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Review of Indigenous Autocracy: Power, Race, and Resources in Porfirian Tlaxcala, Mexico, by Jaclyn Ann Sumner (2024)

Banner for Review of Indigenous Autocracy: Power, Race, and Resources in Porfirian Tlaxcala, Mexico, by Jaclyn Ann Sumner (2024)

An Indigenous person in a position of power during the Porfiriato, the period from 1876 to 1910 when General Porfirio Díaz ruled Mexico, seems almost unimaginable. But in Indigenous Autocracy: Power, Race, and Resources in Porfirian Tlaxcala, Jaclyn Sumner tells the captivating story of Próspero Cahuantzi, who governed Tlaxcala for nearly 26 years—longer than any other governor of the period. What makes Cahuantzi’s tenure unique is not only his Indigenous heritage, but the ways in which he skillfully leveraged power in a political climate steeped in racial prejudice and anti-Indigenous policies. While Porfirio Díaz’s regime was persecuting and oppressing Indigenous populations elsewhere, including pursuing brutal campaigns like the attempted extermination of the Yaqui, Cahuantzi defied the odds by wielding executive power in Tlaxcala.

Indigenous Autocracy is not a biography. However, Sumner skillfully uses Cahuantzi’s life and career to explore the complex political practices that supported Díaz’s authoritarian regime, addressing themes like race, ethnicity, liberalism, nation-building, authoritarianism, and environmental control in late 19th and early 20th-century Mexico. Through a regional focus on Tlaxcala, Sumner challenges the common portrayal of a monolithic and omnipotent Porfirian government. She illustrates how Díaz’s authority was far from uniform across Mexico and that his policies were more flexible and negotiable at the local level.

Portrait of Próspero Cahuantzi
Próspero Cahuantzi. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Sumner probes the question of how Cahuantzi maintained his power over such an extended period of time, especially given that some of his policies seemed to conflict with Díaz’s modernization plans. Although his military career and loyalty to Díaz initially solidified his position, it was Cahuantzi’s ability to strategically invoke his Indigenous identity—both personally and on behalf of Tlaxcala—that secured his continued tenure. Cahuantzi came to embody the idealized “civilized Indigenous” figure that the Porfirian regime was willing to support: an individual connected to Mexico’s pre-Hispanic past and yet aligned with the government’s goals of progress, order, and stability. In this way, Sumner argues, Cahuantzi’s carefully crafted image of indigeneity was highly selective, reinforcing anti-Indigenous sentiments against those who did not conform to this model of the “civilized” Indigenous leader. This selective indigeneity was not only politically expedient but also profoundly rhetorical; it was tailored to fit the expectations of an assimilationist state rather than reflecting a deep commitment to Indigenous practices or worldviews.

While Sumner presents Cahuantzi as a compelling figure through which to examine Porfirian policies at the local level, there are moments when she may ascribe too much influence to him. A more detailed exploration of Tlaxcala’s local government structures would have strengthened the analysis by illustrating how other officials or advisors within Cahuantzi’s administration may have influenced governance. Additionally, since indigeneity is a core theme of the book, an expanded investigation into the worldview of Tlaxcala’s Indigenous groups—including the Nahuas and Otomíes—and their usos y costumbres (customs and traditions) would have enriched our understanding of how Cahuantzi’s identity intersected with local Indigenous cultures. Sumner suggests that Cahuantzi’s knowledge of local relationships, resources, and traditions allowed him to implement policies that maintained social stability and content. But a deeper analysis of his Indigenous heritage could have illuminated how it informed his political decisions. Such an absence suggests that Cahuantzi’s indigeneity functioned more as a symbolic or rhetorical construct to advance his career, rather than a driving force behind his governance.

Cabinet meeting of Porfirio Díaz
Cabinet meeting of Porfirio Díaz. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Sumner argues as well that Díaz tolerated Cahuantzi’s leadership in Tlaxcala partly because the state’s modest size and economy posed little threat to the Porfirian modernization project. However, she later notes that in 1910, “Tlaxcala’s contribution was among the most comprehensive, even as compared to larger states” (p. 130). This increase in revenue, attributed in part to Cahuantzi’s efforts, hints at latent economic potential within Tlaxcala that perhaps went underestimated by Díaz’s central administration. Sumner leaves us to consider why Díaz, despite the era’s prevailing Social Darwinist and positivist ideologies, allowed a high-profile Indigenous governor like Cahuantzi to remain in power. This question deepens our understanding of the regime’s racial and social policies, revealing complexities often overlooked.

Book cover for Indigenous Autocracy: Power, Race, and Resources in Porfirian Tlaxcala, Mexico

I cannot emphasize enough what a pleasure it was to read Jaclyn Sumner first monograph. This work is both meticulously researched and artfully written, offering a narrative that is both intellectually rich and eminently accessible. Its thoughtful organization and clear language make it immensely rewarding for scholars but also accessible to readers beyond the academic sphere. Overall, it succeeds in its aims and makes a substantial contribution to the historiography of Mexico, Tlaxcala, and the Porfiriato, as well as scholarship on indigeneity, race, and authoritarianism in Latin America. It sheds valuable light on the complexities of Indigenous identity and political power within Mexico’s modernization project.

Raquel Torua Padilla is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a B.A. in History from the Universidad de Sonora and is currently a CONTEX Fellow. Her research focuses on the history of Indigenous peoples in the Northwest of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, with a particular emphasis on the Yaqui people. Her current projects examine Yaqui militias and their diaspora during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

A visceral turn: Dr. Zeb Tortorici and queer alterities to the archives

Banner for A visceral turn: Dr. Zeb Tortorici and queer alterities to the archives by César Iván Alvarez-Ibarra

In honor of the centennial of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, the 2022 Lozano Long Conference focuses on archives with Latin American perspectives in order to better visualize the ethical and political implications of archival practices globally. The conference was held in February 2022 and the videos of all the presentation will be available soon. Thinking archivally in a time of COVID-19 has also given us an unexpected opportunity to re-imagine the international academic conference. This Not Even Past publication joins those by other graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin. The series as a whole is designed to engage with the work of individual speakers as well as to present valuable resources that will supplement the conference’s recorded presentations. This new conference model, which will make online resources freely and permanently available, seeks to reach audiences beyond conference attendees in the hopes of decolonizing and democratizing access to the production of knowledge. The conference recordings and connected articles can be found here.

En el marco del homenaje al centenario de la Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, la Conferencia Lozano Long 2022 propició un espacio de reflexión sobre archivos latinoamericanos desde un pensamiento latinoamericano con el propósito de entender y conocer las contribuciones de la región a las prácticas archivísticas globales, así como las responsabilidades éticas y políticas que esto implica. Pensar en términos de archivística en tiempos de COVID-19 también nos brindó la imprevista oportunidad de re-imaginar la forma en la que se llevan a cabo conferencias académicas internacionales. Como parte de esta propuesta, esta publicación de Not Even Past se junta a las otras de la serie escritas por estudiantes de posgrado en la Universidad de Texas en Austin. En ellas los estudiantes resaltan el trabajo de las y los panelistas invitados a la conferencia con el objetivo de socializar el material y así descolonizar y democratizar el acceso a la producción de conocimiento. La conferencia tuvo lugar en febrero de 2022 pero todas las presentaciones, así como las grabaciones de los paneles están archivados en YouTube de forma permanente y pronto estarán disponibles las traducciones al inglés y español respectivamente. Las grabaciones de la conferencia y los artículos relacionados se pueden encontrar aquí.

…Soy ese amor que negarás para salvar tu dignidad
Soy lo prohibido…
(Roberto Cantoral, 1970)

The first time I engaged with the work of Dr. Zeb Tortorici was in 2019, at the end of a Texas fall when the idea of a worldwide emergency as COVID-19 seemed improbable, if not impossible. At the time, I was meeting with my future PhD advisor, Dr. Laura Gutierrez, at UT Austin, to explore research into queer disgust, the performance of pleasure, excess, and queer rejection to LGBTT+ hegemony in México. Dr. Gutierrez told me about a book she considered helpful for my research. The book was Sins Against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain (2018). This book would become my introduction to the work of Dr. Tortorici, his affective approach to archived documentation, and the methodological shift to queering archives in the search for possibilities for censured queer alterity.

Once I had the book in my hands, I examined it with care and attention. A medium-sized book, not too heavy, yet not insubstantial. A black and red cover showcased an image of what looked to be a winged devil speaking to various demonic creatures. Navigating the book’s pages was as fascinating as exploring the aesthetic composition of its exterior. Dr. Tortorici introduces the book by re-telling an event from my hometown, Monterrey, in 1656. Lorenzo Vidales, a local thirteen-year-old, was found engaging in bestiality with a goat, an act the civilian and religious courts punished by having Lorenzo whipped and expelled from the city of Monterrey. The death penalty served as a warning and promise for him if he ever thought of returning to the city. Even when the event belongs to the municipal archives of Monterrey and, therefore, to our national and regional historical memory, it is, in no way, part of the collective knowledge of those of us who grew up at La Sultana del Norte, as Monterrey is known. It was too repulsive, too nefarious; and simply too deviant to have a place in the official narrative of the city, a space constructed around industrial myths where the will and determination of the industrial catholic bourgeoise made the desert fertile.

State Archive of Nuevo León. Images taken by the author.

Having the opportunity to speak to Dr. Tortorici in person shortly after encountering his work doubled my excitement and curiosity about his research into excess and memory. The start of that conversation, which I hope to continue over the years, was marked by what I felt to be a meeting of kindred spirits of a sort who haunt archived excess and academic curiosity. These spirits surely welcome gracious archival accidents. So are the questions and conceptual possibilities that archival accidents allow. What I found most valuable, however, as I venture into my own research on the possibilities of excess in performance art in Monterrey, were the questions of embodied viscerality and excess, and its trans-temporal archival presence.

Dr. Tortorici’s research has a particular connection to my own work on the visceral and excess and to my analysis of queer possibilities in the face of hegemonic normalcy. For context, two special issues of A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (to which Dr. Tortorici contributed) give theoretical weight to embodied and archival vicerality by defining it as “a phenomenological index for the logics of desire, consumption, disgust, health, disease, belonging, and displacement that are implicit in colonial and postcolonial relations.”[1] Tortorici’s contribution adopts a microhistorical lens to show how vicerality can structure and baffle archival impulses. Incidents of necrophilia, fellatio, masturbation, and erotic religious visions from colonial Mexican archives reveal the layered and complex “gut feelings” of historical actors – including the archivists and historians who registered these events.[2] In short, although Dr. Tortorici’s work covers an earlier period than my scholarly interests, I was eager to engage in dialogue with him—especially when it comes time to sort out affective approaches that queer the archives and confront the excessive elements that have been intentionally overlooked.

Let me zoom out briefly from my first reading of Sins Against Nature and my exciting first conversation with Dr. Tortorici about our shared research interests, to offer a brief overview of his research trajectory. From there, we can begin to explore how his understanding and work with the archives of “No” are opening up archival possibilities for radical alterities to institutional respectability. By archives of “No”, I refer to that which is too excessive to be archived, or even remembered by institutions; therefore rejected on a “anti” archive category, a “No” category .

Manuscript text of a sodomy trial in Monterrey
Archivo Historico Monterrey / Causas Criminales Vol 10 B Exp 958 / 1704 / Contra Lorenzo Aspitia por haber cometido el pecado Nefando.
Manuscript text of a sodomy trial in Monterrey
Archivo Historico Monterrey /Causas Criminales Vol 26 Exp 465 / 1786 / Contra Martin de los Reyes por delito que se le imputa del pecado Nefando.

Dr. Tortorici is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literature at New York University. His research interests center around queer colonial history and archives in Latin America, with particular attention to pornography, dissident sexualities, pleasure, desire, and censorship. In addition to several prestigious fellowships and visiting professorships, Dr. Tortorici also has a remarkable publication record. Sins Against Nature won the John Boswell Award from the Committee on LGBT History and the Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize. Dr. Tortorici’s work recognizes the value of intellectual community building for advancing valuable scholarly projects. This includes his co-editing different volumes on Ethno-Pornography, Centering Animals in History, Trans*historicities, and Medical reproductive knowledge in 18th-century Latin America.

Dr. Tortorici’s work in many ways represents a navigation of the archives of the “No.” As a historian of the “No”, his focus and methodology have centered on looking for different moments of non-history, non-citizens, and undesirable non-humans.[3] He hopes to guide academic curiosity toward that which has been historically silenced and those who have been double censured by the creators and the user-researchers of archives. A methodological turn toward the “No” should not be understood within the limits of orthodox archival order and logic but rather as queer interruptions to academic normalcy. His approach to queering the archives is not reserved solely for diverse expressions of gender and sexuality. The implications of his questions around archival materials productively open broader alterities to the colonial order, which, in turn, make the “nefarious” episodes of the “no” histories he reconstructs transcendental.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, “pleasure,” despite the positive affect it connotes, nevertheless overlaps with the realm of the “No.” I’m fascinated by Dr. Tortorici’s work on pleasure for presenting a platform to speak of something that has been purposefully ignored, surveilled, and exoticized, and as a response to imposed contemporary archival respectability. Dr. Tortorici’s research opens a space for queer pleasure, embodied desires, and the erotic. His efforts are even more admirable precisely because they must work against the structural limits imposed by institutions holding archival traces of these pleasurable moments.

Book cover Sins Against Nature
Book cover Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America

The good news is that visceral rejections of queer pleasure hold the key that can free over-silenced stories. Queer embodied conversations with archived pasts must be understood primarily as that: conversations. Dr. Tortorici leads us towards these conversations, which must necessarily turn towards careful coded dialogues that those queering archival research can affectively understand. These embodied visceral conversations inherently involve provocations, consumptions, and reactions. In this sense, Dr. Tortorici reveals how queering colonial archives means showing how archives hold and censure stories of consumption that have provoked disgust within those who created the archive. These visceral tensions open a “beyond time” affective encounter with those who study and translate queer codes of the archive and engage in visceral dialogues with the present, past, and future. Dr. Tortorici is careful to point out the need for accurate translations of queer viscerality. The provocation censured, persecuted, and archived during the colonial period does not have the same affective meaning for contemporary audiences. These conversations, therefore, are very much in the translation.

