Chapter 9

The Struggle in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the State of Oaxaca, 1847–1853

In the south-east, another dangerous situation was developing just as US pressure for transit rights across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec increased following the military victory.¹ The Isthmus had been the colonial border between the Viceroyalty of New Spain and the Kingdom of Guatemala. The federal-era State of Chiapas had until 1823 belonged to the latter. Even after the accession of Chiapas, control of the Isthmus had been tenuous. During the course of the nineteenth century, the strategic importance of the Isthmus increased, especially with the expansion of US territory as far as the Pacific Ocean after 1848. The Oaxaca State Government in 1846–8 feared the prospect of a US seizure of this territory. In the two preceding decades, it had come to regard the promotion of its Pacific ports and Isthmus transit as key elements in the recovery of the State from economic decline. Preoccupation with US designs continued throughout the 1850s.²

In 1844, under the centralist system, the Department of Oaxaca contained a total of 942 pueblos. Under the restored federal system, the District of Tehuantepec, administered by a sub-prefect, consisted in 1846–53 of thirteen pueblos, in which there were estimated to be 2,688 contributors eligible for payment of the capitation tax. Monthly revenue in 1846 came to only 336 pesos, out of which the sub-prefect’s honorarium of 27 pesos had to be deducted. The annual receipt came to 3,528 pesos.³

Sixteen of the twenty-four villages in the southern Isthmus were Zapotec. Mije communities lived in and around Guichicovi. The 3,000 inhabitants of the four Huave villages lived mainly as fishermen in the Pacific lagoons. In the 1840s, the total population of the southern Isthmus seems to have been around 31,845 inhabitants. There was not one unique Zapotec language, but several, possibly six to nine forms of it. A separate Tehuano Zapotec was distinct from that spoken in the central valleys, in Miahuatlán to their south, in Choapan near the Veracruz State border, or in the sierra mining towns of Ixtlán (next to Guelatao, where Juárez grew up), Villalta and Yalalag. Tehuantepec, the second town of the State, had developed with a racially varied population since the Conquest. The town’s property owners and merchants competed with the Zapotec communities for control of local resources, assets and commercial networks.⁴

The decline of the scarlet-dye trade at the end of the colonial era, in which production had been controlled largely by Indian communities across the State, made competition more intense. The decline of the Tehuantepec indigo trade emphasised this at the local level. The principal remaining asset lay in the salt deposits of the lagoons, stretching from Huamelula along the coast in the direction of Tonalá in Chiapas. Sale of salt, a prized commodity, enabled the indigenous communities to pay the contributions required by Church and State. Salt also preserved meat and fish consumed in the villages. In 1736–7, the pueblos of Juchitán and Ixtaltepec were challenging the Isthmus Dominican House for encroaching on their common lands. In 1779, the colonial government declared the salt deposits to be part of the Royal Patrimony, along with sub-soil deposits under the Laws of the Indies. At Independence, the Mexican national state reconstituted the salt pans as National Patrimony. However, in 1826 the government transferred the right of exploitation to a private entrepreneur, Francisco Javier Echavarría. The Isthmian pueblos, with Juchitán in the lead, viewed this action as a threat to their commercial independence. They were already resisting government attempts to stamp out their contraband trade in Guatemalan textiles.⁵

The struggle for control of the salt deposits resulted in renewed violence in 1834, when José Gregorio Meléndez, popularly known as ‘Che Gorio Melendre’, first appeared as a potential leader. He has been retrospectively adopted in popular histories as champion of Juchitán’s Zapotec identity. In 1833–4, he resisted Valentín Canalizo’s attempts in Oaxaca to overthrow the first Federal Republic in the name of ‘religión y fueros’. He was hated in Tehuantepec, where the group in power declared for centralism on 11 July 1833, supporting Canalizo’s rebellion. In times of danger, Tehuantepec looked for protection to its own strongman, Máximo R. Ortiz.⁶

