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The Ballot, Land and Sovereignty: Cádiz and the Origins of Mexican Local Government, 1812–1820

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Book cover Elections before Democracy: The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America

Part of the book series: Institute of Latin American Studies Series ((LASS))

Abstract

In 1825, the Minister for Internal and Foreign Affairs of the new federal republic of Mexico, Lucas Alamán, writing with characteristic lucidity, stated:

now that control has been lost and obedience to all higher authorities has been swept away, there remains nothing to bind together the lesser powers or even to lend them respectability in the eyes of the people, and from this flows disorder, anarchy and civil war.1

Translated by Patricia Roberts.

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Notes

  1. Quoted in M. Bellingeri, ‘Conflictos y dispersión de poderes en Yucatán (1780–1831)’, in A. Annino and R. Buve (coord.), El liberalismo en México, Cuadernos de Historia Latinoamericana, no. 1 (Hamburg, 1993), p. 74.

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  2. The Madrid Council of State in a meeting of 28 April 1820 when the constitution was restored, calculated the number of American voters and judged that there were 2 million ‘fathers of families’, Archivo General de Indias, Indiferente General, Sec, V. exp. 1523.

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  3. M. Dolores Morales, ‘Estructura urbana y distributión de la propiedad en la ciudad de México in 1813’, Historia Mexicans vol. 25 (Jan-Mar 1976), pp. 363–402. With the same title, the same author published a more detailed version of this analysis of the 1813 census in A. Moreno Toscano (comp.), Ciudad de México, ensayo de constructión de una historia, IN AH, Col. científica, no. 63 (1978), pp. 71–107.

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  4. It was necessary to ensure that there were sufficient teachers and doctors, to send the poor to the hospice and the sick to hospital, to suppress vagabondage, to send the young to work with ‘well-known’ employers, to offer weaving to poor women, to oversee prices and the movements of the common people, compile a register of vecinos, act as judge in marital conflicts, supervise the condition of the pavements, collaborate in the levying of taxes. Each of the mayors (alcades mayores y menores) would have carried a staff and have enjoyed criminal and civil legal privileges (fueros). See the Ordenanza de la Nobilísima Ciudad de México en cuarteles, creation de las alcaldías de ellos y regia de su gobierno, dada y mandada observar por el Exmo Señor Don Miguel de Mayaga (Mexico, 1782).

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  5. Archivo Antiguo Ayuntamiento, Policía en general, vol. 3627, exp. 43, f.8.

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  6. Ladrón de Guevara, ‘Discurso sobre la policia en México’, in S. Lombardo Ruiz, Antología de textos sobre la ciudad de México en el período de la Ilustración (1777–1792), IN AH, Colección cientifica, no. 113(1982), p. 103.

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  7. A. Lavrin, ‘La riqueza de los conventos de monjas en Nueva España; estructura y evolutión durante el siglo XVIIF’, Cahiers des Amériques Latines, no. 2 (1973), p. 100. This work demonstrates that half of Church property in 1813 belonged to the convents, but that it was negligible during the previous century, and therefore much of the Church’s wealth deriving from landed property had been accrued during the Bourbon period.

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  8. C. Gibson, Los aztecas bajo el dominio espanol 1519–1810 (Mexico, 1967), pp. 372–412.

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  9. The problem is a complex one because the location of the community funds did not necessarily correspond to the location of the towns and districts, as has been demonstrated by A. Lira, Comunidades indigenas frente a la ciudad de Mexico. Tenochtitlán, Tlatelolco, sus pueblos, sus barrios, 1812–1919 (Mexico, 1983), Appendix 3.

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  10. Gibson, Los aztecas bajo el dominio espanol.

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  11. G. Brun Martinez, ‘Las razas y la familia en la ciudad de México en 1811’, in A. Moreno Toscano, Ciudad de México, pp. 113–23.

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  12. Archivo General de la Natión de México (AGNM), Dictamen de la audiencia al Virrey Vanegas del 8 de enero 1813, Historia, vol. 443, exp. 14.

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  13. AGNM, Francisco de Urrutia al Intendente Gutiérrez del Maso, 13 de enero de 1813, cit. exp. 22, f.40.

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  14. Ibid.

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  15. AGNM, for San Pablo, Juan Antonio Cobian al Intendente Gutiérrez del Maso, 13 de enero 1813; for Santa Ana, Antonio Menéndez Prieto al..., 12 de enero 1813; for Santo Tomás, Juan Cervantes y Padilla al..., 12 de enero 1813; for San Antonio las Huertas, Augustín del Rivero al..., 18de enero 1813; cit. exp. 17, f. 35; exp.15f. 35; exp. 13, f. 31; exp. 25, f. 43.

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  16. Augustín del Rivero ... cit.; Juan Cervantes y Padilla... cit.

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  17. For example, in Santa Ana, to the north of the city, which took in all of the districts of the Santiago Tlatelolco parcialidad, where only one elector was selected, the Indians voted en bloc for the priest of the same parish, Ignacio Sanches Hidalgo. In San Antonio las Huertas the Indians voted mostly for the Count of Jala [Conde de Jala], a cleric, and son of the famous Count of Regla [Conde de Regla].