I keep returning to a term Dr. Tortorici brought into our dialogue: imagination. In order to affectively navigate and queer the archives there is a need for radical imagination. Radical imaginaries permit deeper explorations of the “what if?” These historical possibilities, in turn, contribute to queer contemporary life beyond utopia. In this sense, Dr. Tortorici’s radical imaginaries regarding the archive contribute to a greater genealogy of academic shifts toward radical archival work. I am thinking here of Black feminist scholars such as Saidiya Hartman, Tina Campt, and Riley Snorton, who have opened up radical affective possibilities for queer archives of color.

Dr. Tortorici was featured in the panel “Histories of Collecting and Collecting Stories” for the 2022 Lozano Long Conference, titled “Archiving Objects of Knowledge with Latin American Perspectives.” It is my sincere hope that this introduction may help situate his work as it continues to expand discussions of radical queer archival alterities.

Cuir norteño from Monterrey (México), member of the House of Majesty. PhD student at the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies. Currently, he’s a Student Resident at CIESAS Noreste (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social). He is interested in the possibilities for cuir radical futurity-building via excess, cuir rejection, and alternatives to hegemonic LGBTT+ respectability. He is the father of Carmela, a calico cat.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

[1] Sharon P. Holland, Marcia Ochoa, Kyla Wazana Tompkins; On the Visceral. GLQ 1 October 2014; 20 (4): 391–406. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2721339

[2] Zeb Tortorici; Visceral Archives of the Body: Consuming the Dead, Digesting the Divine. GLQ 1 October 2014; 20 (4): 407–437. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2721375

[3] For the history of the “no,” I am referring here to the work of “unthinkable” histories like those examined by Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1995) Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History.

Bibliography

Collections, F. L. (2017). Fales Video Archive . Obtenido de Sex in the Archives: Seeking Sex, Procuring Porn: https://vimeopro.com/nyutv/fales-library/video/208568051

Tortorici, Z. (2014). Visceral Archives of the Body: Consuming the Dead, Digesting the Divine. GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 20(4), 407-437.

Tortorici, Z. (2018). Sins Against Nature: Sex & Archives in Colonial News Spain. Duke University Press.

University, N. Y. (s.f.). Zeb Tortorici. Obtenido de https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/zeb-joseph-tortorici.html

NEP’s Archive Chronicles: Procesados e interrogados. Encontrando las voces de los Yaqui en los archivos judiciales de Sonora

Banner for Encontrando las voces de los Yaqui

NEP’S Archive Chronicles explora el papel que desempeñan los archivos en la investigación histórica, ofreciendo una visión del proceso de realización del trabajo archivístico y de investigación. Cada entrega ofrecerá una perspectiva única de los tesoros y retos que los investigadores encuentran en los archivos de todo el mundo. NEP’s Archive Chronicles pretende ser tanto una guía práctica como un espacio de reflexión, en el que se expongan las experiencias de los colaboradores con la investigación archivística. En esta pieza, Raquel Torúa Padilla escribe de su experiencia encontrando las voces de los Yaqui a través de los archivos judiciales de Sonora.

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En mi búsqueda por entender la historia de los pueblos indígenas de Sonora, me he enfrentado a constantes desafíos para acceder a fuentes que reflejen auténticamente sus experiencias y perspectivas. Los registros históricos escritos por las poblaciones indígenas en el noroeste de México son escasos y difíciles de encontrar, particularmente aquellos anteriores al siglo XX. Para ese periodo, la mayoría de los individuos indígenas eran analfabetas, no hablaban el idioma de los colonizadores y carecían de recursos y medios para documentar sus pensamientos y sentimientos. Como resultado, nuestra comprensión de la historia indígena depende en gran medida de relatos escritos por personajes no indígenas, como misioneros, exploradores, figuras políticas o militares. Aunque en ocasiones podemos tropezar con valiosos documentos escritos por los propios nativos, como cartas de personas letradas, estos hallazgos tienden a ser excepcionalmente raros. 

Me he interesado particularmente en la historia del pueblo Yoeme, mayormente conocido como Yaqui. Los yaquis conforman uno de los grupos indígenas más numerosos de lo que ahora se conoce como el estado de Sonora, en el noroeste de México. A lo largo de los siglos, han tenido que enfrentarse a diferentes autoridades y gobiernos que han buscado despojarlos de sus tierras, autonomía e identidad. A pesar de los esfuerzos por exterminarlos durante el Porfiriato (1876 – 1911), los yaquis persisten y resisten hasta el día de hoy.

Loreto Villa, Juan Maldonado, Hilario Amarillas, interprete yaqui. Ortiz, Sonora. Fuente: Memórica

Como una solución al problema sobre las fuentes históricas, recientemente he recurrido a los archivos judiciales como una valiosa fuente alternativa para acceder a los testimonios indígenas. Hermosillo, la capital del estado de Sonora en el noroeste de México, alberga dos archivos públicos que contienen documentos jurídicos: el Archivo General del Poder Judicial del Estado de Sonora y el Archivo de la Casa de la Cultura Jurídica de la Suprema Corte de Justicia. Ambos archivos dividen sus colecciones en dos categorías: el archivo histórico, que contiene documentos creados antes de 1950, y el archivo de concentración, que incluye documentos producidos después de 1950.[1] Ambos fueron creados en el siglo XIX y se mantienen y financian hoy en día a través de fondos asignados por el gobierno estatal y el gobierno federal, respectivamente. 

En los últimos años, me he dedicado a buscar en archivos históricos las voces del pueblo yaqui, especialmente del período conocido como la Guerra secular del Yaqui. Esta violenta etapa inició en 1824 bajo el liderazgo de Juan Banderas, un líder yaqui que se alzó contra el gobierno mexicano para defender su autonomía. El conflicto se agravó tras los proyectos liberales que buscaban privatizar las tierras comunales indígenas y, sobre todo, durante el Porfiriato, cuando se convirtió en una guerra de exterminio. Aunque apenas sobrevivieron a esos años, los yaquis continuaron su rebelión contra el gobierno hasta la década de 1930, cuando finalmente se rindieron tras ser ferozmente debilitados por las autoridades revolucionarias.

Aunque el contenido de ambos repositorios comparte similitudes, también hay diferencias notables emanadas de sus diferentes funciones y objetivos. Estas variaciones se manifiestan no solo en su contenido, sino también en la preservación, catalogación y facilidad de acceso a los documentos históricos. En este artículo, presento brevemente la historia de estos archivos y comparto mi experiencia de hacer investigación en ellos, y los resultados que podemos obtener.

Grupo de indios yaqui. Ortiz, Sonora. Fuente: Memórica

Pero antes de entrar a los archivos, es necesario que explique cómo funciona el sistema judicial en México y cómo el expediente de un caso particular puede terminar en un archivo u otro. Desde la Constitución de 1824 y la creación de los Códigos Penales, los delitos en México se han clasificado como de fuero común o de fuero federal. Los casos de derecho común se procesan en los tribunales locales o estatales, mientras que los delitos de derecho federal van a los juzgados de distrito. Si una persona acusada (por cualquier tipo de delito) siente que ha sido sentenciada de manera injusta, tiene dos opciones a su disposición. Primero, pueden presentar una apelación para una revisión de la sentencia en una segunda instancia. Si esto no tiene éxito, pueden buscar ampararse ante la ley, lo cual se lleva a cabo en tribunales colegiados o, si es necesario, en la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación.[2] Los delitos de fuero común son aquellos que afectan directamente a las personas, como el abigeato, el estupro, el robo, o infligir lesiones. Los expedientes de esos delitos (y de sus apelaciones, si se promovieron) se pueden encontrar en el Archivo General del Poder Judicial del Estado de Sonora (AGPJ). Los delitos de fuero federal, por otro lado, se definen como aquellos “que afectan el bienestar, la economía, el patrimonio y la seguridad de la nación”, como la sedición, el contrabando o delitos de inmigración.[3] La documentación relacionada con los delitos federales, así como cualquier proceso de amparo, se puede encontrar en el Archivo de la Casa de la Cultura Jurídica de la Suprema Corte de Justicia (ACCJ). 

Columna de la antigua penitenciaría estatal.
Antigua penitenciaría estatal. Edificio construido en su mayor parte por yaquis, que también serían encarcelados allí. Fotos tomadas por la autora.
Armazón y escalera de la antigua penitenciaría estatal.
Detalle de la Penitenciaría Estatal.
Fotos tomadas por la autora


El archivo del Poder Judicial


El AGPJ, como todos los archivos, tiene su propia historia. Desde 1833, cuando el Estado de Occidente se dividió en Sonora y Sinaloa y se estableció la primera Constitución local en el estado, el decreto número 13 garantizó la permanencia de los Poderes Supremos, incluido el Supremo Tribunal de Justicia, en Hermosillo, junto con sus respectivos archivos. Más de un siglo después, en 1957, un nuevo decreto estableció un archivo especializado bajo la jurisdicción del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia para organizar y salvaguardar la documentación exclusiva del Poder Judicial del estado. La ley más reciente, de 1996, designó al AGPJ como un órgano auxiliar del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia, con el objetivo de profesionalizar y agilizar las operaciones del poder judicial.[4] Sin embargo los esfuerzos para identificar, catalogar y organizar la documentación no se han completado por cuestiones administrativas y de recursos.

Durante muchos años, la documentación de este archivo se mantuvo resguardada en el Archivo General del Estado de Sonora (AGHES), en la calle Garmendia, en el Centro Histórico de Hermosillo. Desde el año 2000, el archivo se trasladó a un nuevo edificio justo al lado de la Prisión de Hermosillo, en el Blvd. de los Ganaderos. El interior del archivo es todo lo que podrías esperar de un edificio burocrático, y aún peor, de uno judicial. La falta de ventanas, el espacio reducido y la decoración minimalista y utilitaria de la sala de consulta te invitan a ponerte en el lugar de las personas encarceladas cuyos expedientes encuentras frente a ti. Afortunadamente, puedes encontrar brillo y calidez en los archivistas, historiadores, y empleados del AGPJ.

Indios yaquis, alistados en el ejército mexicano, transportados en vagones de carga
México – Sonora, indios yaquis, alistados en el ejército mexicano, transportados en vagones de carga. Fuente: Library of Congress

Para tener éxito en la consulta de este archivo, es esencial establecer buenas relaciones con los archivistas, pues la consulta de la documentación presenta un desafío importante: no hay un catálogo ni una guía de referencia. Así que, o llegas al archivo ya con las referencias anotadas que viste citadas en el trabajo de alguien más (y a veces, incluso en ese caso, han sido modificadas), o es tu día de suerte y lo que buscas ya ha sido identificado por los archivistas. Dicho esto, debo reconocer los esfuerzos recientes del Poder Judicial del estado de Sonora por contratar historiadores y archivistas para trabajar en la preservación y catalogación de los 3036 legajos.

Yo llegué con una lista de referencias de los documentos que quería consultar, porque un amigo mío había estado ya consultando ahí y me guió hacía un expediente interesante. Después de llenar un formulario especificando la referencia, me solicitaron una identificación con foto y a continuación fueron a buscar los documentos. Me pidieron que usara guantes de látex, una mascarilla y que manejara los documentos con cuidado. Desafortunadamente, después de horas de pasar una página tras otra, no pude encontrar el caso que estaba buscando. Pero como siempre ocurre con el trabajo de archivo, encontré muchos otros documentos interesantes y relevantes para mi tema de investigación.

Archivo judicial federal de Sonora

Título de Casa de la Cultura Jurídica del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia
Casa de la Cultura Jurídica del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia. Fotografía de la autora.

Visitar la Casa de la Cultura Jurídica es una experiencia diferente. El edificio del archivo, antes una vivienda, fue construido en 1945 y está ubicado en la colonia Casa Blanca en Hermosillo, frente al icónico Parque Madero. En 1998, la Suprema Corte de Justicia adquirió la propiedad para utilizarla como la Casa de la Cultura Jurídica en Hermosillo, que es mucho más que solo un archivo. Nombrada en honor al “Ministro José María Ortiz Tirado,” esta Casa es una de las 36 en todo el país que sirve como un espacio público para “promover la cultura jurídica, favorecer el acceso a la justicia y el fortalecimiento del Estado de Derecho.”[5]

Se requiere que los visitantes firmen una carta comprometiéndose al uso responsable de los materiales documentales y a compartir cualquier publicación con el Archivo. Para solicitar archivos específicos, los visitantes deben proporcionar detalles como el fondo (“Amparo” o “Penal”), el año, la referencia numérica, y los nombres de las personas procesadas. Curiosamente, a pesar de ser necesario presentar esta información para la consulta, el archivo no tiene un catálogo propio. 

Para la colección Amparo, tuve que visitar primero la biblioteca de la División de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad de Sonora para revisar dos catálogos. Estos fueron producidos por Hans Ildefonso Leyva Meneses (que cubrió los años de 1900-1917) y Mayel Barboza Enciso Ulloa (de 1918-1928) como parte de los requisitos para obtener su título de licenciatura.[6] Afortunadamente, un catálogo digital completo de la colección Penal, aunque escrito de forma anónima, ha estado circulando entre los historiadores locales durante años (¡un agradecimiento al autor!). 

La sala de consulta es completamente distinta a la del archvio estatal. Está bien equipada, es espaciosa y cómoda, y ofrece a los investigadores una vista a un jardín con árboles y cactus, así como a una hermosa familia de felina (entendible, pueso que las instituciones federales suelen tener más recursos). En este archivo también se requiere usar guantes de látex y una mascarilla. Desafortunadamente, debido a las medidas de protección de identidad pues los fallecidos también tienen derecho a la privacidad, no se permite fotografiar los documentos. Como resultado, una consulta exhaustiva puede llevar tiempo y esfuerzo, pero vale la pena.

Gatos en el archivo rodeados de plantas.
Fotos tomadas por la autora
Gatos en el archivo rodeados de plantas.
Fotos tomadas por la autora

Los documentos y las voces que podemos encontrar


Respecto a los documentos, existen parecidos en cuanto a formato, secuencia, propósito y contenido. La extensión de cada expediente dependerá de la gravedad del delito, el número de personas involucradas, la complejidad de la investigación y el volumen de pruebas. El vocabulario y la estructura de los documentos de finales del siglo diecinueve son rígidos y formales, y muestran la ideología positivista de la época. La estructura del documento típicamente consiste en tres partes principales: descripción del crimen y de los involucrados, testimonios y pruebas, y la sentencia o veredicto. Aunque analizar todo el caso puede arrojar luz sobre las sutilezas del sistema judicial, generalmente suelo concentrarme en analizar las declaraciones y relatos, porque es aquí donde comienzas a encontrar las voces de los indígenas. Afortunadamente, debido a la burocracia del sistema judicial, los documentos incluyen la información biográfica de los involucrados, como nombre, edad, estado civil, ocupación y lugar de nacimiento y residencia, seguida de descripciones físicas de los acusados. Además de lo anterior, los documentos también suelen indicar si alguno de los involucrados era una persona indígena. Sin embargo, las autoridades no solían ser explícitos en cuanto al grupo étnico. Es decir, solo sabemos que la persona era indígena.