The issue of land ownership and resource usage remained outstanding. Representatives of the Zapotec república de indios of Juchitán, on 25 April 1840, appealed to the justice of the first instance in Tehuantepec for location of their land titles, which had been missing for many years. They believed them to be in the Court of First Instance Archive in the city of Oaxaca and requested their return.⁷

On 23 April 1843, the town council of Tehuantepec, generally a supporter of centralism, warned the Mexico City Government of the damage which would result from giving effect to the privatisation of the salt deposits, both to the Indian communities, which would thereafter have to pay an extortionate price for salt, and to the exchequer, which would lose the revenue. Significantly, this revenue paid for the maintenance of the garrison in the town. As District Governor, Col. Cristóbal Salinas, requested the Sub-Prefect of Juchitán, in 1846, to ensure that the pueblos of his district did not in any way interfere with private property by robbing livestock. If discovered, the perpetrators would be brought before the district magistrate.⁸

‘Citizens’ of all the fifteen town barrios, led by a certain Germán Brito, met in the Parish Hall at 6 p.m. on 10 January 1846 to declare support for the ‘restoration of order in the Nation’ through Paredes y Arrillaga’s accession to power under the Plan of San Luis Potosí (14 December 1845). Aware of events beyond the Isthmus, they said they were following the example of Antonio de León in Huajuapan and generals and garrisons across the Republic.⁹

The Church Question and the Polkos in Power

The impact of the Gómez Farías decrees in January and February 1847 exposed substantial divisions in the southern Isthmus. The polko rebellion in Mexico City and its counterpart in the city of Oaxaca on 15 February against those decrees revealed sharply differing responses. Representatives of the fifteen barrios of Tehuantepec town declared on 28 March their opposition to any attempt by the newly installed polko administration in the city of Oaxaca to annul the elections of September 1846 to the Constitutional Municipal Council, replacing it by a body sympathetic to the new regime. They denounced such ‘anti-constitutional manoeuvrings’. One month later, the ‘citizen electors of the pueblos of the district of Juchitán’ protested to the sub-prefect against the ‘illegal and anti-constitutional action’ of 15 February. They called it an ‘asinine revolution, the product of money and manipulation, a gross abortion, a perfidious and anti-patriotic example of aspirantismo’, when the country was fighting a war against an external enemy. These electors did not mince their words. A group of usurpers, they said, had set up a junta, describing it a governing council, which was calling for fresh elections designed to annul those held in the previous September. They had no mandate for this and should not be obeyed. Worse, they were opposing the national government’s attempt to raise funds for the conduct of the war. Their actions were an insult to the sovereign people. The electors concluded by affirming their faith in the system which had, in August 1846, restored the sovereignty of the State of Oaxaca, in accordance with the Federal Constitution of 1824:

We stand by our principles. We have moved on from the age of degradation and subservience to all authority. We need to recognise the dignity of free men and push out these aspiring usurpers, ending the periodic disturbances which have made a mockery of the people.¹⁰

However, Tehuantepec’s Barrio de San Blas, perennially the most turbulent of the barrios, joined the opposition to the Liberal State Governor, Arteaga, and rose in defence of ‘religión y fueros’ in May 1847. Local military commanders bitterly condemned the action of the blaseños, warning of the disastrous consequences of division among Mexicans. Nine of the Oaxaca towns, among them Villalta, Huajuapan, Teposcolula and Cuicatlán affirmed their opposition to the Gómez Farías measures. The town of Silacayoapan, in the Juxtlahuaca district, denounced the government decrees as ‘sacrilegious and disastrous’, threatening civil war, when there was a foreign invader to fight. Its town councillors were appalled at the seizure of funds destined for divine worship. They appealed to León.¹¹

