Rashomon in the Zocalo: writing the history of popular political culture in nineteenth century Mexico.

Publication: MACLAS Latin American Essays

Publication Date: 01-MAR-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies

Introduction

Those of us who study the political culture of nineenth century Mexico often lament the absence of archival documentation and the elusiveness of that which we know must exist somewhere, but just cannot find ... yet. Further frustration arises in the study of the popular classes, who were much less likely than elites to engage in the kinds of activities that leave traces in the archives. Indeed, the urban poor were even less likely than their rural counterparts to engage in the kinds of activities that leave traces of their presence in the archives (lawsuits over communal lands, for example). The words of Jules Michelet, the mid-nineteenth century French romantic historian, form an appropriate epigraph for these frustrations. Michelet, perhaps most well known for his 1846 work, titled simply The People, despaired, "I had the people in my heart ... but I found their language inaccessible. I was unable to make it speak." (1)

Recent literature in history and cultural studies, however, suggests that a dearth of archival materials in fact is not the primary obstacle to the study of the popular, or subaltern, classes in Mexico, or anywhere else. Rather, the real challenges are theoretical and methodological. A crucial experience several years ago forced me to clarify my position regarding these challenges by providing the archival equivalent of viewing "Rashomon," the 1950 Akira Kurosawa film that contemplates the nature of truth and memory by recreating four different versions of the same rape-murder in medieval Japan. Rashomon arrived in Mexico City's Zocalo when I came across two diametrically opposed "eyewitness" accounts in private diaries of the same popular protest.

The first version of this upheaval noted that on March 11, 1837, a mob of leperos attacked the Mexican congress. While the "pretext" for the upheaval was a recent devaluation of copper currency and a food shortage, the real cause was "the infamous machinations of anarchists." The events were carefully planned and executed by radical federalists who yet again manipulated small numbers of the city's malleable masses for their political ends. (2) The second version of these events asserted that a "truly popular" cross-section of the city's residents gathered in Mexico City's main square to protest the congress' misguided decision to devalue copper coin dramatically. The participants included "many persons of distinct opinions," whose frustration was directed by "persons of no [specific political] category." (3) While temporarily frustrating my romantic quest for the Holy Grail of nineteenth century Mexican politics, finding these documents was of course a great stroke of luck, since it forced me to question again the way in which I was using all of my sources, and to refine my criteria for their evaluation. It put into sharp focus many of the theoretical and methodological problems that face the researcher who presumes to investigate popular political culture, and the pitfalls that await. First, these documents, written by members of the elite, remind us that popular political culture cannot be isolated from the broader political culture. Just as studies of popular culture in general challenge the traditional division between high and popular culture, the same must be done for the distinction between popular and elite political culture. (4) Though we may try to use archival documents to explore the actions and motivations of non-elite actors, the documentary record was written and collected by and for elites, and we must always be cognizant of the changing ways in which "the masses" were used as a trope in competing elite discourses. However, to end our analysis at the level of elite discourse would in some ways deny both the ability of historians to contextualize and evaluate sources and the agency of non-elites, as far removed as they may be from having direct input into the documentary record.

In my work, I follow Lynn Hunt's approach to political culture, as I try to analyze the way the urban masses enter into the full array of "principles, formulae, and ground rules of political interaction," rather than simply as a discursive category. (5) To do so requires a careful accounting of what Charles Tilly calls the "opportunity structure" and the "repertoire of contention," those times when the complex interplay between elite machinations, the actions of intermediaries, and popular aspirations, yield mass action. (6) Further, it is important to understand the relationship between this repertoire of contention and the broader and deeper crisis of Mexican politics during the first half of the nineteenth century, which was undoubtedly characterized by a crisis of political legitimacy. In the midst of economic stagnation and the fragmentation of elite politics, rural and urban masses became engaged in the struggle over the construction of a new political order. Much of the historiography on this era focuses on the peasantry, but the urban masses became engaged in this struggle in countless ways as well. As Silvia Arrom has pointed out, the mechanisms--both "positive" and "negative" factors--by which the relative quiescence of the urban space during the colonial period was maintained proved less viable in the post-colonial world.

The War of Independence and its aftermath introduced new levels of confrontation to political relationships and altered the 'repertoire of contention.' We see, for example, new political rituals draped in the symbols of popular sovereignty, which provided the opportunity for, or indeed required a certain degree of, popular mobilization to meet their designers' goals. In this volatile climate, elite actions are essential to understanding urban unrest, but are an insufficient locus of study for the emerging political culture, since ideas and actions often moved beyond the control of elites. (7) Even through the filters of elite accounts and the anonymous status of participants in these activities, we can derive some conclusions about their words and actions, like the connection between elite discourse and the language of mass action. In discussing this language, we should keep in mind Arlette Farge's observation that, "people's opinions related to a plurality of phenomena which invited participation and encouraged reflection: phenomena on many different levels." (8)

The archives provide numerous clues about the raw material from which popular political opinion and language were formed: handbills, pasquines, poems, skits, songs and jokes were all important sources of ideas and slogans. Some are particularly memorable, capable of summarizing complex trends succinctly, and...

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