Para determinar si el individuo en cuestión pertenecia a la etnia yaqui, los indicadores más importante suelen ser el nombre y apellido—como Bacasegua, Buitimea o Matus, apellidos comunes dentro de la etnia. Además de esto, la ubicación de los eventos puede ser un indicador importante, particularmente si se mencionan locaciones dentro o cerca al territorio yaqui, como Guaymas, Vicam o Potam. Si bien este método es efectivo, es importante señalar algunos posibles problemas. En primer lugar, es fácil confundir erróneamente a los yaquis y a los mayos (otro grupo indígena de Sonora) debido a sus similitudes culturales y lingüísticas. Asimismo, a lo largo del tiempo, los yaquis han mostrado una movilidad significativa por todo el estado e incluso más allá de las fronteras políticas, por lo que no era raro encontrarlos desde Álamos hasta Cananea.

Mapa de Sonora - Sinaloa.
Lizars Mexico & Guatimala 1831 UTA (Detail Sonora Sinaloa). Fuente: Wikimedia Commons

Aunque los expedientes judiciales son una importante fuente histórica para el estudio de los pueblos indígenas, es importante aclarar que sus prespectivas y cosmovisiones no están intactas en el archivo. Para esto, es crucial entender cómo se recogieron sus testimonios durante el proceso. Por lo general, en los procedimientos regulares, respondían a preguntas específicas hechas por las autoridades, en lugar de poder testificar de manera espontánea y libre. Por otro lado, si el individuo o individuos buscaban promover un amparo, se presentaba su testimonio por escrito ante la Suprema Corte. También es importante enfatizar que las declaraciones en los documentos de procedimiento civil o penal no son transcripciones literales. En cambio, fueron transcritas por los escribanos en un formato abreviado y pulido a través de una narración indirecta.

En este sentido, podríamos pensar que los expedientes de amparo serían un testimonio menos manipulado, ya que eran los mismos afectados quienes presentaban el testimonio. Sin embargo, considerando el contexto histórico y los casos de amparo que he consultado, los yaquis que promovían el amparo rara vez estaban alfabetizados. En muchas ocasiones, otras partes interesadas asistieron en el caso, a menudo con intereses personales en juego. Por lo tanto, además de los testimonios judiciales orales y escritos, se pueden encontrar esporádicamente otros tipos de evidencia, como cartas, recibos, contratos e incluso evidencia material. Pero si lo que tenemos a nuestra disposición es un testimonio de los indígenas filtrado y manipulado por terceros ¿cómo podemos encontrar sus voces y cosmovisiones? Tener una comprensión profunda del contexto histórico y de cómo se llevó a cabo el proceso judicial sugiere el mejor punto de partida.

Analizar cuidadosamente las declaraciones, contrastarlas y compararlas con otras fuentes (tanto primarias como secundarias) nos permite identificar posibles sesgos, malentendidos, distorsiones o supresiones. Interpretar las fuentes a partir de enfoque indígena también puede ayudarnos a obtener información sobre el significado, el vocabulario, las sutilezas, las implicaciones e incluso los silencios de los testimonios. Con un análisis exhaustivo, los documentos judiciales pueden ofrecernos un vistazo, y a veces incluso más, de las perspectivas, valores y cosmovisiones de los yaquis. Estos archivos son una ventana para observar cómo los yaquis navegaron e interactuaron con el sistema legal mexicano en un momento en que el gobierno los perseguía y buscaba exterminarlos, y cómo fueron representados o mal representados en los procesos judiciales.

Los documentos judiciales muestran cómo los yaquis fueron blanco no solo de las depredaciones del gobierno, sino también de la población sonorense, y cómo también fueron perpetradores de crímenes de fuero común y federal durante el periodo de guerra. Estos expedientes proporcionan detalles y testimonios sobre revueltas, “actividades sediciosas” y la desobediencia en general al gobierno, mientras nos ofrecen también un vistazo a sus vidas cotidianas y las distintas maneras de resistir a la guerra.

Las colecciones del Archivo del Poder Judicial del estado de Sonora y del Archivo de la Casa de la Cultura Jurídica ofrecen valiosas perspectivas sobre la historia del pueblo yaqui en el siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX. Espero que mi experiencia, enfoque y metodología puedan ser un modelo para aquellos interesados en profundizar en documentos legales en otras partes de México, ya que cada entidad federal tiene sus propias sucursales de estos archivos. A pesar de los desafíos que cada uno de ellos presenta, estos arcervos son una fuente rica y a menudo infrautilizada de información para los historiadores que investigan no solo sobre asuntos legales, sino también sobre la historia más amplia de Sonora y sus poblaciones indígena y no indígena.  

Quiero expresar un agradecimiento especial a todos los archivistas del Archivo del Poder Judicial del Estado de Sonora, en particular a Bennya Román Flores, cuya generosidad y dedicación han sido fundamentales para la realización de este trabajo. También agradezco a los colaboradores de la Casa de la Cultura Jurídica en Hermosillo, en especial a Adrián Pérez, por su paciencia y constante apoyo mientras consultaba múltiples cajas de documentos.

Raquel Torua Padilla es doctoranda en el Departamento de Historia de la Universidad de Texas en Austin. Es licenciada en Historia por la Universidad de Sonora y actualmente es becaria de CONTEX. Su investigación se centra en la historia de los pueblos indígenas en el noroeste de México y el suroeste de EE.UU., con especial énfasis en el pueblo yaqui. Sus proyectos actuales examinan las milicias yaquis y su diáspora durante los siglos XIX y XX.

Los puntos de vista y opiniones expresados en este artículo o vídeo son los de su(s) autor(es) o presentador(es) y no reflejan necesariamente la política o los puntos de vista de los editores de Not Even Past, el Departamento de Historia de la Universidad de Texas, la Universidad de Texas en Austin o la Junta de Regentes del Sistema de la Universidad de Texas. Not Even Past es una revista de historia pública en línea y no una revista académica revisada por pares. Aunque nos esforzamos por garantizar que la información de los artículos procede de fuentes fidedignas, Not Even Past no se hace responsable de errores u omisiones.

[1] Los procedimientos para consultar el archivo de concentración son distintos. En el presente, sólo me dedicaré a explicar lo referente al archivo histórico.

[2] García Ramírez, Sergio. 1998. Panorama del derecho penal mexicano. Derecho penal. México: UNAM, McGraw-Hill.

[3] Pérez Moreno Colmenero, Silvia. 2001. Valores para la democracia. Delitos e infracciones administrativas. México: Instituto Nacional para la Educación de los Adultos. 09/13/2024 http://www.oas.org/udse/cd_educacion/cd/Materiales_conevyt/VPLD/delitos.PDF

[4] “Archivo General del Poder Judicial del Estado”. 09/13/2024: https://www.stjsonora.gob.mx/ArchivoPJE/#:~:text=Dentro%20de%20nuestros%20archivos%20se,Estado%20de%20Sonora%20y%20Sinaloa.

[5] “Casa de la Cultura Jurídica en Hermosillo. Ministro José María Ortiz Tirado”. 09/13/2024: https://www.sitios.scjn.gob.mx/casascultura/casas-cultura-juridica/hermosillo-sonora

[6] Leyva Meneses, Hans Ildefonso. 2004. Catálogo para las fuentes documentales de la Casa de la Cultura Jurídica en el estado de Sonora, serie juicios de amparo, 1900-1917. Tesis de licenciatura. Hermosillo: Universidad de Sonora. And Barboza Enciso Ulloa, Mayel. 2004.  Catálogo del archivo de la Casa de la Cultura Jurídica en el Estado de Sonora del Poder Judicial de la Federación, sección juzgado quinto de distrito del quinto circuito, serie juicios de amparo, 1918-1928. Tesis de licenciatura. Hermosillo: Universidad de Sonora

NEP’s Archive Chronicles: Prosecuted and interrogated. Finding the voices of the Yaqui in the judicial archives of Sonora

Banner for Prosecuted and interrogated. Finding the voices of the Yaqui in the judicial archives of Sonora

NEP’S Archive Chronicles explores the role archives play in historical research, offering insight into the process of conducting archival work and research. Each installment will offer a unique perspective on the treasures and challenges researchers encounter in archives around the world. NEP’s Archive Chronicles is intended to be both a practical guide and a space for reflection, showcasing contributors’ experiences with archival research. This installment explores the complexities of finding the voices of the Yaqui people in the archives of Sonora.

Nota: Haz click aquí para acceder a la versión en español.
Note: Click here to access Spanish version.

In my scholarly quest to understand the history of Indigenous peoples, I have confronted persistent challenges in accessing sources that authentically reflect their experiences and perspectives. These sources are often rare, obscure, and challenging to interpret. The historical records written and left by the Indigenous populations in northwestern Mexico are scant, particularly those predating the twentieth-century. Most Indigenous individuals were not literate, lacked knowledge of the colonizers’ language, and had limited means to document their thoughts and feelings. As a result, our understanding of Indigenous history relies heavily on accounts written by outsiders such as missionaries, explorers, political figures, and military personnel. While we may occasionally stumble upon valuable firsthand documents, such as letters from literate individuals, these discoveries are exceptionally rare.

I have been particularly interested in the history of the Yoemem or Yaquis. They are one of the largest Indigenous groups in what is now known as the state of Sonora, in northwest Mexico. Over the past centuries, they have had to confront different governments that have tried to dispossess them of their lands, autonomy, and identity. Despite constant efforts to subdue them and even exterminate them, they persist and resist to this day.  

Yaqui men: Loreto Villa, Juan Maldonado, Hilario Amarillas, interprete yaqui.
Loreto Villa, Juan Maldonado, Hilario Amarillas, interprete yaqui. Ortiz, Sonora. Fuente: Memórica

To address the challenge of finding their voices in the primary documents, recently I have turned to judicial archives as a valuable alternative source for accessing Indigenous testimonies. Hermosillo, the capital city of Sonora in northwest Mexico, is home to two public archives that house juridical documents: the General Archive of the Judicial Branch of the State of Sonora (Archivo General del Poder Judicial del Estado de Sonora) and the Archive of the House of Legal Culture of the Supreme Court of Justice (Archivo de la Casa de la Cultura Jurídica). Both archives divide their collections into two categories: the historical, which contains documents created prior to 1950, and the concentration collection, which includes documents produced after 1950.[1] The archives were created in the nineteenth-century and are maintained and funded today through funds allocated by the state government, and the federal government, respectively.

Over the past few years, I have extensively researched both historical archives in pursuit of the voices of the Yaqui people, especially from the Yaqui War period. This violent era started in 1824 under the leadership of Juan Banderas, a Yaqui chief who upraised against the Mexican government to defend their autonomy. The conflict only worsened after the Liberal projects that sought to privatize indigenous communal lands and, especially, during the Porfiriato period, when it turned into an extermination war. Although they barely survived those years, the Yaquis continued revolting against the government until the 1930s when they finally surrendered after being ferociously attacked by the revolutionary authorities.

While the content of both repositories shares similarities, there are also notable differences arising from different duties and objectives, both historical and current day. These variances manifest not only in their content but also in the preservation, cataloging, and accessibility of the historical documents. In this article, I introduce the history of these archives, the experience of researching there, and what we can discover.

Group of Yaqui men
Grupo de indios yaqui. Ortiz, Sonora. Fuente: Memórica

Before I do that, let me briefly explain how the judicial system works in Mexico and how a case’s file might end up in one archive or the other, Since the 1824 Constitution and the creation of Penal Codes,[2] crimes in Mexico have been classified as common law (fuero común) or federal law (fuero federal). Common law cases are processed in state courts, while federal law crimes go to district courts (juzgados de distrito). If an accused individual (of either common or federal law crimes) feels they were unfairly sentenced, they have two options at their disposal. First, they can file an appeal for a second instance review. If this is unsuccessful, they can seek recourse through the “amparo” or legal protection process, which is carried out in collegiate courts or, if necessary, in the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación).[3]

Common law crimes are those that directly affect individuals, such as cattle rustling, rape, robbery, or inflicting injuries. The files of those crimes (and of their appeals, if promoted) can be found at the General Archive of the Judicial Branch of the State of Sonora (AGPJ). Federal law crimes, on the other hand, defined as those “that affect the well-being, economy, heritage, and security of the nation”, such as sedition, smuggling, or immigration violations.[4] Documentation related to federal law crimes, as well as any amparo processes, canbe found at the Archive of the House of Legal Culture of the Supreme Court of Justice (ACCJ).

Column of former state penitentiary.
Former state penitentiary. Building built mostly by Yaquis, who would also be imprisoned there. Pictures taken by author.
Frame and staircase of former state penitentiary.
Detail of State Penitentiary.
Pictures taken by author.

The state’s judicial archive

The AGPJ, like all archives, has its own history. Since 1833, when the Mexican State of Occidente (Estado de Occidente) split into Sonora and Sinaloa and the first local Constitution was established in the state, decree number 13 ensured the permanence of the Supreme Powers, including the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, in Hermosillo, along with their respective archives. Over a century later, in 1957, a new decree established a dedicated archive under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice to organize and safeguard documentation exclusive to the Judicial Branch of the state. The most recent law affecting this archive, dated 1996, designated the AGPJ as an auxiliary body of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, aiming to professionalize and streamline the judicial branch’s operations.[5] However, because of its new nature and likely limited resources, efforts to identify, catalog, and organize the documentation have not been completed.

For many years, the documentation of this archive was kept in the General Archive of the State of Sonora (AGHES), on Garmendia Street in the Historic Center of Hermosillo. However, since 2000, the archive relocated to a new building right next to the Hermosillo Prison, on Blvd. de los Ganaderos. The interior of the archive is everything you would expect from a bureaucratic building, and even worse, a judicial one. The lack of windows, the small space, and the minimalist and utilitarian decoration of the consultation room invite you to put yourself in the shoes of the imprisoned individuals whose files you find in front of you. Fortunately, you can find brightness and warmth in the archivists and employees of the AGPJ.

