Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Omar S. Valerio-Jiménez is Associate Professor of History at the University of Iowa.

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River of Hope

Duke University Press

Contents

List of Maps, Figures, and Tables................................................................................ixAcknowledgments..................................................................................................xiIntroduction.....................................................................................................1CHAPTER 1. Constructing Vecinos, Constructing Indios Complex Interdependence.....................................17CHAPTER 2. Fragmented Communities Class and Gender Hierarchies...................................................51CHAPTER 3. Opposing Forces Political Loyalty and Trade...........................................................92CHAPTER 4. Bandidos or Citizens? Everyday Forms of Resistance to Political and Legal Changes.....................129CHAPTER 5. Divorcées, Rancheros, and Peons Changing Class and Gender Relations..............................176CHAPTER 6. Contested Citizenship The Enduring Roles of Race and Class............................................222Conclusion.......................................................................................................275Notes............................................................................................................287Bibliography.....................................................................................................333Index............................................................................................................355

Chapter One

Complex Interdependence

One day in June 1804, José Ignacio de la Garza rode on horseback to Don Calletano Medrano's house and challenged Don José Francisco Capistrán to fight. At a fandango (dance) in Refugio the previous night, Capistrán had hit de la Garza with the side of his sword while another man restrained him. De la Garza now sought revenge, challenging Capistrán to leave the safety of Medrano's house and use the same sword to fight "if he was a man." Capistrán did not respond to the provocation and challenge to his masculinity, but Medrano filed charges of injurias (insults) against de la Garza, landing him in jail and prompting legal proceedings.

The vecinos (community members) who testified against de la Garza represented a cross section of the villas del norte's (northern towns) elite men. They included Medrano, a merchant; Capistrán, a soldier and farmer; several more farmers; a judge; and a military officer. Two of the witnesses had previously been de la Garza's employers. Everyone called to testify, with the exception of de la Garza himself, identified themselves as españoles (Spaniards). Most of the witnesses referred to de la Garza as "el indio Ignacio" (the Indian Ignacio). His full name was not revealed until he himself stated it in court.

The witnesses described de la Garza as a thief, a troublesome servant, and a baladrón (braggart). They accused him of stealing items ranging from small articles of clothing and dishes to cattle and horses. His former employers characterized him as intolerable, citing bad service, thefts, and lack of courtesy. Witnesses claimed that he provoked fights often. Medrano maintained that de la Garza would continue to threaten vecinos until he was punished for his transgressions. De la Garza's lawyer argued that his client should be judged by different laws than those that applied to colonists and "conquered" Indians; he stated that his client was like a child who lacked "civilized" manners, including respect for religion and the law.

De la Garza's own statement was at sharp odds with the vecinos' testimony. He identified himself as an honest and hardworking thirty-two-year-old unmarried Indian vaquero (cowboy). His first imprisonment resulted from an attempt to free his sister, a criada (domestic servant), from the "power of Doña Francisca Cavazos" in the nearby town of Camargo. Subsequent incarcerations had been for alleged thefts that he dismissed as resulting from misunderstandings. Authorities had jailed him for stealing from a previous employer, he explained, after he took ten hides as payment for uncompensated work as a vaquero. Similarly, he responded to a former employer's accusations of disloyalty by arguing that he had left his job as a servant after ten years because his boss had provided less clothing for him than for other workers. As for the fight with Capistrán, he was merely retaliating against the vecino's disrespect.

This incident provides a telling glimpse into nineteenth-century power relations and social interactions between indios (Indians) and vecinos in the villas del norte and the larger geographic region of the Seno Mexicano. De la Garza was typical of the area's Indian workers, who occupied a subordinate social position among colonists. The vecinos' attitudes of superiority were characteristic of a people who traced their ancestors to the eighteenth-century conquerors of the region. These ancestors had bequeathed to the settlers their privileged position in the community, their self-image as paternalistic providers, and their expectation that Indians defer to them.

New Spain's state formation brought colonization and conquest to the Seno Mexicano, which extended the colonial government's administrative control and devastated the region's indigenous populations. Spanish colonists arrived in the region to claim the land for New Spain, create vecino communities, and establish municipal governments. The colonial government provided the colonists with military assistance and the legal justifications for controlling an indigenous labor force. For Indians, the arrival of Spanish colonists meant conquest by extermination, subjugation, or exclusion. Indigenous nations faced a cultural and demographic catastrophe. Targeted by unrelenting Spanish violence, Indians had few viable choices. By resisting the colonists' intrusions, indigenous nations risked annihilation. Accepting Spanish rule meant that Indians became subordinate workers or slaves and probably lost their indigenous identities. The third alternative was to move beyond Spanish control and leave their homelands. Regardless of their choice, indigenous nations experienced widespread disruption of their societies. Spanish colonization brought newcomers who forcibly appropriated indigenous land, enslaved Indian women and children, and introduced devastating diseases. New Spain's colonial state formation in the Seno Mexicano was a cultural revolution, but a disastrous one for Indians who lost autonomy, territory, and sometimes identity.

The colonists' perceptions of Indians arose from various social interactions. Indian workers lived in towns as subordinate members, occupying the lowest rung of vecino society, like the genízaros (detribalized Indians) of New Mexico. Their origins were commonly among local indigenous groups whom the settlers had conquered and incorporated into their community as slaves. Some of these Indian workers were also the colonists' potential consorts; their progeny increased the vecino population and its ethnic diversity. Those hostile to the colonists, who were identified as indios bárbaros (barbarous Indians), often attacked towns in search of cattle and...