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  18. According to J. González Angulo Aguirre, Artesanado y ciudad a finales del siglo XV11I (Mexico, 1980), pp. 180 et seq., in the last colonial period there were very real signs of a progressive crisis in the artisan associations of the City of Mexico due to the increase in independent and free producers of goods, a phenomenon apparently tolerated by the authorities.

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  19. AGNM, Resumen de las secciones de la parroquia del Sagrario de los votos que sacaron los 4 electores que eligieron a los feligreses de ella, Historia, vol. 447, exp. 4, f. 61; El Intendente Gutiérrez del Maso al Virrey Vanegas, 11 de enero 1813, ibid., exp. 10, ff. 6–7.

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  20. A. V. Humboldt, Ensayo Político sobre Nueva España (Mexico, 1965), p. 123.

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  21. L. Alamán, Historia de México desde los primeros movimientos que prepararon la Independencia en el año 1808 hasta la época presente; México, 1850, 5 vols. Tomo 3, Apéndice, doc. n. 10. ed. facs. (Mexico, 1985).

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  22. Representación del consulado de Mexico al Rey Don Fernando Séptimo el 27 de mayo de 1811, Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, Seccián manuscritos, Fondo America, f. 404.

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  23. AGNM, Operaciones de Guerra, tomo 31, f. 96.

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  24. T. Anna, La caida del gobierno español en Ciudad de México (Mexico, 1979), p. 185.

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  25. In its Dictamen of 1 April the Audiencia speaks of incomprehensible figures. Our own calculation on the basis of information submitted by the priests reveals a population, registered in the parishes, of 78,572 individuals. The census of the recently constituted Council of Police and Public Order had estimated 168,811 persons in 1811. The discrepancy in the figures may also result from the fact that in 1811 the city was invaded by thousands of refugees who were fleeing from the rebels. In 1813 there was a serious epidemic in the city which caused more than 20,000 deaths. See K.A. Davis, ‘Tendencias demográficas urbanas durante el siglo XIX en Mexico’, in Moreno Toscano, Ciudad de México, pp. 372–412.

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  26. Archivo de la Diputación Provincial de Nueva España (ADPNE), vol. 1, 1820, exp. 17.

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  27. The entire text was published by J. Delgado, La Audiencia de México ante la rebelión de Hidalgo y el estado de Nueva España (Madrid, 1984).

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  28. AGNM, Operaciones de Guerra, vol. 920, exp. 2

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  29. F.-X. Guerra, Modernidad e Independencias (Madrid, 1992), pp. 227–69.

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  30. We refer here to M. Ozouf’s well-known work, La fête révolutionnaire, 1789–1799 (Paris, 1976).

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  31. P. Prodi, Ilsacramento del potere. Il giuramento politico nella storia costituzionale dell’Occidente (Bologna, 1992).

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  32. This distinction has been emphasised by J. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Oeffentlichkeit, Nuewied, 1962, trad. ital. Storia e critica del Vopinione pubblica (Bari, 1971), p. 17.

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  33. See chapter 2.

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  34. AGNM, Operaciones de Guerra, vols. 30 and 31.

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  35. AGNM, Gobernación, caja [box] 13, 1821–22, E-7, exp. 27. This fact is to be found in a letter of March 1822, from the Governor of Oaxaca to the Emperor Iturbide: 500,000 inhabitants, 930 towns, 200 town councils, 20 cabeceras de partido, and 90 republics, notwithstanding the abolition, in the Constitution, of the latter.

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  36. Villaseñor y Sánchez, Theatro americano, descripción general de los reynos y provincias de la Nueva España, y sus jurisdicciones (Mexico, 1748), pt. 2a, chap. 13. This text by Villaseñor is the last which enumerates the republics. The census of the Viceroy Revillagigedo of 1793–94 considers only the towns, and not the republics.

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  37. AGNM, Operaciones de Guerra, vol. 393, 1821, Gutiérrez del Maso, exp. 123.

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  38. AGNM, ibid., exp., 125.

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  39. AGNM, ibid., exp., 134.

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  40. Exposición de la diputación provincial de Puebla sobre los males de Nueva España, in J. H. Hernández y Dávalos (ed.), Colección de documentos para la historia de la guerra de independencia de México (6 vols., Mexico, 1877–82), vol. V, doc. 158, pp. 550–3.

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  41. AGNM, Historia, vol. 435, exp. 32.

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  42. AGNM, Historia, vol. 404, 1820, f. 80.

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  43. AGNM, Operaciones de Guerra, vol. 393, 1821, Gutiérrez del Maso, f. 125.

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  44. G. Thomson, ‘Popular aspects of liberalism in Mexico’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 10 (1991), pp. 265–92.

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Authors
  1. Antonio Annino
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, UK

    Eduardo Posada-Carbó (Lecturer of History) (Lecturer of History)

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© 1996 Institute of Latin American Studies

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Annino, A. (1996). The Ballot, Land and Sovereignty: Cádiz and the Origins of Mexican Local Government, 1812–1820. In: Posada-Carbó, E. (eds) Elections before Democracy: The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America. Institute of Latin American Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24505-5_4

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