Yaqui Indians, enlisted in the Mexican Army, being transported by box cars.
Mexico – Sonora, Yaqui Indians, enlisted in the Mexican Army, being transported by box cars. Source: Library of Congress

To consult this archive, it is essential to establish good relations with the archivists since consulting the documentation presents a unique challenge as there is no catalog or reference guide. So, you either already know the references to the files you want to consult because you saw them cited in someone else’s work (and sometimes even then, they have been changed), or it is your lucky day and what you are looking for has already been identified by the archivists. This said, I must recognize recent efforts by Sonora’s Judiciary Branch to hire historians and archivists to work on the preservation and cataloging of the 3036 files (legajos).

I actually knew (or thought I knew) the references to the files I wanted to consult because a friend of mine had been to the archive before and directed me to a very interesting case. After filling out a form specifying the reference, the archivists asked me for a photo ID and went to get the files for me. They asked me to wear latex gloves, a face mask, and to handle the documents carefully. Unfortunately, after hours of turning one page after another, I was not able to locate case I was looking for. But as is always the case with archival work, I found many other interesting and pertaining documents.

Sonora’s federal judicial archive

House of Legal Culture of the Supreme Court of Justice banner
House of Legal Culture of the Supreme Court of Justice. Picture by author.

Visiting the House of Legal Culture of the Supreme Court of Justice is a different experience. The archive is housed in a building constructed in 1945 (it was a literal house before), located in the Razo neighborhood in Hermosillo, across from the iconic Madero Park. In 1998, the Supreme Court acquired the property to establish the House of Legal Culture in Hermosillo which is much more than just an archive. Named after “Minister José María Ortiz Tirado,” this House is one of 36 across the country that serves as a public venue “to promote legal culture, facilitate access to justice, and reinforce the Rule of Law (Estado de Derecho).”[6]

Visitors are required to sign a letter pledging responsible use of the documentary materials and a commitment to share any publications with the Archive. To request specific files, visitors must provide details such as the collection (“Amparo” or “Penal”), the year, file number, and the names of the processed individuals. But –strikingly—they ask for all of these reference details when they do not have a catalog of their own.

For the Amparo collection, I had to visit the library at the University of Sonora to check out their catalogs for the archive. They were produced by Hans Ildefonso Leyva Meneses (covering 1900-1917) and Mayel Barboza Enciso Ulloa (1918-1928) as part of their bachelor’s degree requirements.[7] Fortunately, a complete digital catalog for the Penal collection, although authored anonymously, has been in circulation among local historians for years now (shout out to the unknown author!).

The consultation room is nothing like the aforementioned archive. It is well-equipped, spacious, and comfortable, and offers the researchers a view of the garden trees and cacti, as well as a beautiful feline family (federal institutions tend to have bigger budgets). Here, too, you are required to wear latex gloves and a face mask. And, unfortunately, due to identity protection measures (the dead have a right to privacy too), photographing the documents is not allowed in this archive. As a result, thorough consultation can be time-consuming, but worth it.

Cats in the archive surrounded by plants.
Cats in the archive surrounded by plants.

The documents and the “voices” we can find.

Due to the similar nature of the documents found in these two archives, they exhibit clear similarities in format, sequence, purpose, and content. The length of the file will depend on the severity of the crime, the number of individuals involved, the complexity of the investigation, and the volume of evidence. The vocabulary and structure of the documents are rigid, and formal, and showcase the positivist ideology of the time.

The structure of the document typically consists of three main parts: a description of the crime and those involved; testimonies and evidence; and the sentence or verdict.[1] Although analyzing the whole case can shed light on the nuances of the judicial system, I am usually drawn to the depositions and accounts, because it is here where you begin to find the voices of the indigenous peoples. Moreover, the bureaucracy of judicial cases presents us with the biographical information of those involved such as name, age, marital status, occupation, and place of birth and residence, followed by physical descriptions of the accused. The document also indicates if any of the persons involved were indigenous (indígena). However, specifics about their ethnic group are rare

To determine if the individual in question was Yaqui, key indicators include their name and surname—such as Bacasegua, Buitimea, or Matus, which are traditionally Yaqui. Additionally, the location of events, particularly in or near Yaqui territories like Vicam, Torim, or Guaymas, can provide further confirmation. While this method is effective, it is important to note some potential pitfalls. Firstly, it’s easy to mistakenly confuse Yaquis and Mayos (also native to Sonora and Sinaloa) due to their cultural and linguistic similarities. Additionally, throughout time, Yaquis have exhibited significant mobility throughout the whole state and even beyond political borders, so it was not rare to find them in Álamos or in Cananea.

Map of Sonora - Sinaloa.
Lizars Mexico & Guatimala 1831 UTA (Detail Sonora Sinaloa). Source: Wikimedia Commons

Although these sources are revealing, the voices and worldviews of the Yaquis are not intact in the archive. And it is crucial to understand how their testimonies were collected in any given case. Usually, in regular proceedings, they responded to specific questions rather than were allowed to speak spontaneously and freely. If, on the other hand, the individual or individuals were looking to get legal protection (amparo), they presented their testimony in written form before the Supreme Court.

It is also important to emphasize that statements in civil or criminal procedure documents are not verbatim transcriptions. Instead, they are presented by the scribes in an abridged and polished (again, very positivist) format through indirect narration. In this sense, we might think that the legal protection cases present a less manipulated testimony since they could write them themselves. However, considering the historical context and supported by the amparo cases that I have consulted, the Yaquis who sought legal protection were rarely literate. In many instances, other interested parties assisted in the case, often with personal interests at stake. In addition to oral and written testimonies, one can sporadically find other types of evidence, such as letters, receipts, contracts, and even material records.

So, if we are presented with a filtered and mediated testimony of the indigenous peoples, how can we find their voices and worldviews? Having a deep understanding of the historical context and the way the judicial process took place provides the best starting point. Carefully analyzing the declarations and contrasting and comparing them with other sources (both primary and secondary) allows us to identify potential biases, misunderstandings, distortions, or erasures. Interpreting the sources with an Indigenous framework can also help us gain insights into the meaning, vocabulary, nuances, implications, and even silences of the testimonies. With a thorough analysis, judicial documents can give us a glimpse, and sometimes even more, to Yaquis’ perspectives, values, and worldviews.

These archives are a window to observe how the Yaquis navigated and interacted with the Mexican legal system at a time when the government persecuted and aimed to exterminate them, and how they were represented or misrepresented in judicial processes. Judicial documents showcase how the Yaquis were being targeted not only by the government, but the Sonoran population as well, and how the Yaquis were also the perpetrators of common and federal law cases during the time of war. They provide details and testimonies on revolts, “seditious activities”, and overall disobedience to the government, and they also give us a glimpse into their quotidian lives and how they resisted the war.

The collections of the Archive of the Judicial Branch of the state of Sonora, and the Archive of the House of Legal Culture offer valuable insights into the history of the Yaqui people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I hope my approach and methodology can be a model for those interested in delving into legal documents in other parts of Mexico, as each federal entity has its own branches of these archives. Despite the challenges each of them presents, these archives are a rich and often underutilized source of information for historians researching not only legal matters but also the broader history of Sonora and its Indigenous and non-indigenous populations.

I would like to express special thanks to all the archivists at the Archives of the Judicial Branch of the State of Sonora, in particular to Bennya Román Flores, whose generosity and dedication have been fundamental for the completion of this work. I also thank the collaborators of the Casa de la Cultura Jurídica in Hermosillo, especially Adrián Pérez, for his patience and constant support while consulting multiple boxes of documents.

Raquel Torua Padilla is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a B.A. in History from the Universidad de Sonora and is currently a CONTEX Fellow. Her research focuses on the history of Indigenous peoples in the Northwest of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, with a particular emphasis on the Yaqui people. Her current projects examine Yaqui militias and their diaspora during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

[1] The procedures for consulting the Concentration archives are different from those of the historical part of the archive. In this piece, I will only discuss the historical collections of both archives.

[2] Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, penal codes for each state continued to be created and adapted.

[3] García Ramírez, Sergio. 1998. Panorama del derecho penal mexicano. Derecho penal. Mexico: UNAM, McGraw-Hill.

[4] Pérez Moreno Colmenero, Silvia. 2001. Valores para la democracia. Delitos e infracciones administrativas. México: Instituto Nacional para la Educación de los Adultos. 09/13/2024 http://www.oas.org/udse/cd_educacion/cd/Materiales_conevyt/VPLD/delitos.PDF

[5] “Archivo General del Poder Judicial del Estado”. 09/13/2024: https://www.stjsonora.gob.mx/ArchivoPJE/#:~:text=Dentro%20de%20nuestros%20archivos%20se,Estado%20de%20Sonora%20y%20Sinaloa.

[6] “Casa de la Cultura Jurídica en Hermosillo. Ministro José María Ortiz Tirado”. 09/13/2024: https://www.sitios.scjn.gob.mx/casascultura/casas-cultura-juridica/hermosillo-sonora

[7] Leyva Meneses, Hans Ildefonso. 2004. Catálogo para las fuentes documentales de la Casa de la Cultura Jurídica en el estado de Sonora, serie juicios de amparo, 1900-1917. Tesis de licenciatura. Hermosillo: Universidad de Sonora. And Barboza Enciso, Ulloa. 2004.  Catálogo del archive de la Casa de la Cultura Jurídica en el Estado de Sonora del Poder Judicial de la Federación, sección juzgado quinto de distrito del quinto circuito, serie juicios de amparo, 1918-1928. Tesis de licenciatura. Hermosillo: Universidad de Sonora

[8] Presented either by writing, in legal seeking cases, or by interrogation, in civil and criminal proceedings.

[9] In this case, information on whether the informant speaks Spanish or not, and whether an interpreter was used, is also available.

NEP’S Archive Chronicles: El Archivo General de la Nación (AGN, Ciudad de México): Procesos afectivos, paisajes urbanos y la escritura de la historia

NEP’S Archive Chronicles explora el papel que desempeñan los archivos en la investigación histórica, ofreciendo una visión del proceso de realización del trabajo archivístico y de investigación. Cada entrega ofrecerá una perspectiva única de los tesoros y retos que los investigadores encuentran en los archivos de todo el mundo. NEP’s Archive Chronicles pretende ser tanto una guía práctica como un espacio de reflexión, en el que se expongan las experiencias de los colaboradores con la investigación archivística.

Note: Click here to access English version
Nota: Haz click aquí para acceder a la versión en inglés

Es un lugar común empezar por decir que estaba leyendo La atracción de archivo de Arlette Farge el primer día que fui a hacer investigación al Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) en la Ciudad de México, pero es verdad. No lo hice a propósito, llevaba tiempo queriendo leer el texto y acababa de comprar un ejemplar usado cuando empecé a investigar sobre la historia del Archivo General de México a lo largo del siglo XIX.

Esto ocurrió hace tres años, pero lo recuerdo claramente. Tiendo a olvidar las cosas, pero allí donde falla mi memoria social, mi memoria bibliográfica es casi impecable. Puedo recordar todos los libros que he leído. Sé cómo es la portada, qué tamaño tiene el libro, y dónde y cuándo lo leí. Recuerdo cómo se siente un libro dentro de mí, y puedo reconstruir lo que dice o por qué es importante. Sobre el clásico de Farge, recuerdo que el libro es romántico, que ella narra cómo recorría los pasillos de los Archivos Judiciales de París buscando mujeres en las fuentes, reflexionando sobre la afectividad del espacio, y recuerdo que lo estaba leyendo ese día. 

Era pleno verano, un día sombrío y lluvioso en la ciudad. También estábamos en plena pandemia de COVID. Por lo tanto, el AGN estaba abierto, pero su horario de atención al público era restringido, así como el material que podían consultar los investigadores. Había agendado una cita una semana antes para asistir y ver si realmente podía encontrar algo. Nunca había oído hablar de la colección que buscaba, pero estaba segura de que existía. Un archivo debe tener una colección sobre sus operaciones institucionales internas, ¿no?

Salí temprano de casa, me subí en el metro y eventualmente llegué a San Lázaro, en el centro-este de la ciudad. La estación de metro debe su nombre a la antigua terminal ferroviaria del mismo nombre, que solía ser parte importante del sistema ferroviario interoceánico en la ruta México-Puebla-Veracruz. San Lázaro siempre es caótico. No sólo hay dos líneas distintas de metro tienen parada ahí, pero el espacio también se comparte con la Terminal de Autobuses de Pasajeros de Oriente, la TAPO, haciéndola una de las estaciones más concurridas de la ciudad, con más de 44.000 usuarios que la cruzan al día. Me costó trabajo encontrar dónde abordar la línea 5 del Metrobus, pero eventualmente lo logré. Una parada después, llegué a la estación Archivo General de la Nación.1

Imágenes de la estación de metrobús de Ciudad de México.
Fotografías tomadas por la autora.

El AGN se encuentra actualmente ubicado en el Palacio de Lecumberri. Inaugurado originalmente en 1900 por el presidente Porfirio Díaz, este edificio fue diseñado como una moderna penitenciaría panóptica, propósito con el cual cumplió hasta 1972, cuando fue clausurado debido a una serie de irregularidades, corrupción y falta de espacio para sostener el creciente número de reclusos. Una vez cerrado y abandonado, estalló un debate en la prensa mexicana sobre su destino. Su demolición privaría a los antiguos reclusos como a las familias de las víctimas de un importante lugar de memoria. Además, quienes se oponían a su demolición subrayaron la importancia de conservar el edificio como un lugar crucial para estudiar y comprender la historia de la arquitectura disciplinaria durante en México en el siglo XX. Pero ¿qué hacer con él?

