ABSTRACT

This chapter explores how elite concerns filtered into the camps of indigenous insurgents, who then gave new meanings to issues of constitutionalism and independence. Constitutionalism and a protonationalist rhetoric entered into village discourse and helped sustain the guerrilla war through the long years of royalist ascendancy. For the villagers of northern Veracruz, the insurgency offered them opportunities to favorably resolve issues of political power in two critical areas: within the pueblos themselves, and between the pueblos and the state. During the colonial era, Papantla, located on the Gulf of Mexico in northern Veracruz, was the seat of a subdelegacion and the center of a prosperous trade in vanilla, maize, wax, and, to a lesser extent, sugar. The chapter also explores how recalcitrant villagers reacted to the Spanish constitution promulgated in 1820. The jockeying for power between government and rebels reveals how rural insurgents perceived their struggle and how these perceptions had changed since 1810.