteenth-century Mexico, seeEric Van Young’s The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence,Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence,1810–1821 (Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress, 2001). Although independence benefitedmainly creole elites, Mexican peasants were activelyinvolved in the transition from colony to republic. Formore information on peasants and politics in earlynineteenth-century Mexico, readers should refer tothe works of Peter Guardino, including The Time ofLiberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca,1750–1850(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).


Documents

The Age of Transformation and Revolt, 1780–1825 · These documents allow ... Along with the revolt that Tupac Amaru II and ... Section I The Age of Transformation and Revolt, 1780–1825