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Title: Summer of Discontent, Seasons of Upheaval: Elite Politics and Rural Insurgency in Yucatan, 1876-1915 by Allen Wells, Gilbert M. Joseph ISBN: 0-8047-2655-8 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: December, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $65.00

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Summary: Chasing the Master's Narrative,Or How Yucatan GotIts Revolu
Comment: This book untangles politics in Yucatán's henequen zone at the transition from Porfiriato to Revolution. It seeks to join middle level political history with the "uncertain terrain of social history and political culture at the grassroots (iv)." From this juncture, Wells and Joseph propose to explain the success of Yucatán's Merída oligarchy in staving off change in the absence of the Porifirian regime and in the face of widespread dissent and revolt. So successful was this oligarchy that, "the Mexican Revolution would have to fight its way into the peninsula with an army of seven thousand troops (1)." The success of Merída's export oligarchy against change is a comparative case, the authors argue, for Central America and the Southern Cone illustrative of "the capacity of local (or national) oligarchies (such as Yucatán's henequen planters or El Salvador's coffee barons) to 'hang on,'. . . even in the face of escalating social challenges,. . . local rebellions,. . and multiclass coalitions (iii) ." Part one, titled "Summer of Discontent, Oligarchy and Its Costs, 1876-1909," examines the factional politics of Merída's oligarchy within the Porfirian state. It details how Porfirian patronage first quelled Yucatán's chronic political instability, and later abetted the exclusive dominance of the Molinista faction. From Merída in the tropical jungle, the Molinista faction took economic and political control of Yucatán by forging national and international alliances, positioning itself both as the guarantor of the immense henequen profits and the broker of Dìaz's patronage. The Molinista faction held rival factions in check through manipulation of the henequen market and political repression. Repression was exercised against not only rival elites during official elections, but also against dissidents--radical liberals and labor organizers who denied the henequeros' legitimacy, and who articulated an opposing social vision. Frustrated by the entrenched Díaz-Molinista alliance, rival elite factions began courting the support of the artisans and peasants who found cause with this dissent. "Seasons of Upheaval" continues the story of henequero rule at the end of the Pax Porfiriano. In 1910, the Morenista and Pinista elite factions allied with Francisco Madero's reform movement, seeking not so much a new social pact as a means to pry the Molinistas loose from the state house. They organized in the villages along the fringe of the henequen zone, recruiting local leaders like Pedro Crespo and José Loreto Baak into their loose political organizations. Their strategy, the authors reason, was to foment enough political agitation to convince Díaz to arbitrate a compromise. Initially, the move partially succeeded, as Díaz replaced the Molinista Enrique Muñoz Arístegui with General Luis Curiel as governor. However, this bid for regional power soon spun out of the hands of the Yucatec elites. Not only did Francisco Madero briefly replace Díaz as president, leading to the collapse of the center, but the revolts in the countryside continued as aggrieved villagers and peons sought to redress the abuses of the henequeros. The desperate attempt of the Morenistas and Pinistas to unseat the Molinistas produced an opportunity for Yucatán's beleagured campesinos to turn their machetes against the masters. Over two chapters, the authors recount the major episodes of the agrarian revolts which menaced the henequen oligarchy during 1911-1913. Here, the work delves into social history and peasant studies, turning to criminal archives and oral history to reconstruct the world of the Mayan peasants. While they note that the judiciary's support of henequero hegemony in its time of crisis shaped the trial records, the detailed testimonies of the criminal cases "allow the social historian," argue Joseph and Wells, ". . . to hear the voices of the dispossessed (15)." With these, as with the oral histories, they pursue the internal dynamics of the revolts--how did they begin? Who participated in and who led these revolts? What were their purposes, and who and what were their targets? Rejecting contemporary newspaper accounts and those of later Marxist historians which depict peasants manipulated by paternalist ties for the causes of elite caudillos, they argue that the peasants pursued their own agenda, turning this "critical meeting of grievances and opportunities" into a time to settle scores and recoup community rights (185). For example, in November of 1911, armed campesinos took the cabecera Halachó in the name of Delio Moreno Cantón's party. After taking the plaza, however, the rebels cut the telegraph lines and named their own municipal authorities (237). Personal vendetta also played prominently in these rebellions. Pedro Crespo tied his fortunes to the Morenista and anti-Díaz causes as he led a pre-dawn raid on Temax on March 4, 1911 to avenge his father's murder(202). Also in early 1911, campesinos and artisans from pueblo Peto attacked the Catmís hacienda, seeking to revenge the abuses of the hacendado Arturo Cirerol and his crony Casmiro Montalvo Solis. With the support of the district prefect Solis, Cirerol had exacted "first night rights" from newlyweds on his hacienda and in the district at large. In a court action brought by Cirerol against the rebel Máximo Sabido, Sabido decried Cirerol's abuse against the campesinos' families. "These are the facts," he declared, "and they will be remembered two generations from now." As with Pancho Villa, whose sister was raped, the authors conclude that "a deep personal outrage" motivated many of the rebels on the edges of Yucatán's henequen zone (201). Despite the Morenistas' advantage at the grass roots, Delio Moreno Cantón and his supporters never arrived to the governor's house. The Huerta regime, once safely established in Mexico City, "wooed Morenismo," the authors conclude, "playing on its illusions and cravings like a hussy toying with a sugar daddy (250)." The clear miscomprehension of sexual power this equation of Huerta with a hussy expresses undermines the authors' contention that sexual outrages sparked those revolts. A hussy toys with a sugar daddy because she does not have the coercive power to take what she wants. Toying, we might say, is a weapon of the weak, a means of extracting money from The Man who controls money, the basic resource in a capitalist economy. Huerta, in control of the state apparatus, by contrast, had the power to manipulate Delio Moreno Cantón. Power is the matter of this work. And, the authors, in this metaphor, evince a poor understanding of it, perilously so in light of how important sexual expressions of dominance stand in the authors' account of Yucatán's "Seasons of Upheaval." Between 1911 and 1915, changing Revolutionary governments and the Yucatán oligarchy pursued politics on the Porfirian model with varying success. The game, though, was not the same. The demand for agrarian reform from Yucatán's campesinos remained, and that threat brought a check against a full revindication of henequero domination. Moreover, the Carrancista governors, Eleuterio Avila and Toribio de los Santos, came into office with a reform agenda. Affronted by the heavy handed administration of de los Santos, Yucatán's oligarchs stirred a desperate separatist movement which was put down by an army of seven thousand federales. In the aftermath, firing squads accomplished what Porfirian style political machinations and agrarian revolt could not--the overthrow of the henequero oligarchy. Summer of Discontent, Seasons of Upheaval is a methodologically sophisticated work which makes an important addition to the bridge being built across the divide that separates political history from subaltern studies. Summer of Discontent, Seasons of Upheaval is remarkable for its transparency and the ease which it allows the reader to enter the world of the henequen oligarchy.