Royalist Counterinsurgency and the Continuity of Rebellion: Guanajuato and Michoacán, 1813-20

In three pitched battles royalist commanders defeated the revolutionary movement led by Padre Miguel Hidalgo and Captain Ignacio Allende only four months after it had begun. Subsequently, between 1811 and 1814, the royalists, particularly in Puebla during the winter of 1811-12, held back Padre José María Morelos’s attempts to revive the revolution by means of a different regional base. In 1814 and 1815 they began the process of expelling insurgent forces from the fringes of the central plateau. Following the defeats of Hidalgo and Morelos, the movement disintegrated into autonomous rebel bands. The remaining leadership singularly failed to establish any convincing provisional government. The defeat of these bands became the precondition of the revival of the political objectives of the Mexican elite, whose pressure in 1808 for autonomy within the Bourbon imperial framework had provoked the gachupín coup of September 15–16. In view of the absence of any principal rebel army after the elimination of Morelos in 1815, the term best applied to the struggle with government forces is insurgency. Rebel bands, frequently indistinguishable from bandit groups, sought to undermine local sources of royalist strength through guerrilla actions. These regional theaters of war required an opposing strategy on the part of the government, which involved the development of techniques of counterinsurgency.¹ We shall examine here the struggle for control of the intendancies of Guanajuato and Michoacán, which were the original base areas of the insurrection.²

The Development of a Royalist Response to Insurgency

Royalist counterinsurgency, especially after 1812, operated at a series of levels, which, at least conceptually, were designed to coincide.³ Even before Brigadier Félix María Calleja took office as viceroy in March 1813, royalist commanders had already outlined the major themes of counterinsurgency strategy, which comprised measures of internal security and military techniques. Indeed, the political crisis of 1808 had encouraged the viceregal government in the following year to strengthen its internal security agencies by the creation of a Junta de Seguridad y Buen Orden. Following the outbreak of the Hidalgo rising in the Bajío, Viceroy Francisco Venegas sponsored the creation of a volunteer force in October 1810, drawn from the urban elites and to be known as the Distinguished Patriot Battalion of Ferdinand VII. To these and to subsequent royalist volunteer forces fell the task of holding the intermediary ground between areas that had not been affected by the insurrection and the front-line military zones where the vanguard of the royalist army operated. Early in the struggle, government emphasis fell upon the creation of self-defense forces. Venegas, on January 31, 1811, called for a force of “respectable citizens” drawn from among the “owners or lessees of haciendas” and prominent townsmen for the protection of public order and for the security of the highways. Calleja, then commandant general of the Army of the Center, took up this call, which became fundamental to his Military-Political Plan of June 8, 1811.⁴ During the following month, after his return from Guanajuato, Calleja formally constituted a force of fifty-two men as the “Volunteers of Ferdinand VII,” to defend the dangerously exposed silver-mining city from marauding rebel bands lodged in the surrounding sierras. Similarly, Calleja sponsored the formation of a dragoon company of fifty mounted men in the Real del Marfil above the city at the cost of the local hacendados, a further company of sixty in the Real de Valenciana at the cost of the mine, and a third company of sixty-five men in the Real de Mellado.⁵

Despite the initial defeats of Hidalgo and Allende’s forces, the military situation in the intendancies of Guanajuato and Michoacán continued to deteriorate. In no sense did the demise of the original leaders signify that the royalists had accomplished an effective pacification of these regions. The high level of rebel activities throughout 1811 indicated the urgency of government action. Small rebel bands continued to harrass towns in the rear of the royalist armies operating in the field to prevent peaceful transit on the roads and economic recovery. Guanajuato’s city councillors, representatives of the local plutocracy of mine-operators, merchant-financiers, and hacienda-owners, described these bands of gente popular as “thieves, murderers, and delinquents,” and they repeatedly appealed for effective military force to extinguish them. So serious was the danger that a rebel band broke into the city in January and, joined by a large crowd, attacked the intendant’s residence, and tried to set free prisoners from the municipal jail. The bands led by Cruces with men from San Miguel and San Luis de la Paz and the assistance of “innumerable Indian and popular elements from all over the intendancy threatened the city in February. A local cleric, Rafael García, known as “Garcilita,” led a band from the Salamanca district, and on January 17 looted 3,800 pesos from private and public sources there. In response, a mob in nearby Irapuato rampaged through that town on the following night. Continued unrest in the Bajío towns and countryside helped to explain the emigration of wealthy citizens to Querétaro or Mexico City. The insurgency contributed greatly to the disruption of the network of mining finance in which many of them had been involved. Although by the summer of 1811 the violence appeared to have abated in the north and center of the intendancy from León to San Miguel, insurgent bands from Valle de Santiago still threatened Irapuato. Furthermore, the arrival of the rebel chieftains, José Antonio Torres and Juan Rubio Huidobro, had turned the southern town of Pénjamo into a major insurgent base.⁶

