Mark Overmyer-VelÁzquez is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Connecticut.

Visions of the Emerald City

Modernity, Tradition, and the Formation of Porfirian Oaxaca, MexicoBy Mark Overmyer-Velzquez

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2006 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-3777-5

Contents

Illustrations and Tables………………………………………………………ixPreface……………………………………………………………………..xiIntroduction Writing the Emerald City………………………………………….11. La Vallistocracia: The Formation of Oaxaca’s Ruling Class………………………172. The Legible City: Constructed, Symbolic, and Disciplined Spaces…………………403. “A New Political Religious Order”: Church, State, and Workers…………………..704. “A Necessary Evil”: Regulating Public Space and Public Women……………………985. Portraits of a Lady: Visions of Modernity…………………………………….122Conclusions The Consequences of Modernity………………………………………153Appendix Articles Cited from the 1857 Constitution………………………………161Notes……………………………………………………………………….163Bibliography…………………………………………………………………203Index……………………………………………………………………….221

Chapter One

La Vallistocracia The Formation of Oaxaca’s Ruling Class

Let it be known to our people that in September the Caudillo of our Freedoms will be among us. –Peridico oficial de Oaxaca, 1892

In order to demonstrate how this class is a ruling class, it is necessary to specify the modes in which its economic hegemony is translated into political domination: which means examining, among other things, processes of recruitment to elite positions in the major institutional spheres, the relations between economic, political and other elites, and the use of effective power to further define class interests. -Anthony Giddens, Elites and Power in British Society, 1974

The Emerald City’s Vallistocracia, members of the state capital’s upper and upper-middle classes, put their visions of modernity into practice by mobilizing old and developing new social and cultural forms to strengthen and perpetuate their rule. By coordinating long-standing practices such as transnational business relationships and elite family intermarriage with modern cultural and media events as diverse as playing baseball, engaging in tourism, and reading the newspaper, the city’s ruling elites moved beyond coercive methods to secure their positions of privilege in the Porfirian city. The elite vision of modernity in Oaxaca City also involved a simultaneous erasure of the capital’s contemporary “traditional” (i.e., indigenous) elements and a celebration of the region’s autochthonous past. City elites incorporated long-standing and modern political practices with newly constructed cultural forms and discourses to become ruling elites.

This chapter is the first of two that explore the social, political, economic, and ideological aspects of the elite class in the state capital. During the Porfiriato, Oaxaca City elites translated economic and social privilege into dominant political power to become ruling elites. The capital’s ruling class, those in command of the local bureaucracy and tied into Daz’s federal political structure, consisted of members of both the upper and upper-middle class. Anthony Giddens’s study of elites in Britain and Romana Falcn’s work on Mexican jefaturas polticas provide powerful conceptual frameworks for understanding the process of recruitment and the structure of the city’s elite class through long-standing patron-client ties. Their work is also relevant here for its examination of how elites distributed power via “modern” cultural projects and affiliations. Central to the formation of the capital’s ruling class was the “governmentality” of Oaxacan elites, that is, as Colin Gordon glosses Foucault’s term, the “way or system of thinking about the nature of the practice of government (who can govern; what governing is; what or who is governed), capable of making some form of that activity thinkable and practicable both to its practitioners and to those upon whom it was practised.” In other words, not only was the administrative structure of political power in the state capital critical to the formation of ruling elites, but so was its nature, how it was maintained through sociopolitical ties and cultural practices.

In chapter 2 we will see how elites reshaped the city according to their specific race-, class-, and gender-biased visions and practices of modernity to fortify their dominant status. Like the city’s popular groups, elites neither comprised a unified block of individuals nor articulated a coherent vision of modernity. These two chapters also provide an on-the-ground, local case study of state formation and government power in modern Mexico. As showcases of Daz’s modernizing regime, state capitals like Oaxaca de Jurez were also regional power centers for the Porfirian government. For over thirty years Daz built and maintained his regime from Mexico City through an interconnected hierarchy of political appointments from the presidency down to city administrators. Emphasizing economic prosperity and modernization, Daz eagerly supported national and foreign business people in their efforts to bring world capitalism to Mexico.

Porfirian Politics in Daz’s Backyard

In 1866, the year following the bloody battle and fall of Antequera (Oaxaca City) to the troops of French imperial commander Marshal Bazaine, General Porfirio Daz returned to reclaim the city of his birth. After securing a victory there he continued north to lead the final defeat of the occupation armies in the state of Puebla. Daz was on his way to becoming Oaxaca’s most celebrated son. A decade later in 1876, after his country had survived more than a decade of civil war, foreign interventions, lost elections, and the death of President Benito Jurez, Daz seized the reigns of liberalism and rode triumphantly into Mexico City to begin his thirty-four-year rule over the republic. Daz’s military and political credentials would make a lasting impression on the inhabitants of Oaxaca’s state capital.