The case of Petapa, in the southern Oaxaca Isthmus zone, demonstrated the scale of division at the village level over this issue. On 23 February 1847, ten signatories, describing themselves as representing the ‘común del pueblo’ of Santo Domingo, one of the component villages of the district, read out the Act of Declaration issued in the city of Oaxaca on 15 February and, with the three Espinosa brothers – Aniceto, Germán and Blas – in the lead, stated their opposition to the Gómez Farías Decree of 11 January. The municipal councillors, led by the First Justice (alcalde primero), strongly disagreed with them. The ‘común’, accordingly, took the decision to remove the latter from office on the grounds that they were ‘enemies of order’. They chose, ‘by common consent’, a ‘subject of known probity’, Citizen Hilario Antonio, to act as the Administrator of Justice in the village. This, they declared, was the view of ‘the majority’. They, thereupon, communicated this news to the new State Governor, Guergué. At the same time, they proclaimed their adhesion to the existing system of government. On the same day, the head-town of the district, Santa María Asunción Petapa, similarly declared support for the coup of 15 February in Oaxaca, withdrawing obedience to the sub-prefect, who abandoned the town. In an ‘extraordinary’ session of the town council on 3 March, these sympathisers also expressed their support for the existing system of government, while opposing that one specific measure.¹²

Revealing as these documents are, their significance is not entirely clear. Who, for instance, were the Espinosas? With a Hispanic surname, were they mestizos in an Indian village, property owners or merchants (or both), prepared to lead a group of partisans in a coup to remove an Indian council loyal to Arteaga and Liberal positions? The removal of the sub-prefect was an audacious action, which might at some stage provoke a response from the centre. Did their opposition to the Gómez Farías measures go beyond defence of the interests of the Church? Since Oaxaca appeared, on the surface, to be a Liberal state, how deep was this hostility to the Gómez Farías administration? It certainly ranged over a wide geographical span of the state, from the Mixteca to the state capital and the southern Isthmus. One point to note is that village support in Petapa for Guergué’s action on 15 February does not seem to have been deterred by the fact that he was one of the two controversial purchasers of the haciendas marquesanas in 1836, the estates of which had always been vigorously contested by the contiguous pueblo of Juchitán.

Conflict, however, did not die down but grew worse after the publication in the district of the decree of 27 April, which disclaimed the group in control of the State government after the events of 15 February in Oaxaca City.¹³

Trouble continued to ferment throughout the districts of the southern Isthmus during 1847 over the Church question and the Guergué regime in the state capital. The condition of the armed forces in the southern Isthmus remained in a deplorable state, as Salinas reported early in 1847. He had no concrete information concerning National Guard units, which were supposed to have been established in the head-town. He regarded the officers as inept and untrustworthy. When a count was taken in June, the garrison consisted of only fifty-nine men, of whom twenty came from the National Guard. By July, a group of ‘aventureros revolucionarios’ had seized control of Tehuantepec and proclaimed the district’s secession from the State of Oaxaca, under the direction of Meléndez. The Sub-Prefect of Juchitán appeared to be cooperating with them. Tehuantepec’s governor, Joaquín García, having taken refuge in nearby Tequisistlán, wanted his removal in favour of Macedonio Ruiz or Simón López, regarded as reliable, and was hoping to hold elections to the municipality. Meléndez, for his part, blamed the ‘fugitive’ García for failing to collect the capitation tax, necessary for war costs. When the town council and barrios deposed Meléndez, the latter departed for Juchitán, his home base.¹⁴