En los medios de comunicación estalló un debate sobre los posibles usos del edificio. La polémica de «los historiadores», representados por Edmundo O’Gorman, Eduardo Blanquel, Jorge Alberto Manrique y el arquitecto Flavio Salamanca, fue decisiva para que Lecumberri pasara de ser una cárcel a un archivo. El argumento principal de los historiadores se centró sobre todo en la cuestión del espacio, conscientes de que una de las características fundamentales de los archivos es que nunca dejan de crecer. En ese momento, el AGN, originalmente alojado en el Palacio Nacional desde su inauguración en 1823, hacía tiempo que se había quedado sin espacio y sus fondos se encontraban dispersos por diversos lugares de la ciudad, como el Palacio Nacional, el Templo de Guadalupe en Tacubaya o la Casa Amarilla, la Ciudadela y el antiguo Palacio de Comunicaciones, hoy Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL).2 La descentralización perjudicaba las funciones de la institución y ponía en riesgo el acceso de los usuarios.

Tres imágenes del palacio de Lecumberri: estructura exterior, cúpula interior, edificio exterior
Fotografías tomadas por la autora.

Consciente de sus necesidades presentes y futuras, el personal de la institución había estado buscando soluciones para este problema. José Ignacio Rubio Mañé, que fue director de la institución entre 1960 y 1977, incluso llegó a viajar por el mundo a través de un programa financiado por el gobierno en busca de inspiración en otros archivos para mejorar el que él supervisaba. Pero el proyecto de remodelación quedó truncado antes de concluirse.

Y ahora, la solución estaba ahí: Lecumberri. El edificio ya era propiedad del gobierno, estaba abandonado y salvarlo garantizaría su funcionamiento como lugar rememoración y estudio. Como elemento adicional y fortuito, este palacio se había construido para garantizar las prácticas de vigilancia, un componente muy necesario para los archivos. Estos otorgan una gran prioridad a la vigilancia porque almacenan documentos sensibles y únicos que sirven de fuentes primarias para los relatos históricos de una comunidad determinada en el tiempo. Su robo o deterioro puede tener repercusiones sociales, materiales e incluso emocionales.

En 1977 se aprobó la transformación de Lecumberri en la nueva sede del AGN, que se trasladó en 1982 bajo la dirección de Alejandra Moreno Toscano. Las antiguas celdas de la prisión se convirtieron en bóvedas para el almacenamiento de documentos, y las largas galerías de cada uno de los 5 brazos de la prisión se transformaron en salas de lectura y oficinas. Aunque poética, la falta de control técnico sobre el clima y las plagas que los archivistas podían tener sobre los documentos dentro de las bóvedas impulsó la construcción del Anexo Técnico. Inaugurado en 2018, el Anexo es una instalación de almacenamiento de documentos moderna y tecnológica que aumentó masivamente el espacio de almacenamiento y modernizó los sistemas. Las celdas sirven ahora de oficinas para el personal, y algunos de los largos pasillos se han acondicionado para un proyecto de digitalización masiva. En el exterior, el gran edificio blanco y cuadrado contrasta con el palacio decimonónico situado a su lado. Dos estrategias e innovaciones tecnológicas diferentes para un mismo fin.

Tres imágenes de bloques de celdas y espacio de almacenamiento de documentos. Actualmente son oficinas.
Fotografías tomadas por la autora.

A mi llegada, me recibieron dos agentes de policía. Como en muchos archivos de todo el mundo, tuve que dejar mi mochila, papel, plumas, agua y cualquier alimento en los casilleros y registrarme con un documento de identidad oficial y registrar el número de serie de mi equipo de trabajo (computadora y tablet). Una vez registrada, tomé mi computadora, teléfono, guantes y mascarilla, y me dirigí a la Centro de Referencias, una parada obligatoria antes de entrar en las salas de consulta. No sabía dónde encontrar el archivo institucional, así que hablé con los archivistas. Mi primera conversación con la mujer de recepción -llamémosla M.- fue más o menos así:

“Buenos días”.

            “Buenos días”.

            “¿En qué puedo ayudarle?”

            “Estoy buscando… Estoy buscando el archivo del Archivo”.

            “¿Disculpa?”

            “Sí. Busco el archivo del Archivo”.

No puedo evitar reírme al recordar la cara de M. ante mi extravagante solicitud. Le expliqué que yo era historiadora, que estaba investigando la historia del Archivo General y que buscaba el archivo interno de operaciones del AGN.

            “Tiene que haber uno, ¿no?”.

            “Ay, no sé la verdad, no he oído hablar de él. Pero ¿por qué no pruebas en el buscador general a ver qué encuentras?”.

Me senté frente a una computadora y escribí lo primero que se me ocurrió: «archivo». Pero al teclear una palabra que forma parte del nombre de toda la institución, el sistema transcribió toda la base de datos en la sección de resultados del programa, y lo colapsó. Pasé las siguientes semanas en Centro de Referencias analizando ArchiDoc, el gigantesco sistema de búsqueda del AGN, intentando averiguar cómo encontrar esta colección de la que nadie en el había oído hablar. Hasta que un día, a primera hora de la mañana, se acercó M. para decirme que había visto una colección en el perfil de administrador de ArchiDoc. Se llamaba Archivo Histórico Institucional (AHI) y figuraba en la sección del siglo XIX.

¡Eureka! Resulta que no había visto esta colección en ningún lado porque los documentos estaban todavía siendo catalogados y procesados, y no estaba disponible aún para su consulta3. Se me puso la piel chinita de la emoción. Lo recuerdo claramente. Estos documentos constituyen la historia del Archivo a través del papeleo burocrático de la administración de la misma institución. De hecho, esto era exactamente lo que yo buscaba: el archivo del archivo. Y significaba que mi investigación doctoral era posible.

El Archivo Histórico Institucional tiene dos tipos de formatos documentales: volúmenes y cajas que contienen expedientes guardados en carpetas amarillas sin ácido. Los volúmenes están encuadernados en piel y tienen unas dimensiones aproximadas de 40 cm x 25 cm, con un número de páginas que oscila entre 250 y 450 por volumen. Consta de 295 volúmenes que van de 1825 a 1944, abarcando 119 años de historia administrativa archivística. La colección muestra un aumento significativo de volúmenes a lo largo del tiempo con un patrón de crecimiento sostenido a lo largo del tiempo. Su contenido es ecléctico y abarca informes, remisiones, recibos, notas, instrucciones y solicitudes de información, entre otros. En estos documentos podemos encontrar los mundos sociales, económicos, políticos, materiales e incluso afectivos que han sido parte esencial de la mecánica interna de la institución y de los materiales que ella resguarda.

Imagen del volumen encuadernado en cuero
Fotografía tomadas por la autora.
Imagen de papel con membrete de AGN
Fotografía tomadas por la autora.

No pude examinar los documentos físicos ese año y tuve que esperar hasta el verano siguiente para hacerlo, tras conseguir autorización previa de la administración del Archivo. Poco después, la historiadora y archivista Linda Arnold tuvo la amabilidad de compartir con nosotros la hoja Excel de toda la colección, lo que me permitió procesar y comprender más profundamente la colección antes acceder a los documentos.

En cuanto pude, regresé a la Ciudad de México y me dirigí directamente al AGN para analizar la colección física. Para ese momento ya sabía de qué elementos se componía el AHI, y por fin había llegado el momento de leerlo. Desde entonces he pasado cientos de horas en la Sala de Lectura «A» del AGN leyendo los documentos y tomándoles fotos para mi investigación.

En estos años, he paseado los extraños caminos de Lecumberri y he llevado a mis seres queridos a las visitas guiadas que ofrece la propia institución. También me he hecho amiga de algunos de los archivistas que trabajan ahí y he conocido a historiadores que admiro haciendo investigación. Mi investigación también me ha llevado a otros archivos de México y del mundo, donde he estado buscando evidencia que lo represente como parte de una red global de emergentes tecnologías de la información en el siglo XIX.

Tres imágenes de los exteriores de Lecumberri: edificio, cúpula desde el exterior, torre.
Fotografías tomadas por la autora.

Ya empecé a escribir la tesis y espero que esté lista en los próximos años. Pero escribir esta historia no ha sido del todo fácil. Los archivos son entidades por naturaleza fragmentadas y están constituidos por silencios y ausencias más que por lo que han logrado custodiar.4 Como objeto de tasación, botín de guerra o resultado de la volátil e imprevisible fragmentación de los fondos, la información documental que sobrevive en la actualidad no es más que un minúsculo fragmento de lo que se ha producido alguna vez. Esto plantea algunas preguntas fundamentales: ¿Por qué no se ha analizado en detalle la historia de los archivos? ¿Qué nos dice esto hoy? ¿Qué tipo de historias podemos recuperar analizando en detalle los archivos institucionales de las instituciones archviísticas?

Es precisamente la naturaleza fragmentada del AGN lo que me ha impulsado a explorar formas más experimentales de escribir sobre sus historias, llevándome a abordar sus complejidades a través de la escritura creativa, especialmente a través del ensayo. Porque al reflexionar sobre las condiciones en las que se archivó la historia, nos hacemos una idea de cómo se vivió y experimentó ésta, generando oportunidades para reinterpretar la formación de la identidad nacional y el pasado de formas nuevas y previamente inexploradas.

Camila Ordorica es candidata doctoral en Historia Latinoamericana por la Universidad de Texas en Austin, donde estudia la historia del Archivo General de México durante el largo siglo XIX (1790-1910). Su investigación dialoga con la archivística y la historia cultural, social y material, y explora cómo los archivos se escriben en la historia y su papel dentro de ella. La pasión de Camila por los estudios archivísticos tiene sus raíces en su formación como archivista. Camila ha trabajado en los Acervos Históricos de la Universidad Iberoamericana y en los archivos de Sine-Comunarr. Además, ha colaborado con la ENES-Morelia de la UNAM, el Instituto de Estudios Críticos ’17 y la Federación Internacional de Historia Pública en estudios y prácticas archivísticas y humanidades digitales.

Los puntos de vista y opiniones expresados en este artículo o vídeo son los de su(s) autor(es) o presentador(es) y no reflejan necesariamente la política o los puntos de vista de los editores de Not Even Past, el Departamento de Historia de la Universidad de Texas, la Universidad de Texas en Austin o la Junta de Regentes del Sistema de la Universidad de Texas. Not Even Past es una revista de historia pública en línea y no una revista académica revisada por pares. Aunque nos esforzamos por garantizar que la información de los artículos procede de fuentes fidedignas, Not Even Past no se hace responsable de errores u omisiones.

  1. Desde entonces he descubierto que la mejor ruta en transporte público es ir a la estación del metro Bellas Artes y tomar el Metrobús 4 directo al AGN. Suele haber más tráfico, pero el trayecto es más bonito. Con el aire fresco de la mañana, se puede contemplar todo el centro histórico, con sus edificios torcidos y su bulliciosa actividad. ↩︎
  2. Pereyra, Carlos, et al. Historia, ¿para qué? 1st ed. (México: Siglo Veintiuno, 1980) ↩︎
  3. El IHA aún no se ha abierto oficialmente a consulta, pero tengo entendido que se presentará oficialmente al público antes de finales de año. ↩︎
  4. Ver: Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever. A Freudian Impression, (The University of Chicago Press, 1996); Michelle Caswell, Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia, (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014); Verne Harris, Ghosts of Archive: Deconstructive Intersectionality and Praxis, (Routledge, 2021); Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past. Power and the Production of History, (Bacon Press, 1995) ↩︎

NEP Author Spotlight – Camila Ordorica

The success of Not Even Past is made possible by a remarkable group of faculty and graduate student writers. Not Even Past Author Spotlights are designed to celebrate our most prolific authors by bringing together all of their published content across the site together on a single page. The focus is especially on work published by UT graduate students. In this article, we highlight the many contributions made to the magazine made by Camila Ordorica, our incoming Associate Editor and Communications Director for academic year 2024-2025.

Camila Ordorica is a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American History at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studies the history of Mexico’s General Archive during the long nineteenth century (1790–1910). Her research bridges archival science with cultural, social, and material history, exploring how archives are written into history and their role within it. Camila’s passion for archival studies is rooted in her training as an archivist. She has previously worked at the Universidad Iberoamericana’s Acervos Históricos and the archives of Sine-Comunarr. Additionally, she has collaborated with UNAM ENES-Morelia, ‘17, Institute of Critical Studies’, and the International Federation of Public History on archival studies, practice, and digital scholarship training.

Camila earned her B.A. in History from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and later pursued an M.A. in Gender Studies from the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary. At the University of Texas at Austin, she has served as co-coordinator for the Lozano Long Centennial Conference, ‘Archiving Objects of Knowledge with Latin American Perspectives’ (2020 – 2021), and the ‘History Department’s Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality’ (2022–2023). Camila’s research has been supported by Conahcyt/Contex, the École nationale des Chartes, the Newberry Library, the W.M. Keck Foundation, and the Conference on Latin American History. Her writing is featured in Revista nexos, Letras Libres, el Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, Revista América, Historia Mexicana, Contributions to the History of Concepts, and Not Even Past.

Note: This bilingual article appears first in Spanish and then in English.

Por segunda vez en los 73 años desde su creación, UT Austin fue sede del XVI Encuentro de Historiadores Internacionales de México (octubre de 2022). Bajo la coordinación de un comité conjunto presidido por la Dra. Susie Porter de la Universidad de Utah, el Dr. Pablo Yankelevich de El Colegio de México y el Dr. Matthew Butler como organizador local de UT Austin, la conferencia se planificó como un diálogo sobre la relación binacional entre México y Estados Unidos—y más específicamente Texas—y sobre los archivos. ¿Cómo ha cambiado la escritura de la historia de México y de la frontera desde la última vez que se llevó a cabo este encuentro aquí, en 1958? Este artículo presenta una breve historia de los Encuentros de Historiadores Internacionales desde 1949 y ofrece algunas notas sobre cómo ha cambiado la escritura histórica sobre México y sus fronteras desde entonces

For the second time in the 73 years since its inception, UT Austin was the host the XVI Meeting of International Historians of Mexico (October 2022). Under the coordination of a joint committee chaired by Dr. Susie Porter of the University of Utah, Dr. Pablo Yankelevich of El Colegio de México, and Dr. Matthew Butler as UT-Austin’s local organizer, the conference was planned as a dialogue concerning the binational relationship between Mexico and the United States—and more specifically Texas—and about archives. How has the writing of Mexican and borderland history changed in the last time the meeting took place here, in 1958? This article presents a brief history of International Historians Meetings beginning in 1949 and gives some notes on how historical writing about Mexico and its borders has changed since then.