This chapter’s first epigraph, celebrating the presence of President Daz at the inauguration of the Mexican Southern Railway in September 1892, captures the dominant Porfirian attitude of the Emerald City’s ruling elites toward Daz. Recipients of Oaxaca’s Juarista and Porfirian “dual legacy,” elites in the capital city championed programs of economic modernization fostered by Daz and his predecessor, Benito Jurez. Oaxaca’s government leaders manufactured this unifying liberal myth to legitimize the rule of Porfirio Daz as perpetuator of the Jurez legacy despite the historical antagonism between these two Oaxaqueos. Daz sustained his multidecade dictatorship largely by circumventing official electoral procedures and appointing loyal friends and colleagues to positions of political authority in federal and state governments. As the Porfiriato progressed, elites in Oaxaca City both benefited and suffered from their links to Daz’s federal government in Mexico City. Although following “official” state elections Daz handpicked all of Oaxaca’s governors, it was the election of Emilio Pimentel in 1902 that fused the most successful and debilitating aspects of the Daz presidency. Pimentel was part of the new cientfico elite-a coterie of technocratic lawyers and officials that held prominent and influential positions (including four governorships)-closely connected to Daz and well supported by the state capital’s foreign community. During his tenure as governor (1902-11), Pimentel worked to recast the state and its capital into a showcase of modernity for the Porfirian regime. Owing to his modernizing plans, he and the state’s oligarchy alienated and embittered the city’s growing professional and commercial sectors, which would eventually rally against the excesses of the regime.

Although President Daz claimed that he led a modern and democratic government, for most of its reign the Porfirian regime effectively closed the political system to opposition and, in positions like the jefatura poltica (office of district political boss), condensed and integrated functions usually differentiated in a modern state. While espousing liberal values of autonomy and self-representation, it simultaneously supported long-standing structures of corporatism and patronage that had existed since the colonial era. In favor of economic development, Daz and his government neglected the country’s political democratization. The integration of paternalistic political structures and democratic political rhetoric characterized the historyof Porfirian politics in Oaxaca Cityand helped to sustain Daz’s regime in the state capital and throughout Mexico for over three decades.

Like Mrida and other state capitals in Mexico, Oaxaca City played a critical role in the political architecture of the nation. State capitals were both the insertion points for federal policies and the centers of the states’ political and economic cultures. Because Oaxaca City was also the hometown of Daz and Benito Jurez, its connection to Mexico City’s political center was particularly strong. As president of Mexico in 1877, Daz adeptly integrated members of the local and national Juarista opposition and groups of supporters into his new government. Daz’s ability to incorporate diverse liberal factions into one, pro-Daz coalition grew in sophistication as he secured his political tenure for more than three decades. By 1902 Daz had placed several of his Oaxacan compadres (to be sure, they were all men) in federal and state posts of authority throughout the republic. Indeed, one pro-Daz historian wrote that Oaxacans were for Daz “what the Jesuits have been for the Pope, charged with sustaining the faith in the hero of peace, the doctrine of grace by reelection…. The Oaxacan privilege has lasted from 1858 to 1911, fifty-three years dominating Mexico!”

In Oaxaca the president established a local version of his national oligarchy. Daz structured his system of political power so that it emanated from his centralized position in Mexico City. The federal capital dominated the country’s economic and political landscape. During the Porfiriato the federal government reclaimed Mexico City’s economic primacy, which had been compromised during the nineteenth century’s wars and struggles with the church, by locating all of the national banks and the Monetary Commission in the capital. Taxation of the states allowed this financial dominance. Mexico City attained its financial supremacy at the expense of the remainder of the country.

As in other Mexican states, Oaxaca’s elaborate government hierarchy facilitated Daz’s rule on the local level. Adopted from Oaxaca’s state constitution, the Manual de gobernadores y de jefes polticos (Manual for Governors and Political Bosses) clearly outlined the different positions and responsibilities in the state’s government. Mexico’s states were (and continue to be) geopolitically divided into districts and municipalities. City councilmen (regidores) and trustees (sndicos) responded to a municipal president who, in turn, answered to a district’s political boss (jefe poltico). Appointed by President Daz, the jefe poltico and state governor worked in conjunction to carry out the mandates of the federal government. Between 1876 and 1902 Daz named loyal generals to the governorship of his home state. Except for a four-month leave in 1882, Daz himself governed the state from December 1881 to October 1883. During his tenure as governor, Daz never broke stride as the de facto ruler of the country. Among the thousands of letters in the Porfirio Daz Collection in Mexico Cityare dozens addressed to Daz in Oaxaca City from 1881 to 1883. Top-level federal officials like Matas Romero and Manuel Romero Rubio continued to consult the governor on matters of national importance. Forexample, Matas Romero sought Daz’s help in obtaining initial financing for the Mexican Southern Railway from U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, and Romero Rubio queried the governor about the recent election of Mexican President Manuel Gonzlez (1880-84).

