By Jesús Aguado
The beginning of the 20th century started abruptly. It was called “the time of the rabid dogs,” a time when civilians took their own lives, according to oral history. It was the time of typhus. It was also when any goods found on the street were confiscated by the authorities and the owner could later claim them. This is what San Miguel de Allende was like then—full of stories of alcohol, gunmen, escaping prisoners, fires set in the jail, and the burning of the historical archives. The strange thing is that none of these events supported the Revolution, the rebellion of native Mexicans who were ready to fight for land and “freedom.” What motivated the people of San Miguel to commit these acts of vandalism?
The issue of ejidos is not over yet
The Mexican Revolution was the armed movement begun in 1910 to end the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. It concluded officially with the new Political Constitution of the United Mexican States in 1917, the first in the world to provide social guarantees and collective labor rights. This is why September 20 is a national holiday. It marks the beginning of the struggle that later was named “Land and Freedom.” In 1910, John Kenneth Turner published his book Barbarous Mexico, in which he asked, “What is Mexico?” As early as 1909, Turner was advocating a pro-democracy revolution. By then, General Porfirio Díaz had been in power since November 28, 1876. He remained so until ousted on May 26, 1911—almost 30 years. It was a time when foreign interests were favored and the locals, particularly peasants, were used for cheap labor.
In his texts, Turner relates that he knew the true Mexico, where the laws and the Constitution were just, but were not being followed. It was, he wrote, “…a country without political freedom, without freedom of speech, without a free press, without free elections, without a judicial system, without political parties.” He concluded that it was a country “without freedom to achieve happiness.” Turner had visited and toured Mexico and had found that it was a land where there had been no elections for more than a generation, there had been no electoral struggle to unseat the presidency because the executive power governed everything with an army, and the politicians in power had a fixed price.
Porfirio Díaz is credited with great development of the country—he was the one who introduced the railroad. However, the construction and the costs of the railways fell on the lower strata of society, who never benefited from them. The railroads went toward developing capitalism, which made those already rich, richer. The Díaz government was steadily supported by Mexican aristocrats and by capital from foreign companies. It was also during this time that the haciendas had their heyday, thanks to the slave-like peons on whom they imposed endless debts through company stores. Turner pointed out that even in Yucatán the haciendas were so large they were practically small cities of 500 to 2,500 inhabitants. “The owners of these extensive haciendas were the main slave owners,” he wrote. The peons worked the land, but it did not belong to them.
In fact, the revolution started as a way to stop the reelection of President Porfirio Díaz; later it became a revolution for ownership of land. The Diaz presidency was succeeded by Francisco I. Madero, who had made the call to take up arms against the government. Díaz resigned from power on May 26, 1911 and went into exile in France. Madero was elected president, but due to disagreements he was assassinated in 1913. So far, historians have not been able to agree on the exact date of the end of the conflict, but thanks to the revolution, today there is an electoral system and great parcels of land were taken from the landowners. Ejidos were created to assure that the land belonged to whoever worked it. At least this is the way it was one hundred years ago. The issue with ejidos, however, is that the land became disjointed when it was divided, distributed, and sold many times over among friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and strangers. This prevented the development of public services in the ejidos.
Between the bland document of National Agrarian Registry, and the reluctance of the old and new owners to do things right, ejidos have remained irregular.
We have examples is in our backyard—one is Ejido de Tirado and its peripheral settlements. There is also Nuevo Pantoja, by the Bicentennial Bridge. Up until recently Nuevo Pantoja had no electricity or drinking water, and it still has no drainage, because the land is so irregular. One hundred years after the slogan “Land and Freedom,” the lands given to community groups remain without services.
