CHAPTER 7 MESOAMERICANS IN THE NEOCOLONIAL ERA 283Most nativist movements were violently suppressed by state military mobiliza-
tion, as happened in the case of the independence movements led by Hidalgo and
Morelos. Nevertheless, some of them proved to be rather long-lasting. They expressed
in poignant terms the reality of certain regions with hidden “majorities” of Indians,
especially those living within rural communities but also many now living outside
the communities who had begun to participate in national economic and political
life as servants to the ruling creole class.
The nativist movements of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Mexico and
Central America were not just cathartic expressions of “tradition,” for they also pro-
vided a basis on which the Indians could adapt their own social and cultural tradi-
tions to the social changes being forced upon them by liberal reformers. Through
time, these movements tended to expand in territorial scope and assimilate more of
the dominant creole-mestizo culture. We have the paradox, then, of movements that
helped the Mesoamerican Indians preserve their cultural heritage, at the same time
that they united them in larger political organizations and incorporated more cre-
ole and mestizo culture than ever before.
Nativist movements as we are employing the terms here are not revolutionary
movements. Their proponents marshal local kinship and village groups behind charis-
matic leaders, in contrast to revolutionary movements in which great classes of peas-
ants or proletariats are united under the leadership of radical modernizers. We agree
with social scientists like Frantz Fanon (1968), however, that nativist movements may
prepare the way for later revolutions by creating hope, solidarity, and politicization
among exploited native peoples. As we shall see in the next chapter, such a transition
from nativist to revolutionary movements is precisely what occurred in the Mexico
and Central America during the twentieth century.
We turn now to examples of prototypical nativistic movements carried out by
the Mesoamerican Indians during the post-independence period, starting with a re-
view of the most successful nativistic movement of the Mesoamerican region, the
caste war of Yucatán, Mexico. This will be followed by a brief description of an im-
portant movement in Central America, the Nonualca rebellion of El Salvador.
The Caste War of Yucatán
In Nelson Reed’s classic study, The Caste War of Yucatán(1964), he describes condi-
tions in Yucatán during the first half of the ninteenth century that were typical of In-
dian areas during that period in Mexico and Central America. After independence,
the creole caudillosof Yucatán competed with one another for regional power, ra-
tionalizing personal conflicts as contests over liberal versus conservative ideals. The
contests particularly pitted caudillosfrom the city of Campeche against their coun-
terparts in the capital city of Mérida. Large numbers of Mayan Indians were recruited
as soldiers in the caudilloarmies, and fighting alongside the mestizos they received
on-the-job training in warfare and other creole practices.
The liberal caudillosof Yucatán began to push hard to expand plantation agri-
culture, especially the henequen industry, in the western part of the Peninsula as
well as sugar in the eastern part. Under the auspices of liberal reform, the land and