As president again after 1884, Daz’s influence over local Oaxacan affairs continued to increase. In January 1889, Daz and Governor Albino Zertuche corresponded about material improvements in Oaxaca City. The letters provide an excellent example of the extent of Daz’s control over developments in the state capital. Speaking for the municipal councilman Francisco Colmenares, Zertuche requested assistance in improving the city’s lighting system and slaughterhouse. Daz’s response was definitive: contact the American Gas and Water Company to carry out its recent contract with the government to better municipal public works and instruct Oaxaca City’s council to construct their own slaughterhouse. Many letters like these demonstrate President Daz’s role as arbitrator in local affairs. Ordinary citizens petitioned Daz as both governor and president. In scores of notes, city residents requested financial assistance and employment for themselves and their relatives. With the power to connect residents and city officials with the state government and international businesses, Daz cemented his political dominance.

As residents of the state capital, Porfirian-era governors personally oversaw the expansion and reconstruction of the city. Annual reports by the governors attest to their intimate involvement in city affairs. More than just a recounting of the previous year’s successes and failures, these reports prescribed actions for the coming year. In his administrative report of 1904, Governor Emilio Pimentel, emphasizing sanitation, discussed ways to improve public hygiene and outlined the contractual agreement with the Mexico City engineer Robert Gayol to conduct a preliminary study of the city’s drainage system.

Further complementing Daz’s personal extension of power in Oaxaca, the system of jefaturas polticas acted in conjunction with the governor to monitor and maintain control over local politics. Daz revamped the colonial-era jefaturas polticas system during his reign, using it to bolster his centralized, personalist rule in the state’s districts and municipalities. As a former jefe poltico himself, Daz realized how the position could bridge the local to the national, aiding the integration of states into the developing Mexican nation. Although formally legalized in the Constitution of 1857, jefes polticos utilized patronage ties and informal methods of coercion to gain consent and power in state politics. In Oaxaca’s Central District, the location of Oaxaca City, President Daz directly appointed the jefe poltico. Often military men or government administrators closely allied with Don Porfirio, jefes polticos of Oaxaca’s Central District like Mariano Bonavides (1879-94), Colonel Priciliano M. Bentez (1898-1902), and Tirso Iurreta (1902-8) influenced almost every aspect of life in the state capital. They directly controlled education, taxation, and public works, as well as oversaw the police force, prison system, and census reports.

Jefes polticos also intervened directly in the lives of ordinary people. As mediators between municipalities and the federal government, jefes polticos played crucial roles in Mexico’s inchoate process of state formation. In one case exemplifying their frequent involvement on the popular level, Tirso Iurreta, the principal jefe poltico during Pimentel’s term as governor, insisted on behalf of the residents of the sixth block of Armenta y Lpez that the municipal government install a drainage pipe along the street. The urban railroad had been causing mud to build up in front of their homes. After a typical flurry of administrative wrangling, city officials agreed to have the railroad company construct the much needed drainage pipe.

The Central District’s jefes polticos played commanding roles vis–vis Oaxaca City’s government. Before Tirso Iurreta left the state for Mexico Cityon business in June 1907, he appointed the municipal president, Gildardo Gmez, to act as interim jefe poltico. In turn, Gmez temporarily assigned a city sndico to replace himself. A decade earlier Priciliano Bentez had attempted to appoint the municipal president, Francisco Vasconcelos, to his position as jefe poltico. Bentez had hoped that Vasconcelos could take over the jefatura while simultaneously maintaining his original post as the head of the city’s government. Although state authorities, including the governor, uncharacteristically rejected Bentez’s administrative move, the effort was indicative of the tight political connections at the state and municipal levels. This fluid exchange of political positions enhanced the control by the jefes polticos and, hence, Daz of the municipal government.

Intimately linked to Daz’s dictatorship, the municipal presidents of Oaxaca City not only closely followed the dictates of their jefes polticos but also participated in a corrupt municipal electoral system. Although in theory elected by a democratic majority (of men), municipal presidents were in fact installed by a small group of ruling elites. Municipal electoral records reveal that election counts considered only a minority of male voters in the capital’s affluent center. In the 1905 municipal elections only 552 of 9,660 eligible voters cast their vote in 18 of the city’s 66 electoral wards. Absent from the election rolls were votes from the city’s lower-class neighborhoods. Tereso Villasante took the election over Gildardo Gmez with 534 votes to 18. The mandates of the Federal Electoral Law concerning municipal elections further linked the fate of local political positions to national demands and aided in the manipulation of election results. According to Articles 13 and 14 of the 1901 Federal Electoral Law, the municipal president himself was the first to receive the uncounted ballots during an election. After the city secretaries counted the votes, the municipal president would review the count and announce the victor. Thus, these procedures provided the municipal president clear access to uncounted votes and a strong hand in determining the results.

President Daz’s presence both directly and indirectly dominated local Oaxacan politics. His long reach was further strengthened by the loyalty of the city’s politicians and elite industrialists, often one in the same.

(Continues…)

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