Popular movements and state formation in revolutionary Mexico : the agraristas and cristeros of Michoacán / Jennie Purnell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Purnell, Jennie, 1957-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Peasants--Political activity--Mexico--Michoacán de Ocampo.

Peasants.

Peasants--Political activity.

Land reform.

History.

Mexico--Michoacán de Ocampo.

Cristero Rebellion, 1926-1929.

Land reform--Mexico--Michoacán de Ocampo--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

x, 271 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham [N.C.] : Duke University Press, 1999.

Summary:

In Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico Jennie Purnell reconsiders peasant partisanship in the cristiada of 1926-29, one episode in the broader Mexican Revolution and the last major popular rebellion in Mexican history. While some scholars have argued that the Mexican Revolution was a people's rebellion that aimed to destroy the political and economic power of the elites to the benefit of the peasants, others claim that the Revolution was a struggle between elites that left little room for popular participation. Neither approach, however, explains why thousands of peasants sided with the Church against the state and its program of agrarian reform -- reform that was presumably in the best interest of the peasants. Nor do they explain why so many peasants who considered themselves devout Catholics took up arms against the Church.

Rather than viewing the cristeros (supporters of the Church) as victims of false consciousness or as religious fanatics, as others have done, Purnell shows that their motivations -- as well as the motivations of the agraristas (supporters of the revolutionary state) -- stem from local political conflicts that began decades, and sometimes centuries, before the Revolution. Drawing on rich but underutilized correspondence between peasants and state officials written over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Purnell shows how these conflicts shaped the relationships between property rights, religious practice, and political authority in the center-west region of Mexico and provides a nuanced understanding of the stakes and interests involved in subsequent conflicts over Mexican anticlericalism and agrarian reform in the1920s.

Demonstrating the importance of local history in determining peasant reactions to state formation, this study will aid future research not only in nineteenth-and twentieth-century Mexican history but in peasant studies, social movements research, and political analysis of authoritarian and postauthoritarian regimes in Latin America.

Contents:

1 What Makes Peasants Counterrevolutionary? The Problem of Partisanship in Mexico's Cristero Rebellion 1

2 Liberals, Indians, and the Catholic Church in Nineteenth-Century Michoacan 24

3 State Formation in Revolutionary Michoacan 48

4 The Cristiada: Elites and Popular Groups in Rebellion against the Revolutionary State 72

5 The Agraristas of the Zacapu Region 111

6 Catholics, Cristeros, and Agraristas in the Purepecha Highlands 134

7 The Cristeros of Northwestern Michoacan 163

8 Popular Groups, Political Identities, and the State in Mexico: The Cristiada in Comparative Perspective 179.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [245]-264) and index.

ISBN:

082232282X

0822323141

OCLC:

39962273