282 UNIT 2 COLONIAL MESOAMERICA
personal dignity. The court record also indicates that the law being applied by the
authorities in this case no longer made legal distinction between Indians and mes-
tizos. In fact, the Indian defender of the accused presented an elegant argument to
the effect that “moral” considerations were not relevant, only legal ones, as befitted
“[liberal] modern legislation.” It is evident, too, that some Indians were active par-
ticipants in the liberal establishment itself, including Lt. Fermín, the militia head, and
the educated Indian who acted as the victim’s legal defense.
Liberal reforms in Guatemala introduced major changes into Indian commu-
nities such as Momostenango. The Indians were being transformed in thought, lan-
guage, custom, and social position. The great majority of them had been
subordinated to the political control of creole and mestizo authorities and were
being severely exploited economically on the coffee plantations and cattle ranches
where they were forced to labor. That the impact of liberalism on the Indian com-
munities of Mexico was similar to that of Momostenango and other Central Ameri-
can communities, is illustrated by the case of Tepoztlán, Mexico, summarized in Box
7.4. (See the map in Figure 7.1 for the location of Tepoztlán.)NATIVIST MOVEMENTS
BY MESOAMERICAN INDIANS
Exploitation of the Mesoamerican Indians by the conservative, and ever more so by
the liberal rulers of Mexico and Central America, coupled with their peripheraliza-
tion by U.S. and European powers, was bound to elicit a radical response from the
millions of Mesoamerican Indians who survived into the postindependence period.
Without access to the written word, these poor and marginalized peoples were nev-
ertheless quite aware of what was happening to and around them. Employing quite
rational logic, they took advantage of “openings” in national and regional events
(such as the U.S.–Mexico war between 1846 and 1848) to mount massive and vigor-
ous movements in support of their native ethnicities and in protest against their de-
graded social condition.
Mexico and the Central American countries experienced hundreds of these re-
bellious movements on the part of the native Mesoamerican communities. The move-
ments typically addressed longstanding economic and political grievances against
the local representatives of the national powers, and they nearly always advocated
their causes by demanding religious and political autonomy as well as recognition of
their respective native ethnic identities. A few of the movements created national
panic, as when masses of Mayan Indians in Yucatán rebelled against national rule
just at the time that Mexico was losing large parts of its northern territory to the
United States (see the account to follow on the “Caste War of Yucatán”). Indians
from one community would rise up in arms against the creole and mestizo oppres-
sors, usually joined by those from other communities in the region, especially where
the Indians comprised the majority populations in their respective regions. The In-
dians frequently justified this militancy by mobilizing Mesoamerican symbols in the
name of native separatism, and for this reason the rebellions are often referred to as
“nativist” movements.