The Haciendas Marquesanas

The eight livestock estates of the Marquesado del Valle, owned by the descendants of Hernán Cortés and located in the southern Isthmus, became the source of repeated litigation during the eighteenth century, as the Zapotec communities sought to employ the colonial legal system to their own advantage. They believed that the estates and those administered by the Tehuantepec Dominican convent had usurped lands rightly belonging to them. The situation had been complicated by the introduction of non-Indian labour of African origin. Mulatos and pardos (Spanish colonial terms to describe Black-white and Black-Indian race mixture, respectively, still used in the mid-nineteenth century), all free men, formed a significant element of the southern population, occupying positions in the colonial militia that guarded the Pacific coast down from Jicayan to the Isthmus. Petapa, to the north of Tehuantepec, had become a refuge for escaped slaves in the colonial era. Tehuantepec had more mulatos than Hispanics. Following the collapse of indigo production in the Isthmus, Alamán, legal trustee of the Cortés inheritance, was keen to have the estates sold to investors who might be able to revive the properties. Local communities, however, were already planting on lands claimed by the haciendas, as though they were their own. Estéban Maqueo, a newly immigrant merchant of Italian origin based in the city of Oaxaca, purchased these estates in 1836, in association with the same José Joaquín Guergué, who would become acting Governor of Oaxaca in February 1847.¹⁵ Guergué was a sugar planter from western Oaxaca, born in Tlaxiaco the son of a Spanish immigrant of the mid-eighteenth century.¹⁶ The estates were in poor condition at the time of purchase as a result of decades of neglect. This transfer of property exacerbated tensions in the region with the Zapotec, Mixe and Zoque communities. At issue, in 1842 were the new boundary markers between these estates and the lands claimed by the Zapotec pueblos of Ixtaltepec, Ixtepec, Tlalixtepec and Chihuitlán.¹⁷

The Escalation of Conflict

Newly in post as state governor in 1847, Juárez mistakenly believed that he could control the politics of the southern Isthmus by co-opting local chieftains, Máximo R. Ortiz and Meléndez, as sub-regional subordinates. He learned the hard way that each of them had his own agenda. Besides, they were bitter rivals and neither had any respect for State or national governments.

Juárez had entrusted Meléndez with the formation of a force to resist any prospective US invasion of Oaxaca through the Gulf port of Coatzacoalcos. Meléndez, instead, put himself at the head of a rebellion in sympathy with the Indians of San Blas barrio. Community leaders in Juchitán – the brothers, José Hilario and Simón López, and Macedonio Ruiz – had, on 17 April, used the opportunity presented to them by unrest in the Isthmus to declare that the long-disputed salt deposits in their area belonged to the pueblo, which, accordingly, had the right to sell the produce freely. Fearing the dissidents’ advance on the district head-town, the Tehuantepec authorities fled to Oaxaca, enabling the juchitecos and blaseños to occupy the place. Part of the explanation for this conflict lay in the internal dynamics of village and small-town politics in the locality, rather than in national issues. Juchitán and the other pueblos of the district resented subordination to Tehuantepec. Juárez feared that rebellion in the Isthmus would provide an opportunity for centralist generals in Oaxaca to overthrow the federal system. In that sense, local issues certainly did impinge upon wider, national concerns. Mistakenly believing Ortiz to be trustworthy, in late December Juárez appointed him interim Governor of the Department of Tehuantepec. This was regarded in Juchitán as a provocation.¹⁸

Juárez, in June 1848, appointed the reliable Lieutenant-Colonel J. M. Muñoz to replace the untrustworthy Meléndez as Governor of Tehuantepec. Although the latter at first tried to block Muñoz’s entry into the town on 29 December, his troops forced Meléndez out. Ortiz handed over civil authority to Muñoz in Tehuantepec.¹⁹ In May 1849, however, Muñoz was obliged to report lack of success in bringing the disorder in Juchitán under control. He named the guilty party as José Hilario López, who had appropriated salt from the property owned by Echavarría.²⁰

The State government, furthermore, could not resolve the problem of continued opposition to attempts to collect the capitation tax throughout the southern Isthmus. The tax was already in arrears throughout the state from 1847–8. Juárez hoped to resolve this by bringing in one of Oaxaca’s silver-mine investors, Diego Innes, as consignee for the departments of Villa Alta and Ejutla. The governor’s close ally in the sierra, Miguel Castro, would collect the tax in the former, and another ally, Bernardino Ruiz, in the latter. Innes would then pay the total sum into the Treasury, which would be spent on war requirements.²¹

