ABSTRACT
This chapter, based on evidence found in more than 100 case files located in the state archives of Guanajuato, looks at how state officials adjudicated appeals by youth who sought emancipation to be able to marry. The case files show that the population accepted the government’s power to morally regulate marital affairs, which bound the state and society in Guanajuato in a hegemonic relationship that at once preserved and was enabled by institutional continuity. The chapter, as it elucidates this thesis, thus offers an intimate glimpse into everyday life and governance in Mexico following the war against the United States in 1846–1848. In so doing it challenges the conclusion reached by contemporary social critics, and repeated by subsequent generations of historians, that the conflict with the U.S. plunged Mexico into dysfunction. Notwithstanding the upheaval that gripped Mexico, residents of Guanajuato, perpetuated order through their daily interactions with government officials.
