In 1983, the governor of Veracruz, Lic. Agustín Acosta Lagunes, a member of a prominent landowning family of central Veracruz, initiated a project to publish a series of works on modern Veracruz. Since the publication of Manuel B. Trens’s classic six-volume work in 1950, no comprehensive history of the state has been published. Under an agreement signed between the Colegio de México and the state of Veracruz, a team of researchers collaborated in the researching and writing of four works on two specific time periods, when Veracruz was the capital of the nation, and two well-known revolutionary leaders, Cándido Aguilar and Adalberto Tejeda. Seven historians from the Colegio de México and the Universidad Veracruzana gathered materials from the National Archives, Defense Archives, Foreign Ministry Archives, and Carranza Archives in Mexico City as well as the valuable municipal and notarial archives of the cities of Veracruz, Jalapa, Orizaba, and Córdoba to weave together a detailed accounting of the political and social struggles of modern Veracruz.
At least four themes can be singled out in these fine monographs which provide some sense of continuity to Veracruz history since the Reform Era. First, Veracruz has in reality three geographical regions, each with a distinct history. The less-developed Huasteca of the north as well as the south were only marginally involved in political events. The center dominated the state’s economy because of the commercial activities of Mexico’s principal port, Veracruz, and the industrial complexes around Orizaba, Córdoba, and Jalapa. These four volumes concentrate on events in this region. Secondly, the economic and geographical importance of the port determined the course of historical events in certain critical periods. Both Benito Juárez and Venustiano Carranza retreated with their beleaguered forces to establish governments in Veracruz so they could be assured of a steady source of revenue as well as easy access to communication lanes. The third theme found in these works is Veracruz’s strong liberal tradition. Carmen Blázquez Domínguez traces its roots to the powerful commercial classes who were strong supporters of laissez-faire, anticlericalism, private property, nationalism, and the primordial role of education for a developing nation. This liberal tradition provided the foundations for the emergence of a revolutionary movement led by such famous Jarochos as Cándido Aguilar, Adalberto Tejeda, Heriberto Jara, Gabriel Gavira, Rafael Tapia, Herón Proal, and Úrsulo Galván. One should add, however, that an equally powerful conservative movement found fertile ground here and financed and supported such prominent political figures as Teodoro Dehesa, Félix Díaz, and Adolfo de la Huerta.
Carmen Blázquez has ably demonstrated the crucial role played by Veracruz during the War of Reform in Liberal military and economic strategies to overthrow the Conservative regime. She first delineates how well-known Veracruzanos, in particular, Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, Ignacio de la Llave, José María Mata, and Manuel Gutiérrez Zamora, became leading figures in the Liberal revolt against Félix Zuloaga. For three years, Governor Gutiérrez Zamora and the powerful merchant class extended political and financial support to the embattled Juaristas in the port. The author has uncovered excellent census data in the municipal and notarial archives with which she has reconstructed a tableau of the socioeconomic conditions existing in urban and rural Veracruz during the civil war. This incisive monograph might have benefited from another chapter placing the Veracruz Liberal movement within the historical perspective of the entire Liberal experience before and after the War of Reform.
Berta Ulloa’s scholarly treatment of Veracruz as the Carrancista capital can be seen as an outgrowth of her other outstanding political and diplomatic studies on the Constitutionalist period. Her first chapters review the diplomatic exchanges between President Woodrow Wilson and Venustiano Carranza, who is portrayed as the true nationalist determined to prevent U. S. intervention in Mexican internal affairs. While the most important military battles the Carrancistas waged against the Zapatistas and Villistas took place in other parts of the republic, Ulloa contends the Carrancistas remained true to their promises to implement social reform in Veracruz. In particular, the land reform process commenced, albeit slowly, with the granting of 11 provisional possessions as well as the provisional distribution of parcels to members of a cavalry regiment in 1915. Carrancistas were most willing to allow labor unions to organize and to air publicly their grievances given their participation in the red battalions. Whether Carranza and Provisional Governor Cándido Aguilar actually instrumented significant social change or simply created a political environment more conducive to social reform is still open to question. What Ulloa’s study documents well is that war created intolerable living conditions with inflated rents, food scarcities, and the interruption of transportation, forcing the Carrancistas to ingratiate themselves with the suffering lower and middle classes. Cándido Aguilar played an important role in the Carrancista movement during this period.