The evident participation of the lower strata of the population in the insurrection, particularly in the Bajío, Michoacán, and Guadalajara regions, and the resulting deaths of Europeans at rebel hands, contributed to the initial royalist sense of confusion and outrage. Indeed, the dissident provincial bourgeoisie, which itself had stirred the fires of insurrection, became alarmed at the extent and intensity of the violence it had initially encouraged. Much of this support probably came from the numerous ranchero sector, which in the Bajío, at any rate, had encountered during the half century before 1810 the problem of lack of available land at a time of population growth, rising prices, and relative decline in incomes. Rising land values had led to an increase in rents and the curtailment of traditional customs and privileges. Tenant restlessness combined with a surplus of agricultural manpower to create a potentially volatile situation.⁷ Economic depression, war blockade, and foreign competition spread this unrest through the textile sector, particularly the wool manufacturing towns of Querétaro and San Miguel, precisely the two centers in which the original conspirators had prepared their insurrection.⁸

The demands of counterinsurgency ensured that military commanders would come directly into contact with the village and small town populace, with a regularity and an intimacy to which few of them had previously been accustomed. At first they had little to offer but retribution. In cases of recently reconquered territory, royalist commanders frequently applied draconian measures designed to terrorize the suspect population into returning to allegiance to the crown. Late in 1810 and throughout 1811, Brigadier José de la Cruz practiced such measures in Huichiapan in operations against the bandit groups led by the Villagrán family, who had joined the insurrection, and in Michoacán and Guadalajara.⁹ In Valladolid, numerous partisans of Hidalgo had revealed themselves during the insurgent occupation. Groups of Europeans had been done to death by night outside the city, apparently at Hidalgo’s orders, during the second rebel occupation of the city. Before entry, Cruz threatened to “put every inhabitant to the knife, with the sole exception of women and children, and to set fire to the entire city, should even one shot be fired at him, or the life of any European taken.” No evidence exists that anyone was killed in this way. In Guadalajara, where the rebels had put to death some 350 Europeans in a ravine outside the city, Calleja established a Junta de Seguridad Pública after the victory at Puente de Calderón. This tribunal would decide who should be pardoned and who should not.¹⁰

When he took office in Guadalajara as captain general of Nueva Galicia in February 1811, Cruz ordered the surrender of all arms within twenty- four hours on pain of death. Such policies were designed to deter further opposition through creating an example. Terror tactics—and there were many instances—could not in the long run provide lasting solutions to the problem of an internal breakdown of order. Villages caught between rebel pressure and royalist reprisals sought protection of the stronger. As a result, royalist authority could only become effective in the countryside if government forces could guarantee the security of village inhabitants from rebel depredations and terrorist tactics. Conversely, rebel authority would be recognized if it were capable of imposing order in the locality. For a long time during the 1810s neither side permanently gained the upper hand, with the result that the sufferings of village folk became compounded.¹¹

Iturbide in Guanajuato, 1813-14: The “Organization” Policy

Newly in office in March 1813, Calleja transferred the operational focus of counterinsurgency from Mexico City to the regions. On April 27, 1813, he appointed the young creole officer from Valladolid (Morelia), Agustín de Iturbide, to the military command of the province of Guanajuato.¹² Iturbide’s controversial career spanned the period until his dismissal in September 1816. His rise to prominence had begun with the defeat of the rebel guerrilla Albino García, whom he had executed in Valle de Santiago on June 4, 1812. Promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel two days later, Iturbide rose still further with the capture of the rebel-held island of Zacapu on February 28, 1813, and the defeat of the Rayón brothers on April 16 at Salvatierra, where 350 rebels had been killed. This action encouraged Calleja to appoint Iturbide provisional colonel of the newly reorganized Infantry Regiment of Celaya, a force of 1,200 men recruited in the Bajío. The viceroy then detached the intendancies of Guanajuato and Michoacán from Gruz’s sphere of jurisdiction, placing the latter under General Diego García Conde and the former under Iturbide on September 5, 1813.¹³ Iturbide’s mandate included the implementation of Calleja's Civil and Military Regulation of March 5, 1813. Calleja’s policy was to concentrate army divisions in strategic localities with the specific object of rooting out the rebel bands. Once more the accent fell on self-defense, though in collaboration with regular forces. In every hacienda, rancho, village, and town such units were to be formed. In the urban case, the viceroy required all citizens of note to enlist in cavalry or infantry corps. Sustained by a special fund or forced loan, a body of between 100 and 150 men would be on active service daily, with the object of policing their territory under instructions from local military commanders and civil administrators. On the haciendas a similar force of fifty men under a captain was to be raised by the owners. Calleja had no doubt that the military power was to be supreme, a decision that alone testified to the serious impact already made upon the civil administration in the locality by the insurgency.¹⁴ Revival of economic life depended upon the establishment of a military presence in every hacienda and town in Guanajuato.¹⁵