Muñoz, for his part, reported to the state secretary that general poverty resulting from subsistence farming meant that the town of Tehuantepec could not pay either the capitation or the extraordinary levy of 27 December 1847 to raise funds for the post-war period. An emergency meeting of the Town Council on 6 April appealed for the nullification of the debt. None of the barrios could pay, due to the disturbances of the preceding year.²² In May 1848, Muñoz reported that the Tehuantepec barrios and the towns of Petapa and Niltepec were unable to pay the capitation tax, the receipt of which the national government urgently needed for post-war reconstruction. In the case of Juchitán, Muñoz, on 6 August, attributed arrears to the actions of ‘perverse individuals who desire the ruin of the pueblos’ and tell people that they should not pay. He stated that force had not been attempted through fear of spreading alarm. In any case, the town’s small garrison would be unable to contain a riot.²³

In the case of Petapa, Governor Juárez sent instructions for the removal of the sub-prefect, who, in his estimation had failed to administer the capitation revenue effectively, and requested Muñoz, as Department Governor of Tehuantepec, to supply the names of suitable candidates. Muñoz expressed his reluctance to do so, on the grounds that the incumbent had a good record of maintaining order in the district and ensuring payment of the capitation tax along with the extraordinary contribution of December 1847 by the prompt dispatch of troops to the villages.²⁴

In effect, Muñoz’s reply meant that he considered Juárez’s request to be unfounded or ill-judged. However, on 11 July 1849, Governor Juárez appointed his close political associate Marcos Pérez, a senior figure in Oaxacan Liberalism, to the post of Sub-Prefect of Petapa.²⁵ This was a district consisting of twelve pueblos, with its head-town in Santa María Asunción Petapa, where its elective municipal council was located. On 5 August, this council held an ‘extraordinary session’ chaired by the incumbent sub-prefect, José Luis Cortez. The purpose was to invest Pérez as his successor, who by then had arrived in the town with Governor Juárez’s Letter of Appointment. This was duly implemented. Everyone agreed to uphold the existing system of government.²⁶

Pérez, also in charge of Juchitán, complained in 1850 that both towns were notoriously reluctant to pay the capitation tax.²⁷ The situation did not improve. At the beginning of 1851 he reported that all the villages under his jurisdiction were in a bad way, suffering from hunger and shortages and the effects of the cholera epidemic of the past months, which had left them in extreme misery. All this meant that taxes could not be paid. Pérez went on:

Since the rebel Meléndez began his revolution, he has sent all the pueblos numerous warnings and proclamations designed to instil in them that they should follow his ideas and not pay the capitation tax or any other taxes that fall on the indigenous population … Petapa is the district next to Juchitán and has been influenced by it … on 15 December, the ‘bandidos juchitecos’ surprised us here and I was forced to flee from the Sub-Prefect’s house, afraid that they would kill me, just as they had [Pedro] Portillo – either the rebels or their disaffected supporters here in Petapa.²⁸

Despite reports of persistent highway robbery making transit difficult through the States of Mexico, the Federal District, Querétaro and Puebla, the newspaper La Crónica reported on 14 July 1848, that transit in the State of Oaxaca had become relatively secure.²⁹ Even so, contraband activities remained a serious problem. Early in 1850, a band of armed robbers, believed to be led by the Orozco brothers, Julián and Pablo, from Juchitán, seized cargo on the Niltepec road. An attack on the Niltepec sales-tax office followed. Julián and Pablo Orozco, sometimes described as ‘contrabandists’, were known to be cacao importers from the Chiapas coast. Another Orozco, Antonio, was in jail, his case pending in the Court of the First Instance. Despite State government efforts, opposition to control from the central Valley of Oaxaca intensified and reached a climax between April 1850 and March 1851. Meléndez reputedly had some 1,000 men under his command taken from nearby pueblos such as Huilotepec and Ixtaltepec, a hotbed of resistance, and the Barrio de Santa Cruz. They fought with the armed guards hired by Echavarría. A National Guard force of 434 men in a three-hour exchange with villagers on 18 and 19 June 1850 left between sixty and seventy of the villagers dead. A strong wind led to the destruction of thatched houses by fire. Meléndez fled into Chiapas, only to be expelled by State forces and subsequently frustrated in his attempt to take control of Tehuantepec on 7 July. Cesario Santoni’s report of 14 July, suggested considerable hostility in other villages to the rebels’ activities, and their readiness to join with teniente coronel Marcelino Echavarría’s force and the vecindario of Tehuantepec, making a total force of 1,010 men, in order to push them back. This they successfully did on 11 and 12 July.³⁰