Ricardo Corso Ramírez, José G. González Sierra, and David A. Skerritt of the Centro de Investigaciones Históricas set out to study the life and thought of Cándido Aguilar in order to gain a better comprehension of three phases of Veracruz history: the initial stage of the revolutionary process, the political and ideological consolidation of Carrancismo, and the postrevolutionary restructuring of the state. As early as May 1910 the self-educated ranchero emerged as one of the major military leaders of the Maderista rebellion in central Veracruz. These credentials most certainly influenced Carranza to appoint him commander of the Division of the East in the campaign against Victoriano Huerta. Between May 1914 and January 1916 he served not only as the major military leader but also as the provisional governor of Veracruz, forging it into a bastion of Constitutionalism.
The authors argue that Aguilar viewed the liberal state, much like Salvador Alvarado, as an intermediary to curb the excesses of capitalism by regulating social relations. Their evidence demonstrates that Aguilar intervened to assist the factory owners far more than organized labor, for the promotion of economic prosperity. Taking issue with Fowler Salamini and Falcón, they assert that Aguilar’s agrarian reform program was impressive given the war conditions, and that it was motivated by economic as well as political objectives. To be sure, the breaking up of the Esteva haciendas to create a new class of small farmers was economically motivated, but it ultimately involved an attack on the political power of the old landowning class. The most important but too lengthy chapter, covering Aguilar’s tenure as constitutional governor between 1916 and 1920, details how the Veracruz “strong man” simultaneously served as chief of military operations, minister of foreign relations, and minister plenipotentiary for the Carranza regime. Most importantly, he became the defender of Mexican sovereignty after Villa’s raid on Columbus and in regard to the interpretation of Article 27. The authors portray him as the chief trouble shooter of the administration, but they are not entirely successful in grappling with the question of whether Aguilar was simply the mouthpiece of his father-in-law or acting on his own free will. Aguilar returned from exile after the Agua Prieta revolt, reentered politics as a Tejedista, and later became a loyal PNR supporter. Despite his outspokenness, the authors portray him as a politician who followed the rules of the game, in most instances, to create his own power base in Córdoba within the official party structure.
The final book of this foursome is in many respects the most impressive, for Romana Falcón has written with Soledad García Morales an exemplary political biography of the idealistic Mexican revolutionary, Adalberto Tejeda. Although both authors have previously studied the Veracruz statesman, this new work represents a further elaboration and modification of their previous interpretations. In addition to the previously mentioned sources, they drew on the voluminous and exceedingly rich personal archives of the colonel, as well as information supplied by the family. Their objective was to write a political biography which would elucidate the central role played by Tejeda in the revolutionary process, and, in particular, in agrarian reform. The authors present two levels of analysis: one focuses on Tejeda’s political ties with local caciques and urban leaders, while the second concerns his relationship with the central government. They contend that Tejeda displayed many similarities with other political leaders of the 1920s in his exercise of public office except for one factor; he refused to exercise the use of force. In addition, he distinguished himself as a statesman by his honesty and his refusal to compromise his socialist principles. On the other hand, Falcón quite rightly argues that Tejeda was never able to exercise the kind of political hegemony achieved by traditional caudillos such as Saturnino Cedillo, because Veracruz was a much more highly developed and complex state than San Luis Potosí. Tejeda was neither a charismatic nor a popular leader but rather a politician who might be best described in terms of modernization theory as nationalistic, urban, literate, secular, apersonal, and achievement oriented. As Falcón clearly states, his style of governing was much more complex, precarious, and, at the same time, ambitious than that of the traditional agrarian leaders in the sense that he brought together two dissimilar agrarian movements under Tejedismo in the 1920s: paternalistic Indian caciquismo of the remote sierra regions and the more institutionalized, modern peasant league of Úrsulo Galván.
Certain chapters in particular help us to gain a more profound knowledge of Tejeda as a revolutionary as well as a statesman. The fascinating chapter written by Soledad García on Tejeda’s childhood in the remote sierra canton of Chicontepec dramatizes how his mother’s Indian heritage was just as influential in his formation as his father’s ties to the Porfirista elites. Falcón reemphasizes this theme by contending that the success of his military career in the Huasteca during the revolution was probably linked more to his ties with Indian caciques than to his relations with the Constitutionalist movement. To me, chapter 4 is the heart and soul of this book. Here Falcón analyzes Tejeda’s second gubernatorial administration between 1928 and 1932, in which he cements a power base strong enough to permit him to begin to implement his socialist vision in the areas of agrarian reform, labor reform, education, and anticlericalism. She also expertly explains the vulnerability of his political power because of the central government’s distrust of his radicalism and its support of his local opponents. I only regret that Tejeda’s years as cabinet minister under Calles were not fully treated to round out this splendid biography.
These four monographs have provided us with new perspectives on the complexities of Veracruz’s political history since the Reform Era. Let us hope they will inspire studies on the Porfiriato and the postrevolutionary era so that we will be able to construct a more comprehensive view of the state’s rich history.