In honor of the centennial of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, the 2022 Lozano Long Conference focuses on archives with Latin American perspectives in order to better visualize the ethical and political implications of archival practices globally. The conference was held in February 2022 and the videos of all the presentation will be available soon. Thinking archivally in a time of COVID-19 has also given us an unexpected opportunity to re-imagine the international academic conference. This Not Even Past publication joins those by other graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin.  The series as a whole is designed to engage with the work of individual speakers as well as to present valuable resources that will supplement the conference’s recorded presentations. This new conference model, which will make online resources freely and permanently available, seeks to reach audiences beyond conference attendees in the hopes of decolonizing and democratizing access to the production of knowledge. The conference recordings and connected articles can be found here.

Between 1793 and 1794, the Jacobin Club, a leftist political organization led by Maximilien Robespierre held political power in France. Via this medium, the Jacobins, as they came to be known, enforced a radical understanding of the revolutionary values of the French Revolution through mass violence. This episode is known simply as “the Terror”. In 1794 the Jacobins were forced out office in an episode called the “Thermidorian Reaction”, after which everything seemed to show what the Terror was a thing of the past. In The Afterlives of Terror. Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France, Ronen Steinberg challenges this assumption and argues that this episode stretched beyond the years of its occurrence in the form of debates and practices aimed towards overcoming this modern form of national trauma.

In From Angel to Office Worker: Middle-Class Identity and Female Consciousness in Mexico, 1890-1950, Susie S. Porter explores the material conditions of working women in Mexico City from 1890 to 1950 and the formation of middle-class female identity. She examines how societal practices and debates shaped this identity, analyzing the Mexican women’s movement in the early twentieth century and its connection to global feminist movements. Porter’s work highlights how women negotiated their roles during and after the Revolution and organized to improve their working and living conditions.

Between 1793 and 1794, the Jacobin Club, a leftist political organization led by Maximilien Robespierre held political power in France. Via this medium, the Jacobins, as they came to be known, enforced a radical understanding of the revolutionary values of the French Revolution through mass violence. This episode is known simply as “the Terror”. In 1794 the Jacobins were forced out office in an episode called the “Thermidorian Reaction”, after which everything seemed to show what the Terror was a thing of the past. In The Afterlives of Terror. Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France, Ronen Steinberg challenges this assumption and argues that this episode stretched beyond the years of its occurrence in the form of debates and practices aimed towards overcoming this modern form of national trauma.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

This is Democracy – Mexican Elections

This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Kenneth Greene to discuss the recent June elections in Mexico, and how they reflect the current state of democracy in Mexico and beyond.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, “Across the Moat.”

Kenneth Greene is Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on democratization, political parties, and voting behavior, as well as Mexico’s politics. He is the author of: Why Dominant Parties Lose: Mexico’s Democratization in Comparative Perspective.

The Weight Around My Neck

Pick up the camera. Aim, kneel, shoot. He hides behind a pair of rough hands. Inscribed in the knuckles: “Lupita.” Another shot followed by instant regret. Somehow, taking that photograph reminded you of the power dynamics—the violence—immersed in the asymmetrical act of representing others. Let the camera hang around your neck again. It never felt heavier. Engage. You are told only half of the story, maybe because of fear, or maybe you don’t deserve it yet. He walks away just as you take one last picture. The scar on his back might know the other side of the story.

The scar is a large tattoo of Santa Muerte, the Mexican folk saint of death. Canonized by no one yet a saint still, Santa Muerte pulls together a wide range of devotees across Mexico and among Mexican immigrants in Queens, New York. They ask her to help them with legal troubles, protection from the police, health issues, and love affairs. Arely, a transgender woman from Tlapa, Guerrero, is the leader of the movement in New York. She introduced me to many devotees who generously shared their stories with me.

M took off his shirt to show me his Santa Muerte tattoo.
M took off his shirt to show me his Santa Muerte tattoo (Queens, New York).

The results of those conversations turned into my first book, El pasado que me espera: bosquejo de etnografía cinemática,[The Past that Awaits Me: A Sketch toward Cinematic Ethnography] where I try to tell these stories without bending them, to avoid privileging the frame over the content. More than showing what I learned, the book reads like a constant struggle about what to do with these stories, who they are serving, and how to write them. Investigating the politics of representing the asymmetry between researcher and researched, between writer and believer, became the book’s core and of all my subsequent work.

The book explores the politics and poetics of ethnographic representation and the troubles of writing about others and picturing them. And it offers a possible escape: to incorporate my photographic practice into the research and bend the writing as much as the ethnographic experience demands it, to use the conventions of cinematic discourse (moving the camera, montage, cuts, close-ups) that diminish the “effect of the real” without discarding its narrative power. Drawing on two years of fieldwork on Santa Muerte—a Mexican folk saint usually described as the patron saint of the Drug Wars in Mexico—I essay across genres to avoid the exoticizing, one-sided descriptions that frame its devotees as criminals, sicarios, or deviants. It exploits the diversity of this devotion and the violence inherent in reducing it to a narco-saint.

book cover

El pasado que me espera is divided into three parts. Part I, the book’s core, is an experiment in ethnographic writing that borrows techniques from cinematic discourse, photography, and archives to offer a portrait of the diverse devotion to Santa Muerte: a polyphonic, multi-sited ethnography. Yet, written as a pastiche or collage, it sometimes reads like a novel based on extensive fieldwork, challenging many of the conventions of more traditional ethnographic narratives.

Parts II and III can be considered appendices separated from the empirical text. Part II offers an essay explaining how religious practices and beliefs are represented in Santa Muerte studies and other works on popular religions. It traces how “religion” and its “persistence” came to be conceived as research problems in the social sciences, which makes the appearance of functionalist arguments almost inescapable: devotees believe because they are poor, ignorant, or because they live in violent worlds. Anchoring the text in my fieldwork on Santa Muerte in the context of the rise of the New Atheism movements and social anxieties of modernity, the chapter takes Ludwig Wittgenstein’s method seriously to give agency and meaning back to religious beliefs: to describe, instead of explaining.

Santa Muerte giant statue that watches over Templo Mayor (Tultitlán, Estado de México)
Santa Muerte’s giant statue that watches over Templo Mayor (Tultitlán, Estado de México).

Part III delves into the poetics and politics of ethnographic writing and representation. Using the history of photography and its ambiguous connections to cinematography as a parallel, it unveils the violence and mediation inherent to any form of representing otherness. By showing how academic writing borrows conventions of photography—frame, focus, first and second plane, depth, presence—it then proposes to keep borrowing, but from cinematography—montage, lending the camera, “subjective shots,” cutting—to give ethnographic writing the experience of the real while at the same time underscoring its fictitious foundations.

How the text came to be at all warrants an explanation. It all started as a traditional project in ethnography: to embark on a qualitative study to examine and transcribe the life of people who had something in common: believing in Santa Muerte. To understand their beliefs and try to articulate them, I attended baptisms, weddings, Sunday mass, and occasional parties. But this approach soon fell apart and turned into something else: a hybrid, polyphonic text, with the argument lying somewhere between the content and the form. Without a clear path, a pastiche of essays, book reviews, urban reportage, history, auto-ethnography, and loose ends escaped my fingertips. Something got in the way, but what exactly that thing was remained unclear. On the one hand, the text reflects my inability to reduce what I witnessed in the field into a linear ethnographic report, an unwillingness to betray the stories so they could fit a frame. On the other, it reveals the weight I was carrying around my neck. Literally, the weight of the camera.

J borrows my camera and shoots back (Zumpango, Estado de México)
J borrows my camera and shoots back (Zumpango, Estado de México)

Fieldworkers generally carry their cameras without giving them too much thought.[1] As an innocuous recording device, the camera serves as a backup memory and to assert presence: an evidence-making machine. Some even echo Margaret Mead, one of the most prominent and controversial anthropologists of the twentieth century, who thought that the perfect ethnographic record would be something close to a film camera standing on a tripod in the corner of a room: infallible, unaltered, scientific.[2] Others follow the methods of Bronislaw Malinowski, another very prominent and complicated anthropologist, who used the camera with foresight and care to build an archive of fieldwork itself to assert his presence in the field. He appears constantly in his clearly posed field photographs to convey the hardships, loneliness, and remoteness that serious anthropological work entails. Ethnographic photography seeks to strike a delicate balance to convince its viewers the anthropologist was there without altering the scene to create ghosts.[3]

Yet photographs usually exceed their maker’s intentions. As James Clifford noted in his essay “On Ethnographic Authority,” one of the subjects in Malinowski’s photograph “A Ceremonial Act of the Kula” is looking back at the camera. At first, the picture works as a metaphor for presence but soon begins to diminish its own authority. The illusion of the photograph’s “subjective view” asserts the presence in the scene and brings the viewer to the field: You are there because I was there.[4] But the illusion is broken by that inconvenient stare. When anthropological subjects look back at the camera, they break the spell. They destabilize the infallibility of the camera, and the illusion fades—which may explain why portraits fit so uncomfortably into the ethnographic look.

Doña Petra and her grandchildren holding tiny Santa Muerte statuettes (Zumpango, Estado de México).
Doña Petra and her grandchildren holding tiny Santa Muerte statuettes (Zumpango,
Estado de México).

I took the camera everywhere while doing fieldwork between 2015 and 2017 in Mexico City, Boston, and Queens. A 1984 Olympics Edition Canon AE-1 film camera loaded with 100 ISO color 35mm film. Each film had 36 exposures, which makes photographers on a budget think twice before pressing the shutter every time. After 4 or five rolls, my disappointment with the pictures was only matched by my disappointment with the writing. They mirrored each other: impersonal, distant, disengaged. Vague descriptions of religious rituals in my notebooks matched photographs of devotees from behind perfectly. Shy students, it turned out, make bad ethnographers. That became crystal clear. Were bad photographs another sign? Can the camera speak? Overcoming this crisis entailed weaving photographs and words, writing and picturing—a process that became central to my eventual book.

A commercial for the 1984 Olympics Edition Canon AE-1 film camera.
A commercial for the 1984 Olympics Edition Canon AE-1 film camera.

Changing my photographic practice derailed my writing completely. To improve the images, I had to come closer, move differently, make the quotidian strange, and explain the presence of the camera. Photography exacts constant engagement and attention to detail. The images looked different because my body was moving differently. To make a portrait, the operator needs to build a relationship with the subject, articulate the reasons behind the documentary impulse, and accept the trade-off it implies: to reveal their intentions. A portrait is the snapshot of a conversation; it is always the trace of an encounter, a visual dialogue where no side can remain silent. And my first distanced, impersonal photographs of devotees did not lie: I was too afraid to talk.

Conversations triggered by the camera yielded better ethnographic insights. The excuse of a picture gave me an easy entry to casual small talk, tattoo stories, and revealing insecurities. Encounters that would grow into more delicate dialogues. The Canon became my badge and amulet. I wore the strap like a uniform. But it also became a threatening presence. Some people refused to be photographed, and others dismissed camera-bearers as untrustworthy outsiders and remained silent. Portraits rarely come without strings attached: Where will you publish these? Will you send me a copy? How do I look? What do you want it for? It soon became clear: the politics of ethnography and photography overlapped, and that intersection was what the project became about.

Maritza, the owner of a chicken store in Zumpango, poses with her personal statuette. A Virgen de Guadalupe guards a door that leads to her private Santa Muerte altar.
Maritza, the owner of a chicken store in Zumpango,
poses with her personal statuette.
A Virgen de Guadalupe guards a door that leads to her private Santa Muerte altar.

El pasado que me espera navigates the intersection, embracing complexity and incompleteness. Its fragmented narrative seeks to evoke the tension immersed in visual methods: exposure time, focus, frame, close-ups, composition, and cuts. Moving the camera, lending it, making it stay still, allowing it to think—and letting the portraits speak for themselves. Yet against my best intentions, the writing never relieved the weight of the camera. It feels as heavy and intrusive as the first day, but the neck pain remains instructive. I still carry it as an amulet, a marker of how indebted I am to these stories, and as a reminder that not only does getting closer yield sharper images and more intimate portraits: it is a responsibility.

*All the photos in this piece are by the author.

Rodrigo Salido Moulinié is a writer, photographer, and doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is a Fulbright-García Robles Scholar and a Contex Doctoral Fellow. In 2023 he was awarded the Leonard A. Lauder Fellowship in Modern Art at The Metropolitan Museum, where he will be working on his research project: “Covarrubias’ Crossings: Art, Science, and the Global Politics of Ethnographic Image-Making.” Rodrigo’s work explores the interconnections between the histories of photography, science, and anthropology. He traces the tensions between the making of ethnography and the development of new visual methods of representing otherness—photography, painting, sketching, and writing.

[1] I use the term “fieldworkers,” widely used in anthropology, to include ethnographers, artists, photographers, and other disciplines that go “to the field” without being scholars or trained anthropologists.

[2] “For God’s Sake, Margaret, Conversation with Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead,” The CoEvolution Quarterly 10 (1976).

[3] See Terence Wright, “The Fieldwork Photographs of Jenness and Malinowski and the Beginnings of Modern Anthropology,” JASO 22 (1991), pp. 41-58; Michael W. Young, Malinowski’s Kiriwina: Fieldwork Photography, 1915-1918 Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998.

[4] James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Authority,” in The Predicament of Culture, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1988. See also Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object, New York, Columbia University Press, 1983.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Motherhood, Patriotism and Enfranchisement: How Mexican Catholic Women Defined Womanhood in the Mid-Twentieth Century 

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My thesis focused on tracing and analyzing the complicated political conversations within the women’s division of the Mexican Catholic Action, specifically regarding women’s suffrage from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. My work revealed a layered set of beliefs that defy these women’s simple classification into feminist or antifeminist categories. Their complex reconciliation of conservative views with more progressive ones is a trend that has also been found in the historiography of international Christian women’s organizations through various time periods.[1] In a relatively recent article, Mexican historian Pedro Espinoza Meléndez also identifies seemingly opposing currents of thought present in ACM women’s publications.[2] In this way, my research builds on new scholarship to suggest the need for frameworks that avoid the feminist/antifeminist binary we may be inclined to apply. We should especially be careful if Western interpretations of these terms are being used to explain phenomena in non-Western regions.