In Echavarría’s view, all the juchitecos were supporting Meléndez and hiding him. There was a report that Meléndez had been seen tapping on his wife’s rear window late one evening and had been admitted into their house, where he embraced her. The report noted that she was in tears when he left. Meléndez was said to have declared that he had no fear going into the town, still less to visit his own house. Everyone concurred that this was so.³¹

Juárez attributed persistent discontent in the southern Isthmus to excessive pressure by the privatised Salt Administration and hoped to see this slackened. Furthermore, a new salt tax had been introduced at the time of the second great cholera outbreak in the State.³²

The cholera epidemic paralysed military operations planned for November 1850. This enabled Meléndez to attack Tehuantepec on 1 December, but his band was repulsed and he fled in the direction of Chiapas. Muñoz took over command of the National Guard Guerrero Battalion after the death of Castellanos in the epidemic, its commander since November 1847. Muñoz began operations in conjunction with the Governor of Chiapas, but a quarter of the Guerrero Battalion deserted during this campaign beyond the limits of Oaxaca.³³

The overriding issues in Juchitán remined possession of natural resources and control of trade. That was why the juchitecos ‘invaded’ the salt deposits.³⁴ At least two family-groups clearly emerged as leaders in Juchitán in these years, the López and the Orozcos. Their relationship to Meléndez, however, remains unclear. Did they, for instance, support the declared aim of separation from the State of Oaxaca?

Even the policy of amnesty backfired in the Isthmus. Muñoz, as Commander of the Operations Section in Juchitán, offered the rebels amnesty in January 1851, under the so-called ‘Treaties of the Rancho de Malpaso’, only to discover that Juárez repudiated it, because he intended to bring the leaders to trial. Muñoz’s aim had been to terminate a conflict that he regarded as futile. This dispute between the two leading authorities occurred at a particularly bad time, since it only redounded in Meléndez’s favour when he was attempting to rekindle the revolt. Muñoz complained to Juárez that repudiation of the amnesty compromised him in the eyes of the local people, who were claiming that they had been deceived. Meléndez, he said, heard the news of his arrest before he did, since the rebel leader had been tipped off by ‘several persons in Oaxaca City’. Muñoz, however, did not say who. When the interim Governor of Tehuantepec arrived in Juchitán with twenty-eight armed men to make the arrest, he discovered only Francisco Ilaedo and Santiago Orozco. That town, Muñoz reported, was currently in a state of convulsion once again.³⁵

Meléndez in Juchitán issued two ‘Political Plans’ in 1850 and 1851. The Plan of 20 October 1850 opposed the nomination of Arista as candidate for the Presidency of the Republic. It went on to denounce the war purportedly made on Juchitán by the Governor of Tehuantepec and the State Government in Oaxaca City, singling out Ortiz for special opprobrium. Meléndez blamed them for the fire, which he said had destroyed half the town of Juchitán. Traditional grievances against taxation, recruitment and inept judicial administration recurred. The plan also called for the guarantee of ecclesiastical property, an explicit critique of Liberal policy. This plan, however, contained two new features. In a direct attack on Juárez, the plan rejected the authority of the State of Oaxaca until a governor who would listen to the pueblos should be appointed. This statement would foreshadow the subsequent call for separation from the State altogether. Then, ominously, the plan called for the reinstatement of ‘those army officers who had served the nation with distinction’. To any Liberal in Oaxaca City, this meant the restoration of Santa Anna to power. ³⁶

