UC San Diego

This dissertation analyzes the historical roles of indigenous people in the state of Tlaxcala and its border region with the state of Puebla from 1853 to 1927. This time period is characterized by political conflicts, state modernizing projects, widespread rural violence, and autocratic rule. By focusing on the collective and individual historical roles of rural indigenous actors from the central Mexican Sierra Madre range, known nationally as the Oriente Central, this study challenges established discourses insisting that indigenous people were passive “sacks of potatoes” manipulated by state actors. Led by indigenous caudillos who proved resourceful and well-informed of the national political developments, the indigenous peasants from the Oriente Central participated in all of the significant nation-forming conflicts. My analytical lens shifts attention from the nationalistic narrative to incorporate discussions of indigenous communal autonomy amidst a rapidly-expanding nation state seeking legitimacy from abroad and complete hegemony from within its borders. Village political culture in Tlaxcala began to change with the Revolution of Ayutla (1853-1855), which at its end brought the Liberals led by Benito Juárez into power. Liberal reforms promoted private landholding, the rapid modernization of agriculture, and the end of corporate Indian communities and Church lands. The Indian villages in the central plateau then came under greater attack during the era of General Porfirio Díaz, who ruled Mexico from 1876 to 1880, and again from 1884 to 1911. Consequently, during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), commanded by Domingo Arenas, an indigenous caudillo from Santa Inés Zacatelco, Tlaxcala’s indigenous peasantry fought for the preservation of land and water rights. Arenas was killed by the Zapatistas in late 1917, but remnants of the movement which survived the Revolution were absorbed by the post-revolutionary state led by northern generals. Through the redistribution of ejidos (collective lands) as part of a social project premised on land reform, the post-revolutionary regime transformed high-sierra indigenous people into Mexican campesinos. This dissertation shows that the villages and pueblos surrounding the volcanic La Malintzi region rebelled to keep predatory outsiders at bay, providing us with a unique panorama into central Mexico’s topographies of rural rebellion.