Mexican women did not obtain the right to vote in federal elections until 1953, although there were important antecedents to this final victory dating back at least to the Revolution. One of the reasons for this was the fear that they would infuse national politics with more conservative ideas. Some primary sources provide evidence not necessarily for the validity of these fears, but definitely for their existence and influence in the 1930s. For example, in a speech given at the first National Women’s Congress in 1936, activist Esther Chapa said that many believed “woman is influenced by the most conservative and reactionary currents, and can therefore tip the general politics of the country to the right.”[3]

It is significant also that Chapa declared this fear, rather than other, more overtly misogynistic ideas (which she also discussed) to be the excuse “that is most energetically used by certain enemies of women’s votes.”[4]  Of course, she vehemently denies that these concerns should be taken seriously. Based on other sources, historians have also generally agreed that the precarious political establishment at the time feared that women’s participation would derail them from a progressive political path.[5] For example, one of the first historians of women’s fight for suffrage in Mexico, Ward M. Morton from the University of Florida, cited the enfranchisement of Spanish women in 1933—which resulted on a rightward swing in Spanish politics—as one of the key causes for hesitation on the part of left-leaning or centrist Mexican officials in the 1930s.[6]

photo of Elvia Carrillo Puerto
Elvia Carrillo Puerto, one of the first women representatives in the country in 1923, alongside Beatriz Peniche Ponce and Raquel Dzib Cicero. Source: Wikimedia Commons

There is value in this explanation, but the extent to which these fears were founded is difficult to assert. What is clear, however, is that these ideas were significant at the time, and have permeated into the historiography. In my opinion, one way of getting closer to a nuanced view of the issue is to refrain from treating women as a monolithic group in Mexican society, especially in such a crucial moment of development for the nation’s democracy and larger political apparatus. Because the women of the Mexican Catholic Action promoted ideas from both the right and the left, the study of their beliefs is particularly useful in this endeavor.

When looking at Catholic women’s opinions on the vote, it is crucial to define the elements that made the struggle singularly complex in Mexico. First, due to the wording of the Mexican Constitution, women’s political rights always included two related, but distinct goals—the right to vote and the right to get elected. Inextricably connected, these were fought for and obtained simultaneously in Mexico, unlike in many other countries. This may appear to be a trivial difference. Its significance becomes clear, however, when remembering the previously-explained fear of a women-led hit to progressive political parties and policies. With both ballot boxes and federal offices opening up to women, these fears would have reasonably been amplified.

I should also note that due to their reputed conservatism, it was traditional, Catholic women—such as those in the Mexican Catholic Action—who were the most blamed for the potential setbacks that would come from women’s enfranchisement. As I will demonstrate, while they did hold some conservative ideas, these were paired with more left-leaning attitudes, eventually including unequivocal support for suffrage. The study of their point of view is therefore especially interesting and significant. Gendered conceptions of citizenship responsibilities further compounded the challenges women faced in the fight for political rights.[7]

Logo for Mexican Catholic Action.
Logo for Mexican Catholic Action.

At least three additional contextual factors must be explained prior to any exploration of Catholic women’s political views from the 1930s to the 1950s. The first is the emergence and promotion of Catholic social doctrine in Rome starting in the late 1800s. Generally speaking, Catholic social doctrine was the church’s ideological response to significant events such as industrialization, the rise of communism, and large-scale warfare, conceived largely to maintain relevance in the face of these and other global trends. Some of its principles included the right to own private property, a condemnation of communism as well as unfettered capitalism (a debate that would become especially relevant post-WWII), and the basic dignity of human beings. As will be detailed later, Mexican women actively interpreted Catholic social doctrine, using it as basis for their political goals, including obtaining the right to vote.

The second important background event is the Mexican Revolution. On the one hand, revolutionary characters and ideals—including the expansion of democracy—proved to be of extreme value for many post-Revolution political factions. Indeed, the party that would command the executive branch of government from 1929 to the year 2000, was the National Revolutionary Party (later named the Institutional Revolutionary Party). By the late 1940s, Catholic women would adduce revolutionary principles to explain why granting them political rights was in line with the perceived promises of the revolution.

photo of a scene from The Mexican Revolution.
The Mexican Revolution. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Third, we must understand the nature of church-state relations in Mexico. The Cristero War (1926-1929) brought the tensions between the church and the post-Revolutionary Mexican state to the battlefield. As the war ended, various Catholic lay organizations that had previously engaged with national politics merged to form The Mexican Catholic Action (ACM) in 1929, during the papacy of Pius XI. Although most members of the ACM were from the middle and upper classes, they also had growing peasants’ divisions and chapters across the country. Some historians have argued that the incorporation of many Catholic lay organizations translated into a general decrease in their political involvement, as Catholic Action groups worldwide were directly under clerical authority.[8] Other historians, such as Kristina Boylan, have found that female members—who were the majority—actually retained and fostered the political streak of earlier Catholic lay groups in Mexico.[9]

Catholic social doctrine, especially papal encyclicals associated with its theory, was widely discussed and promoted in ACM circles. Pope Leo XIII’s famous Rerum Novarum encyclical in 1891 is widely regarded as one of the founding documents of Catholic social doctrine.[10] In it, the church proposed it as a way to inter-class harmony, emphasizing Christian charity.[11] In the ACM, this particular encyclical and a few others were especially celebrated. For example, in a report from the co-secretary of the ACM’s central committee from June 25th, 1939, one of the forms outlined discussed plans for the formation of study circles for social education, in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the Rerum Novarum.[12] Later, Popes Pius XI and Pius XII cited and expanded its philosophy. Aside from his additions to Catholic social doctrine, Pope Pius XI actively encouraged the foundation of Catholic Action groups around the world.

photo of Pius XI, by Nicola Perscheid, circa 1922
Pius XI, by Nicola Perscheid, circa 1922. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Building on Boylan’s research on ACM women’s activism, I proposed that although the women of the Mexican Catholic Action enthusiastically followed the pope and were heavily influenced by Catholic social doctrine, they also actively interpreted, modified, and spread messages from Rome according to their interests. For example, while Rerum Novarum suggested that a woman was “by nature fitted for home-work” in order to raise children, the ACM adopted a wider interpretation of this role.[13] A 1938 article titled “Prepare Yourself for our Assembly,” meant to be read prior to that year’s national assembly of the young woman’s division, argued that all women have social duties, “whether it falls upon them to become mothers or…whether their maternity is purely spiritual.”[14]

By this perception, women should act as mothers towards their own children, but also to anyone who needs a mother, and towards the Mexican nation. Introducing a spiritual maternity into the lexicon reflects how these women managed to marry conservative political views, such as their opposition to divorce and critiques of certain media, with more liberal ones, like their support for suffrage and women’s ability to take up professional roles. The adoption of these seemingly adversary attitudes demonstrates that rather than passively obeying papal precepts, Catholic women actively shaped their meaning. Eventually, and especially as church-state relations became less combative, ideas such as these would become part of the basis for their support of suffrage.

The Mexican Revolution and the fervent patriotism that followed it also underpinned the ACM’s gradual embrace of enfranchisement. In 1947, women in Mexico finally received voting rights, albeit limited to local elections. That same year, the ACM disseminated a bulletin titled My Vote as a Mexican Catholic Woman. It was written by Emma Galán, who had served as president of the ACM’s young women’s division and had thus been part of the ACM’s Central Committee. In the publication, Galán devoted a whole section to “the aggrandizement of Mexico” and declared that voting was “a moral duty in the face of love for the Motherland.”[15] Invoking the Mexican Revolution, the document also reveals that women viewed enfranchisement as the achievement of its goals, supporting the expansion of suffrage to include voting in federal elections as well. To Galán, it was anti-revolutionary and anti-patriotic to abstain from voting or to oppose suffrage.

A column by Hermila Galindo published in a 1917 issue of the magazine Mujer Moderna (Modern Woman).
A column by Hermila Galindo published in a 1917 issue of the magazine Mujer Moderna (Modern Woman). In it, she announced her candidacy for localrepresentative. She also outlined her agenda, which included “defending the interests of [all] mothers,” “matrimonial hygiene,” and “procuring everything which would contribute to her dignity.” It was followed by a short editorial note clarifying that women did not have the right to vote in Mexico. Source: Wikimedia Commons {PD-US-expired}

Galán also offers that not voting was also anti-Catholic. The ACM first adopted this position around 1939, though initially, they didn’t explicitly include women.[16] Eventually, though, political circumstances led to women’s incorporation. The ACM was vocally against the secularization of schools, for example, and since education issues were traditionally viewed as part of women’s realm, they became assets in this political fight. Bringing women into the fold through the vote would, therefore, advance their political goals, goals that would at the same time bring about a Mexico that was in line with Catholic social doctrine. Beyond secularization in schools and other such concerns, there was a persistent belief that unfettered capitalism, and most especially communism, were preventing the ACM’s idealized, Catholic Mexico—one that reflected Catholic social doctrine as they saw it—from flourishing. In this way, giving pious women the right to vote was not against Catholic social doctrine, but a benefit to its spread.

The new version of the Mexican one thousand peso bill includes the image of three revolutionary figures: Carmen Serdán (left), Hermila Galindo (center), and Francisco I. Madero (right).
The new version of the Mexican one thousand peso bill includes the image of three revolutionary figures: Carmen Serdán (left), Hermila Galindo (center), and Francisco I. Madero (right). Serdán was known for her support of Madero, and her participation in the revolution as a writer and member of a revolutionary junta. Galindo was an early supporter of both divorce and suffrage, and served as Venustiano Carranza’s secretary for some time. According to historian Gabriela Cano, she even ran for office before she had that right explicitly in 1917, at least in part to protest this constitutional restriction. The bill has been in circulation since the end of 2020, as per the Mexican Central Bank. The photo was taken by one of the author’s family members.

Overall, I hope my investigation of Catholic women’s discourse surrounding suffrage contributes to the perspective that different groups of women throughout history have defined their role and purpose differently, drawing from multiple theories and doctrines. It is hard, therefore, to apply or even find a general rule that defines all women in a given time period. Instead of attempting to do so, I have carefully analyzed the views of a limited sample—those of the women in the Mexican Catholic Action, who themselves embody a complex intermingling of ideas. These women incorporated both national and international considerations—such as papal precepts, and the revolution’s legacy—into their political consciousness, and in doing so they were denoting the meaning of femininity. Their support for suffrage and women’s work outside the domestic sphere was accompanied by some conservative ideals, especially when it came to divorce, sexuality, and general impropriety, as Espinoza Meléndez found.[17]

They viewed the vote as an essential tool to bring about a very specific version of Mexico, one in which neither unfettered capitalism nor communism took root, as generally validated by Catholic social doctrine. In the context of the Cold War and the unstable post-revolutionary political landscape, these views had important implications. Needless to say, ACM activists’ vision of  Mexico was different than that imagined by other political groups. By recognizing these complexities, we can begin to understand and humanize historical subjects more fully. Considering a diversity of historical opinions, especially those expressed by women, can get us closer to answering questions that historians have asked for decades. I also suggest that the study and characterization of their brand of patriotism, as well as their views of modernity should continue to be researched.

Daniela Roscero Cervantes graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2023, receiving degrees in history and journalism. This article is based on her history thesis, Conservative “feminists”: Women’s Citizenship, Suffrage and Political Representation I Mexican Catholic Discourse, 1940-1953. She is currently enrolled at the University of Chicago to complete a master’s in social sciences with a concentration in history. Her research interests focus on modern Mexico, as well as the history of the borderlands, Mexican-Americans, and U.S.-Mexico relations.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Benson Latin American Library Rare Books collection, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, accessed December 7, 2023, Vatican.va.

Mexican Bulletins Collection. UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico.

Mexican Catholic Action Collection. Iberoamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico. Mexican Bulletins Collection. UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico.

Secondary Sources

Bard, Christine. “L’apotre Sociale et L’ange du Foyer: les Femmes et la C. F. T. C. a Travers Le Nord Social (1920-1936).” Le Mouvement Social no. 165, (1993): 23-41

Barry, Carolina and Enriqueta Tuñón Pablos. “Capítulo 9: Las Sufragistas Mexicanas y su Lucha por el Voto,” In Sufragio Femenino: Prácticas y Debates Políticos, Religiosos y Culturales En Argentina y América edited by Carolina Barry, 250-278. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, 2011.

Blasco Herranz, Inmaculada. “Citizenship and Female Catholic Militancy in 1920s Spain.” Gender & History 19, no. 3 (2007): 441-466.

Boylan, Kristina A. “Gendering the Faith and Altering the Nation: Mexican Catholic Women’s Activism 1917-1940.” In Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, edited by Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan, Gabriela Cano, 199-222. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2007.

Boyle, Joseph. “Rerum Novarum.” In Catholic Social Teaching: A Volume of Scholarly Essays, edited by Gerard V. Bradley and E. Christian Brugger, 69–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Cano, Gabriela. “Mexico: The Long Road to Women’s Suffrage.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Women’s Political Rights, edited by Susan Franceschet, Mona Lena Krook, Netina Tan, 115-127. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Ceballos Ramírez, Manuel. “Historia De Rerum Novarum en Mexico (1891).” In El Catolicismo Social: un tercero en discordia, Rerum Novarum, la “cuestión social” y la movilización de los católicos mexicanos (1891-1911). Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1987.

Dau Novelli, Cecilia. Società, chiesa e associazionismo femminile: l’Unione fra le donne cattoliche d’Italia (1902-1919). Rome: AVE, 1988.

Espinoza Meléndez, Pedro. “Antifeminismo y feminismo católico en México: La Unión Femenina Católica Mexicana y la revista Acción Femenina, 1933-1958.” Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios de Género de El Colegio de México 6, no. 6 (2020). http:// dx.doi.org/10.24201/eg.v6i0.381.

Morton, Ward M. Woman Suffrage in Mexico. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1962.

[1] Christine Bard, “L’apotre Sociale et L’ange du Foyer: les Femmes et la C. F. T. C. a Travers Le Nord Social (1920-1936),” Le Mouvement Social 165 (1993): 23-41.

Cecilia Dau Novelli, Società, chiesa e associazionismo femminile: l’Unione fra le donne cattoliche d’Italia (1902-1919) (AVE: 1988).

Inmaculada Blasco Herranz, “Citizenship and Female Catholic Militancy in 1920s Spain,” Gender & History Vol. 19, No. 3 (2007): 441-466.

[2] Pedro Espinoza Meléndez, “Antifeminismo y feminismo católico en México. La Unión Femenina Católica Mexicana y la revista Acción Femenina, 1933 – 1958.” Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios de Género de El Colegio de México 6, no. 6 (2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.24201/eg.v6i0.381.