In northern districts such as Dolores and San Miguel, and in the southern areas of Salamanca, Valle de Santiago, and Pénjamo, the insurgency persisted. Iturbide and Calleja worked in close contact to extinguish it. The means adopted consisted of what royalist commanders described as the “organization” of villages, towns, and estates. In effect, the “organization” policy derived logically from Calleja’s plans of 1811 and 1813. “Organization” meant fortification by digging a ditcb around the village or rancho in question and the garrison of troops, generally volunteers, on major estates and in towns. It involved an obligation on the part of chief citizens to play an active part in their own defense, in order to “contain the excesses of the lower orders.” This took the form of the creation of urban companies financed by local notables.

In effect, royalist commanders expected local property-owners to maintain a self-defense force, ancillary to the regular army and the colonial militia, as their contribution to the elimination of disorders brought by insurgency. The “organization” policy constituted the social dimension of royalist counterinsurgency strategy.¹⁶

The gradual implementation of this policy amounted to a second royalist offensive in the Bajío, designed to established definitive control over the towns. This offensive complemented Calleja’s first campaign of October 1810–January 1811, which had recovered the cities initially lost to Hidalgo and Allende. As we shall see, a third royalist offensive, designed to control the countryside, eventually followed. Iturbide played a major role in both these latter offensives at least until the summer of 1816. The third offensive would continue into 1820.¹⁷

More than two and a half years of civil strife had changed opinions even in such rebel strongholds as San Miguel, Salamanca, and Pénjamo. Iturbide, in consequence, found their inhabitants responsive to “organization.” Indeed, the insurgency faced property-owners and merchants with the prospect of harrassment by a multiplicity of lawless bands roving the countryside and penetrating the outskirts of poorly defended towns. Shortage of men and ammunition, however, continued to delay the organization of the above towns. Iturbide envisaged a further 800-1,000 men and some 600 rifles. Although he pointed to the townspeople’s apparent willingness to cover the cost, the viceroy held a less optimistic view and, instead, drew attention to their long record of insurgent sympathies. In contrast, Léon, Irapuato, and Silao had already been successfully pacified. Calleja threatened recalcitrant towns with a fate similar to that of Zitácuaro, the seat of insurgent authority in Michoacán, which had been razed on January 5, 1812.¹⁸

In his implementation of Calleja’s policies, Iturbide sought to establish as his central principle that haciendas should defend themselves. As supreme commander, he urged upon hacendados the advantage of raising and paying for mobile forces capable of deterring or repelling insurgent marauders. He intended to place such detachments under full military discipline and expected them to operate in coordination with the regular army. Hacienda owners such as the Conde de Valenciana and the Marqués de Rayas agreed in November 1813 to raise respectively 180 and 120 men from their estates in order to garrison their properties.¹⁹ The trouble spots of the Bajío, chiefly Pénjamo, Acámbaro, and Maravatío, would become the testing grounds of such policies. In the Pénjamo district, a center of rebel activity from the beginning of the insurrection, lay the important haciendas of Cuerámaro and Corralejo, at that time threatened by the proximity of the Rayón brothers.²⁰ Iturbide attached major importance to the effective occupation and organization of the town of Pénjamo itself, especially since defense of the district’s estates opened the prospect of regular grain supply to the silver-mining zone of Guanajuato.²¹

A similar wariness of the Rayons’ presence in the Silao region precipitated the reorganization of Salamanca. This defensive object combined with the offensive strategy of driving the rebels into a narrower area and to less agreeable terrain, so that they would no longer be able to threaten lines of communication. During the summer of 1813, the rebels evidently still controlled a substantial part of the intendancy, with the result that Iturbide’s forces could not protect even those villages already organized. Insurgent bands continued to present serious dangers. On June 29, a force of some 600 men attacked San Felipe in the northern sierra, a town in the process of organization under the nominal direction of the Conde de San Mateo Valparaíso. In Cuerámaro, Valle de Santiago, Yuriria, and Salvatierra, the rebel groups, described by Iturbide as “bandits, ” had spread their message with insistence and appeared, in fact, to be expecting the imminent arrival of Morelos from the tierra caliente of Michoacán with 10,000 men.²²