In Mexico, there are almost 30,000 ejidos; 56 are in San Miguel. Nuevo Pantoja originally had 356 hectares. Part of the area was expropriated from the Araiza family by the Federal Government and handed over to the citizens of Pantoja. In 1969, Nuevo Pantoja was impacted by the inauguration and then the flooding of the Ignacio Allende Dam. Since 1950, 33 men have made requests to the Federal Government to provide them with an endowment of land. Eventually they were granted the territory between the Allende settlement, La Lejona, and La Estancia. In 1970 new settlers arrived to occupy the area that they disputed in court with Raúl Araiza (RIP). “We fought him in court, and we beat him on all counts. The land is ours. If someone expropriated it, it was the government, but he wanted the Federal Government to compensate him,” José Luís Servín, an ejidal commissariat (authority) of Nuevo Pantoja told Atencion. The neighborhood is divided by the Manuel Zavala Bypass, and while the north side has some services and improvements, the south side still has irregular water provision, only recently got electricity, and the streets are still unpaved.
Memories of a hundred years ago
The religious archives of the parish of San Miguel Arcángel are almost intact, according to historian Graciela Cruz. The General Archive of the Municipality of San Miguel de Allende began to be kept in 1870, but during the Revolution it was on the verge of disappearing. On May 18, 1911, rebels who supported Madero entered the municipal presidency building, looted, and set fire to the archives. Previously, historian Cruz had told us that the lack of documents in the archives were due to negligence and bad decisions that administrations have made in preserving the civil historical memory that now “is lost.”
The oral history of the burning of the files
María Antonieta Camargo is the daughter of José Guadalupe Camargo, and Jose is the nephew of Fidencio Camargo. In a conversation with Antonieta, she related the story her father told her several times. At the beginning of 1900 there were three brothers, Fidencio, Melesio, and Rodrigo Zamora Camargo. They all owned maguey trees on the road to Querétaro, in the valley, and they were engaged in trading mead and pulque.
According to Antonieta, the Camargos, “were armed to the teeth.” Fidencio would go down to Centro to sell the mead or pulque and “he had a habit of shooting. They fined him, but he just laughed.” Antonieta said that on one occasion he spent several days drinking in Centro, and when he fired some shots, the soldiers angered him and wanted to catch him. He went home, on his horse as always, then returned with oil and threw it at the jail door, and “they shot him in the right shoulder.” Camargo said that Fidencio entrusted himself to the Virgin of Guadalupe, and felt that when the soldiers were following him for setting the building on fire a bower began to grow around him and no one found him. Antonieta also commented that he was never tried.
The documented version
The archives contain telegrams sent from Guanajuato to the district of San Miguel Allende to confirm that peace had been reached, and asked that necessary measures be taken in case of hostilities. On June 8, 1911, a document was issued by District Chief of Government Jesús García to bring Feliciano Camargo, Manuel Ramírez, Josué Muñoz, Felipe Ramírez and María Vidal before a judge, and put them in jail. They were “accused of having had a very direct participation in the riot, burning the municipal palace, the escape of prisoners, and robberies committed in this city on May 18.”
It was all the fault of alcohol
An amparo lawsuit (a constitutional appeal), was undertaken by Paula Moya. In it, the facts narrated by the district judge are that the political leadership issued a circular to control the sale of alcoholic beverages, as “the main and perhaps only reason for the unpleasant criminal acts perpetrated by the populace to this city on May 18 was rampant drunkenness.” After issuing the circular, “an individual from the lower town was taken to jail in a nearly comatose state. When questioned, he stated that all the alcohol they had ingested was provided by Paula Moya.” During the trial, according to the document, the accused attacked the accuser, and she was given a fine of five pesos that later “because of her crying and begging” was reduced to 1.25 pesos.
This document indicates that the revolution had triumphed. “Senora Moya is one of the people who believe, in good or bad faith, or out of ignorance, that with the triumph of the past revolution, there is no longer a government, no laws, no respect, but a lot of freedom. Under that false assumption she considered that she could largely act at will by inconsiderately selling intoxicating beverages.”
The Municipal Archive is located in Plaza Primavera and is open to the general public from Monday to Friday from 9am-4pm. The person in charge does not do specific searches, and the interested party must appear in person. The files the applicants request are located, and applicants can do their own research.