[3] Esther Chapa, The right to vote for women, 1936, p.9, Benson Latin American Library Rare Books collection, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas.

[4] Esther Chapa, The right to vote for women, 1936, p.9, Benson Latin American Library Rare Books collection, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas.

[5] Carolina Barry and Enriqueta Tuñón Pablos, “Chapter 9: Mexican Suffragists and Their Fight to Obtain the Vote,” in Sufragio Femenino: Prácticas y Debates Políticos, Religiosos y Culturales En Argentina y América (Caseros, Argentina, Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, 2011), p. 261-265.

[6] Ward M. Morton, Woman Suffrage in Mexico (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1962), p. 21-25.

[7] Gabriela Cano, “Mexico: The Long Road to Women’s Suffrage,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Women’s Political Rights(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), p. 119.

[8] Manuel Ceballos Ramírez, “The Rerum Novarum Encyclical in Mexico (1891)” in El Catolicismo Social: un tercero en discordia, Rerum Novarum, la “cuestión social” y la movilización de los católicos mexicanos (1891-1911) (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1987), 51-67.

[9] Kristina A. Boylan, “Gendering the Faith and Altering the Nation: Mexican Catholic Women’s Activism 1917-1940,” in Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, ed. Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan, Gabriela Cano (North Carolina: Duke University press, 2007), 210-234.

[10] Joseph Boyle, “Rerum Novarum,” in Catholic Social Teaching: A Volume of Scholarly Essay, ed. Gerard V. Bradley and E. Christian Brigger, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 68-89.

[11] Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 22, 24, 30, 61, 63.

[12] Report of the co-secretary for June 25th 1939 Central Committee Meeting, 22 May 1939, 2.2.1.1 Sessions of the Central Committee 1930-1978 box 1, folder 2 1934-1939, Archivo ACM, Iberoamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico.

[13] Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 42.

[14] Anonymous, “Prepare Yourself for Our Assembly,” Juventud, September 1938, 16, Section 6-Publications, box 7, bound book starting 1938, Mexican Catholic Action Collection, Iberoamerican University Historical Archives, Iberoamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico.

[15] E. Emma Galán G., bulletin titled “My Vote as a Mexican Catholic Woman,” 13, 35 Mexican Bulletins Collection, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico.

[16] Notice number twenty-three from the Central Committee, ca. May 1939, 2.2.1.1 Sessions of the Central Committee 1930-1978 box 1, folder 2 1934-1939, Archivo ACM, Iberoamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico.

[17] Pedro Espinoza Meléndez, “Antifeminismo y feminismo católico en México. La Unión Femenina Católica Mexicana y la revista Acción Femenina, 1933 – 1958.” Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios de Género de El Colegio de México 6, no. 6 (2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.24201/eg.v6i0.381.

Banner image via Pexels – Photo by Luis Ariza: https://www.pexels.com/photo/mexican-flag-on-flagpole-13808918/

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Memories of War: Japanese Borderlands Experiences during WWII

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When I visited Rosy Galván Yamanaka’s home in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, she had a bowl of Mexican-style udon prepared for me. I sat down in her dining room and listened as she told me stories of her grandfather, José Ángel Yamanaka, a Japanese migrant who arrived in Mexico at the beginning of the twentieth century. Like many other Japanese migrants, Yamanaka arrived to work in the coal mines of Coahuila. Eventually, he settled in Piedras Negras. This city on the Texas-Mexico border is not just a place with a community of Japanese Mexicans, it is also a border town currently witnessing the arrival of large groups of Honduran, Venezuelan, and other migrants. Though not apparent at first, the overlooked histories of Japanese communities in Mexico and Texas during WWII and the stories of migrants at the border today highlight similar experiences of exclusion, criminalization, and violence.

Rosy (on the right) pictured with her mother (center) and younger brother (left) during a visit to her grandfather’s home in Monclova, Coahuila.
Rosy (on the right) is pictured with her mother (center) and younger brother (left) during a visit to her grandfather’s home in Monclova, Coahuila. Courtesy of Rosy Galván Yamanaka.

After recalling she possessed a few photographs of her family from 1942 to 1945, Galván Yamanaka began telling me how her grandfather had relocated to Monclova, Coahuila, during the war. Her grandfather had moved south to Monclova after Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho ordered all Japanese living near the border to relocate to Mexico City and Guadalajara. The Yamanaka family was separated for three years, but they were fortunate to be in the same state. Other Japanese Mexican families were not able to visit their relatives due to costs and long distances. Galván Yamanaka is aware that her grandfather was forced to leave Piedras Negras and relocate to Monclova during the war because she was born in 1941, at the start of the war. She carries these stories of the war time years because of the time she spent with her grandfather and older family members and she believes it is her duty to share them with the younger generations in her family.

Japanese Mexican memories of WWII are often obscured. Some Japanese-Mexican families do not know what happened to their family members during the war. For many, it took years to discover why their families were forcibly separated by the Mexican state regardless of their Japanese relatives’ citizenship. These memories of war then remain within each Japanese Mexican family. Some Japanese Mexican families do not know about the discrimination faced by their relatives and that they were forced to leave their homes. In fact, most Mexicans are unaware of this part of Mexican history.  

In January 1942, President Ávila Camacho ordered all Japanese migrants and Japanese-Mexican communities near the Pacific coast and the U.S.-Mexico border to relocate to central Mexico. The Mexican government gave Japanese Mexicans 24 hours to evacuate and move to Guadalajara and Mexico City. The government also stopped accepting naturalization applications from Japanese migrants and prevented Japanese nationals and Japanese Mexicans from collecting funds from banks or making any money exchanges.[1]

The government’s response to the Pearl Harbor attack of December 1941 targeted Japanese communities near the U.S.-Mexico border and the Pacific Coast, as these (and other) communities were marked as a “threat” to both the U.S. and Mexico.[2] Japanese Mexicans were responsible for organizing their own travel to Central Mexico and reporting their relocation to the government. Unlike some countries in Latin America, the Mexican government did not work with the U.S. government to deport its Japanese communities to camps in the U.S.[3]

The stories of Japanese incarceration in the U.S. and the forced removal of Japanese Mexicans are often not told together, obscuring the ways both the Mexican and American governments were complicit in the racialization and criminalization of Japanese communities during the war.[4] By telling transborder stories of WWII, we learn Mexican intelligence agencies, along with the FBI, the Border Patrol, Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), and local law enforcement in the Texas-Mexico border, were part of the relocation, removal, and policing of Japanese nationals and Japanese families from the border region. These narratives not only include northern Mexico and Texas in histories of Japanese exclusion and policing during the first half of the twentieth century, but they also illustrate how collaborations between agencies and officials in the U.S. and Mexico have long affected immigrant communities at the border.

US-Mexico border map
US-Mexico border map

For instance, the Crystal City camp in Texas, which opened in 1942, was located 50 miles east of Eagle Pass-Piedras Negras. It was used to hold Japanese Americans, Japanese Latin Americans, and other incarcerees of Italian and German descent. This camp was operated by Border Patrol and INS agents. Still, this history of Japanese incarceration is not often remembered within the histories of criminalization and exclusion in South Texas and the U.S.-Mexico border region. The presence of this Japanese incarceration camp in South Texas, like the displacement of Japanese Mexican communities in northern Mexico, is also not part of the regional communities’ memories. Both cases uncover hidden narratives of surveillance and policing of Japanese communities at the border that began decades prior to WWII.[5] These histories also reflect a longer history of family separation as families of Japanese Americans, Japanese Mexicans, and Japanese Latin Americans were split from their families and forced to move across state and national borders.

“Behind Barbed Wire” poster for the Japanese American National Museum’s Day of Remembrance in 2019.
“Behind Barbed Wire” poster for the Japanese American National Museum’s Day of Remembrance in 2019. Courtesy of the JAMN (https://www.janm.org).

Today, artists and community organizations are highlighting the convergence of past and present forms of incarceration and policing through their work. This drawing by Japanese-American artist Elyse Imoto illustrates the similar criminalization and violence experienced by Japanese communities during the war and of Mexican, Central American, Haitian, Venezuelan, and other migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years.[6] The juxtaposition of one child in black and white and another in color marks a past and a present. One child is painted in black and white and resembles a young Japanese-American girl held during the period of Japanese incarceration in the 1940s. The second child pictured on the right is depicted in color and resembles a young Mexican or Central American child at the U.S.-Mexico border in the present. The background includes a watchtower, buildings that were typically found in incarceration camps, and a “United States Port of Entry” sign with figures that resemble armed Border Patrol agents.

Migrant detention has been on the rise since 2016, and as of August 2022, there have been 372 cases of family separation since 2021.[7] Cases of family separation at the border are a result of policies that criminally convict migrants and separate any parents or adults crossing with children. One might not immediately think the conditions and treatment of migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border today are related to the treatment of Japanese communities and their forced removal during the war. However, those incarcerated in the Crystal City camp and Japanese Mexicans living in the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas were forced to relocate and leave their families and communities behind. The history of Japanese displacement during WWII is seen as distant from the Texas-Mexico border and not related to larger histories of incarceration and violence in the region. Yet, the migrant experiences in South Texas are part of a continuous normalization of violence that is deemed acceptable by the state through its language and policies for “national security” or against possible “threats” or “criminals.” Japanese incarceration near the Texas-Mexico border and the current state policies related to migration and citizenship at the U.S.-Mexico border are part of a process of exclusion that developed as a result of racialized immigration and enforcement policies of the twentieth century.

Tsuru solidarity banner
Courtesy of Tsuru for Solidarity (https://tsuruforsolidarity.org)

In the U.S., groups like Tsuru for Solidarity are trying to change this by sharing their experiences and the stories of family separation during WWII to #StopRepeatingHistory.[8] Tsuru for Solidarity is a project that is made up of Japanese American and Japanese Latin American social justice advocates and their allies, and the group leads campaigns across the U.S. to educate the public on the history of Japanese incarceration and build solidarities with other groups that are targeted by racist immigration policies. Some of the participants are members of Japanese families that were incarcerated during the war or descendants of former incarcerees. They lead campaigns outside of immigrant detention centers across the U.S. to protest conditions in these centers and policies like family separation.

The history of Japanese incarceration, forced removal, and family separation during the war on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border illustrate the legacies of violence that have longer ties to anti-Asian exclusion in the late 19th century. The legacy of these policies reverberates into the present with the criminalization and incarceration of migrants and asylum seekers on the U.S.-Mexico border. Descendants of Japanese families and community activists in the U.S. and Mexico are sharing their memories within their families and communities, thus making sure these stories are not forgotten.

Lucero Estrella is a PhD candidate in American Studies at Yale University, and she is currently a Visiting Research Affiliate at the Institute for Historical Studies (IHS) at UT Austin. Her dissertation is a study of the histories of Japanese migration and community formation in Texas and northeastern Mexico across the 20th century. Her dissertation examines how Japanese mining and farming communities in Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Texas are critical to histories of race, migration, and empire. Using oral histories with Japanese communities on both sides of the border and sources from state and local archives in Mexico, Japan, and the U.S., her work illustrates how Japanese Americans and Japanese Mexicans, and the national and global forces that structured their lives, shaped the histories of Mexico, Japan, Texas, and the U.S.-Mexico border region.

[1] María Elena Ota Mishima, Siete migraciones japonesas en México 1890-1978. (México: El Colegio de México, 1982), 97.

[2] The surveillance of Japanese communities in northern Mexico was not new, and U.S. surveillance of Japanese settlements in Mexico between the 1920s and the 1940s were fueled by U.S. state anxieties over the expansion of Japanese empire and fear of “yellow peril.” See the works of scholars Eiichiro Azuma, Jerry Garcia, and Sergio Hernández Galindo for more: Sergio Hernandez Galindo, La guerra contra los japoneses en Mexico durante la segunda guerra mundial: Kiso Tsuru y Masao Imuro, migrantes vigilados, First edition. (Mexico City: Itaca), 2011; Jerry Garcia. Looking like the Enemy: Japanese Mexicans, the Mexican State, and US Hegemony, 1897-1945. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014; Azuma, Eiichiro. “Japanese Immigrant Settler Colonialism in the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands and the U.S. Racial-Imperialist Politics of the Hemispheric “Yellow Peril”.” Pacific Historical Review 83, no. 2 (2014).

[3] Countries like Peru, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Venezuela worked with the U.S. to forcibly deport and incarcerate Japanese Latin Americans in camps in the U.S. Some Japanese living in Mexico, such as high-level officials, diplomats, and a small number of Japanese nationals and Japanese-Mexicans living near the border were incarcerated in the U.S. For more on Japanese incarceration in Mexico see Selfa A. Chew, Uprooting Community: Japanese Mexicans, World War II, and the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2015).

[4] Scholars have debated the use of “internment” and “incarceration” among other words like “detention” and “confinement.” Densho, a Japanese American non-profit organization based in Seattle, “encourage the use of “incarceration,” except in the specific case of Japanese Americans detained by the Army or DOJ.” Historian Connie Chiang notes that incarceration conveys the lack of freedom faced by those of Japanese ancestry and I use “incarceration” for this reason. See “Terminology – Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment.” Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project. https://densho.org/terminology/#incarceration; Connie Y. Chiang. Nature Behind Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of the Japanese American Incarceration. (Oxford University Press. 2018).

[5] Concerns over Japanese and other Asian migrants bypassing immigration restrictions and crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to enter the U.S. extended across the border into Northern Mexico and were fueled by a transborder Yellow Peril. These concerns were not only about unauthorized Japanese immigration into the U.S. but also about large Japanese colonies forming in Mexico and Japanese purchasing large concessions in Mexico. See Eiichiro Azuma, “Japanese Immigrant Settler Colonialism in the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands and the U.S. Racial-Imperialist Politics of the Hemispheric ‘Yellow Peril,’” Pacific Historical Review 83, no. 2 (2014): 255–76.

[6] This drawing by Imoto was used as the poster for the Japanese American National Museum’s Day of Remembrance in 2019. This was used as the cover to their program as well as the image used to promote the in-person event hosted at JANM in Los Angeles.

[7] “Biden is Still Separating Migrant Kids from Their Families.” Texas Observer. November 21, 2022.  https://www.texasobserver.org/the-biden-administration-is-still-separating-kids-from-their-families/.

[8] For more on Tsuru for Solidarity and their campaigns and efforts see: https://tsuruforsolidarity.org.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

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