The second plan, issued on 10 January 1851, recognised Arista as President-elect. However, it came out in favour of the creation of a separate ‘Department of Tehuantepec’, which would signify the fragmentation of the State of Oaxaca. Like its predecessor, this plan also called for the preservation of ecclesiastical properties and privileges, but strangely, in the light of Juchitán’s conflicts with private proprietors, it included private properties as well. The plan contained other surprises. A curious appeal was made for solidarity between Juchitán and Tehuantepec, on the grounds that they had never really been enemies, since they were all of the same dialect and same blood, a view that flew in the face of recent history. Was this an attempt to find a popular base for the separation of the southern Isthmus from the State created by the Federal Constitution of 1824? The Juárez Government fixed its sights on Lic. José Cleto Peralta, nominated as spokesman before the National Congress in the plan, who along with three colleagues, was arrested and clapped in jail in Oaxaca City early in February.³⁷

How the Meléndez rebellion, portrayed retrospectively as radical and communitarian, became transformed into an attack on the federal system and a movement for Santa Anna’s return to power has not even been considered in the historical literature.³⁸

Juárez told the Oaxaca State Congress that the capture, trial and punishment of Meléndez and the other ringleaders provided the only guarantee of peace in the Isthmus. He vowed to pursue them ‘with the utmost severity of the law and in the public interest’, allowing no amnesty for crimes against life and property. The cholera epidemic, which took a heavy toll in the state, prevented the delivery of the final blow. The State Congress, on 13 September 1851, authorised Governor Juárez to proceed in person to the Isthmus in the following month, offering a policy of leniency. Juárez in Tehuantepec removed Ortiz from office, which led to his unholy alliance with Meléndez. Resolution of the conflicts was urgent, since the State government feared a US descent on the coast at La Ventosa and despatched a section there. That provided Ortiz with the opportunity to attack the Guerrero Battalion’s barracks, but his co-leader, Alejandro López, was captured and shot. Juárez reported to the State Congress:

I found that the causes stemmed from the subordinate authorities’ incapacity and lack of attention to duty; from abuse of the power entrusted to them; from damage as a result of the malicious rumour that the state government intended to destroy the pueblo of Juchitán rather than simply punish delinquents; from the lack of proper policing there; and from the ineffectiveness of the laws designed to combat robbery and contraband.³⁹

This conclusion, by omission, did not give sufficient credence to indigenous community grievances. It exposed Liberal uneasiness with peasant perspectives.

Juárez’s term of office finished on 12 August 1852. His successor, Ignacio Mejía, instructed the Military Commander in Oaxaca, Gen. Ignacio Martínez Pinillos, to finish off the rebellion led by Meléndez and Ortiz. Pinillos, however, recognised the considerable degree of support in Tehuantepec for Ortiz and thereby the risks of challenging his position. In nearby Pochutla, desertions were already taking place from government forces. Into this situation came news of the Plan of Jalisco of 20 October, which clearly looked towards the return of Santa Anna, then in exile in Colombia. Ortiz made for Ixtaltepec with around forty to fifty armed men. He was recruiting followers and gathering arms in the nearby pueblos, where there was a great deal of support. In Tehuantepec itself, many inhabitants sympathised with him and would join up with him. Pochutla was also in danger since the position of loyal forces was weak.⁴⁰ Meléndez and Ortiz adhered to this plan on 26 December 1852. The plan inflamed sentiments across the State, even in the central valley. Some 200 crudely armed ‘indígenas’ from the Tlacolula Barrio del Rosario proclaimed the plan in front of the municipal offices in the main square, apparently unaware that the sub-prefect also supported it. That did not stop them from sacking the Finance Office.⁴¹

Santa Anna, once in power, would appoint Ortiz Governor and Military Commander in Tehuantepec. Meléndez issued his own third plan, this time in Tehuantepec on 21 February 1853, declaring support for Santa Anna.⁴²

