The Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca, 1750-1850.
Sanders, James E.
The Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca,
1750-1850, by Peter Guardino. Latin America Otherwise series. Durham,
North Carolina, Duke University Press, 2005. ix, 405 pp. $84.95 US
(cloth), $23.95 US (paper).
Peter Guardino was one of the pioneers of the new scholarship on
nineteenth-century nation and state formation, and especially the roles
of subalterns in these processes, that emerged in the 1990s. His new
book, The Time of Liberty, is an important and valuable addition to this
debate. Instead of just assuming popular and elite political culture
evolved from the colonial to the republican period, Guardino carefully
analyzes how exactly political discourse and action changed and why. The
book makes powerful arguments and contributions to the nation and state
formation debates due to its expansive temporal reach, its intensive
archival research in Oaxaca, its combination of social and political
history, its fascinating comparison of rural and urban politics, and its
provoking arguments on the nature of hegemony and political change.
The Time of Liberty traces how a hegemonic system of politics based
on paradigms of royal sovereignty, corporatism, and ethnic difference in
1750 changed to a discourse grounded in images of popular sovereignty and republican citizenship in 1850. To accomplish this, Guardino first
establishes the political culture of both elites and subalterns in
racially mixed urban Antequera (later renamed Oaxaca) as well as in the
largely indigenous and rural Villa Alta province. He argues that while
elites and plebeians in Antequera had little contact in the colonial era
and had vastly different visions of race (vital to elite identity, but
ignored by plebeians), they shared similar concepts of religion and
political authority. Both groups embraced a corporative political
culture based on loyalty to the king, seen as a patriarchal father
figure who corrected the abuses of lower officials. Before independence,
the indigenous villages of Villa Alta shared similar political values,
if perhaps even more strongly emphasizing their relationship with the
king. In addition, this patriarchal vision of power not only governed
their interaction with royal authority, but regulated politics within
the villages as well.
Guardino then proceeds to examine how the Bourbon reforms and
especially the independence process affected each social group and
region. He opens his chapter on the late colonial period with the
interesting claim that political changes did not happen only after
independence; rather, the Bourbon reforms, by altering how the state
justified its actions, changed "Hispanic political culture by
making new kinds of arguments powerful" (p. 91). Guardino does show
subaltern resistance to some reforms and the embrace of others, but as
he has little evidence to show that subalterns' political discourse
changed much during this period, he ultimately contends that the Bourbon
reforms had a "surprisingly muted effect" on popular political
culture (p. 116). Since the Bourbons had little faith in
subalterns' ability (as opposed to royal officials') to absorb
their enlightened arguments and thus did not direct appeals to them, a
new hegemonic political culture did not emerge, as subalterns had little
recourse to appropriating the ideology of the reforms to their own ends.
Guardino then makes the striking argument that most changes to
political culture were not directly related to independence, but were
due to appeals for popular support in ways "that would have been
unimaginable just a few years before" by insurgents, liberals,
royalists, and absolutists, none of whom necessarily promoted
independence (p. 123). The insurgents (who began to condemn colonialism
and demonize European Spaniards as well as to promote the Virgin of
Guadalupe) and Spanish liberalism, exemplified by the Constitution of
1812, were especially influential. Both movements sought to abolish
racial categories, so important to the elite in the colonial era. Both
also promoted the rise of an idea of political equality. Guardino's
argument is convincing, although he might have stressed that while these
ideas emerged before independence was on the agenda, independence
certainly solidified their acceptance and influence.
Finally, Guardino reconstructs the new urban and rural political
cultures under republicanism. In the era's virulent partisan
politics, urban subalterns were not brought into political system as
clients; instead, "party allegiance was most likely inspired by the
political discourses elaborated by each party" (p. 193). One
party--referred to as populists or vinagres--"heralded a new age of
egalitarianism, federalism, and nationalism;" the other--referred
to as conservative or aceites--"worried about disorder and social
dissolution" and feared a decline of the influence of the Church
(pp. 156-157). Outside the city, Indians faced an elite that wanted to
see their society disappear, yet they were able to adapt to the new
political situation and force Oaxacan lawmakers to concede to indigenous
social customs and political traditions, mainly regarding village
government. Village governments guarded an old colonial corporate
identity while also linking localities to state and national political
projects (although one wishes Guardino would have explored indigenous
visions of citizenship more, as surely they had distinct conceptions of
this institution). He concludes by noting that the failure of republican
electoral politics to provide stability was not due to subaltern
indifference to national affairs (he criticizes Eric Van Young on this
point, noting how often peasants had recourse to politics and discourse
outside of the villages they sought to protect), but the result of a
lack of pluralism and political tolerance that led to a reliance on
outside military intervention to over ride the outcome of elections.
Ultimately, Guardino sees all of these changes as due to the
intentions of elites to change the political hegemony and subaltern
response to these efforts. He convincingly argues that change to
political culture happens most rapidly when elites need to mobilize the
bulk of the population, both for warfare and to implement laws and
policies in peacetime, which to be successful needed subaltern support
due to the state's weakness. In both these instances elites had to
appeal to subalterns, who could then use the new arguments in the
appeals for their own struggles. It would have been interesting had
Guardino used his findings on Oaxaca to comment more broadly on issues
of popular politics, for while Guardino does an admirable job of placing
his work in the historical literature on Mexico, other Latin
Americanists might appreciate some engagement with the work done on
subalterns' role in nation and state formation throughout the
region. Nevertheless, the book will be a touchstone for studies of
popular politics, not only in Mexico, but for all those interested in
the nineteenth-century Atlantic World.
James E. Sanders
Utah State University