Destabilisation of the Second Federal Republic

The rebellions of 1847–52 in the Isthmus and across the Sierra Gorda undermined the federal system and destabilised the moderate Liberal regime in power since the war with the United States. Their impact significantly contributed to the overthrow of the regime by army commanders in 1852–3. Tomás Mejía’s role in the Sierra Gorda also paved the way for Santa Anna’s return to power. The objectives of both Meléndez and Mejía were the separation of their particular localities from the governments of the States of Oaxaca and Querétaro, respectively, and the creation of formal territories under their own control. The precondition for this was the demolition of the federal system. Pinillos, unable to defeat the Isthmian rebels, collaborated with them in a common defence of Santa Anna’s cause. As a result, Pinillos was able to overthrow Governor Ignacio Mejía and the Liberal administration in Oaxaca on 17 January 1853 and have himself proclaimed governor on 7 February. The National Guard Company and the Municipal Council of Tlaxiaco pronounced in favour of the Plan of Jalisco on 22 January. The Sub-Prefect of Zaachila reported refusal to pay capitation tax and support for the Jalisco movement by the pueblos in his district.⁴³

The problem for the Isthmian dissidents and rebels was that they could not attach themselves to the Liberal Party as a potential ally, since the Governor of Oaxaca was himself a leading figure in the party at both state and national levels. Juárez had ensured that key supporters, such as Castro in the sierra, Pérez, Sub-Prefect of Petapa, and Ignacio Mejía, who succeeded him as governor in 1852, acted as his instruments of power, along with sympathetic army officers such as Castellanos and Muñoz. They upheld the privatisation of the salt deposits and the sale of the haciendas marquesanas to landed proprietors anxious to stimulate the economic development of the State of Oaxaca. For such reasons, local dissidents looked elsewhere. This explains their willingness to acquiesce in the liquidation of the Oaxaca Liberal regime after Pinillos lent his support for the return of Santa Anna to power at the national level. Here again, we see the intimate relationship of what might have appeared at first sight as intricate village manoeuvrings of secondary or tertiary significance to the wider national scene with respect to a major – and illicit – transfer of power.

Santa Anna resumed power on 20 April 1853 and abolished the federal system on 29 May. One after another, the Oaxaca Liberal leaders – Juárez on 27 May – were arrested and deported.⁴⁴

The paradoxes within this new Santa Anna regime rapidly became obvious. On 1 December 1853, Santa Anna established the Territory of the Sierra Gorda, separated from the State of Querétaro. Although Mejía became Military Commander in this arrangement, the renewed centralist regime put the political centre at San Luis de la Paz; that is, beyond the Sierra Gorda. At the same time, Mejía inherited his father’s former position as Prefect of the Jalpan District. This appointment effectively kept him in the sierra, transforming him from de facto caudillo of his home base into the central government’s watchman over a territory with a long reputation for resistance to authority. In a similar vein, the dictator separated the Isthmus from the former State of Oaxaca by establishing the Territory of the Isthmus. Its seat of power, nevertheless, would not be in the southern Isthmus but at Minatitlán, hardly more than a fishing village, on the Gulf coast, an area that had played no part whatever in the turmoil of 1847–53. These two decisions reflected regime priorities rather than rewards for local leaders’ services.⁴⁵ When, after the triumph of the Plan of Ayutla, the alliance between Álvarez and the Liberals restored the federal system in August 1855, the new Federal Constitution of February 1857 abolished the two Territories of the Sierra Gorda and the Isthmus and re-established the state boundaries as of 31 December 1852.⁴⁶

Divisions within the rebel camp in the Sierra Gorda remain unexplained. Much is yet to be uncovered concerning the identity and orientation of lesser chieftains, although the role of Manuel Verástegui and his family becomes clearer. The disparities of opinion and affiliation within the Isthmus villages have been either ignored or bypassed, especially so, where the religious question has been involved. Many villages and small towns across Oaxaca expressed opposition to the Gómez Farías measures of 1847. The main Liberal base, beyond the state capital, lay in the northern sierra among the caciques of the mining districts, rather than in the Mixteca villages or the Isthmus. No leading figure emerged in the Isthmus comparable to Tomás Mejía in the Sierra Gorda.