During the insurrection, the estates of Corralejo, Cueráramo, Jalpa, Cañada de Negros, Tupátaro, Santa Ana Pacueco, Frías, and others remained vulnerable. Inability to recover revenues and cereal resources deprived royalist commanders of the financial means to achieve their strategic goals. Rebel activity delayed the systematic organization of the Bajío towns from San Miguel to Piedragorda, and Acámbaro to Salamanca.²³ In fact, Ramón Rayón’s capture of Jerécuaro early in September 1813 enabled the insurgents to establish control over all that district’s estates as well as those in Acámbaro, a town that Cruz in 1810 had threatened to reduce to ashes for its obstinate resistance. Rebel successes, however, did not signify a unified control within the insurgent movement. On the contrary, Rayón himself complained that rebel bands stole maize according to their inclination, with the result that he had tried in vain to stop them by setting up a cavalry column of a hundred men of his own.²⁴

Attacks such as those on towns like Jerécuaro, on the border between Gnanajuato and Michoacán, or on positions in the process of fortification, like San Felipe, did not prove to be isolated incidents. They formed part of a general, though scarcely coordinated, rebel attempt to frustrate the royalist pacification strategy before it took root. On the morning of April 17, 1814, for instance, a band of 800 insurgents under Rafael Rayón, Matías Ortiz (“El Pachón”), and other commanders attacked San Miguel through the streets, which had not yet been fortified, and penetrated well into the town center. The attack lasted for just under three hours, until the rebels withdrew in the direction of Dolores, leaving 40 of their number dead and more than 100 prisoners, most of them wounded.²⁵ The assault on San Miguel, repulsed as it was, pointed to the hazards of underestimating the capacity of insurgent bands even into the spring of 1814. Indeed, Iturbide himself had written six months previously that no formidable rebel bands existed any longer in the Bajío capable of challenging any garrison force of 140 men or more. He had, in fact, estimated that San Miguel needed only 150 men to defend it, a calculation that could not have foreseen the appearance of 800 rebels. Local citizens had seven months previously expressed their willingness to contribute as much as 20,000 pesos for arms and uniforms for an effective garrison, but weapons would have to come from outside since Iturbide had systematically destroyed the workshops and forges of San Miguel and other rebel towns earlier in the insurrection.²⁶ The royalists still had not completed the fortifications of San Miguel and those of the village of Chamácuero to the south by the end of April 1814, though Iturbide expected their termination shortly. Only at the end of June could he report the completion of the organization of San Miguel. He attributed the delay to the persistent chore of convoy duty between Querétaro and León, and hinted at an unwillingness to cooperate on the part of the Michoacán royalist forces, which, in his view, had failed to scour the border region between Tacámbaro and Puruándiro.²⁷

Delay and frustration drove Iturbide to lose his patience. He threatened to adopt a series of drastic measures in order to eliminate persistent foci of resistance. Designed to root out insurgent sympathizers in the villages and to punish rebel attacks on organized positions, such tactics amply confirmed Iturbide’s increasing reputation for high-handedness. They involved the compilation of statistics of able-bodied men between fifteen and sixty years of age in the villages and small properties (rancherías), in order to discover the names of absentees. By individual interviews with each inhabitant royalist, commanders sought to elicit the names of those who had joined insurgent bands, on pain of ten years in the presidios, of fines or execution for perjury, or of fifty lashes for female perjurors. Iturbide promised unannounced visits by troops to the locality.²⁸ In the case of insurgent attacks on organized villages, Iturbide viewed seriously the threat to undermine royalist pacification strategy. The insurgents had threatened to kill everyone found within three to four leagues of a government village, to seize livestock, and to lay waste the farm lands. Such a policy threw royalist counterinsurgency strategy into jeopardy. It confronted the rural population with a terror equal to that posed by royalist forces. In order to prevent its realization, Iturbide threatened to execute one-tenth of the wives—already interned in Guanajuato and Irapuato—of rebel leaders and soldiers. Calleja refused to sanction such a measure on the grounds that it would prove to be counterproductive.²⁹

No evidence has come to light that Iturbide systematically executed women related to insurgents. According to one authority, however, Iturbide did order the execution of Tomasa Esteves in Irapuato for attempting to lead astray royalist soldiers and for encouraging them to join the rebels. Locally well known, this female insurgent came from Salamanca.³⁰ It appears, however, that Iturhide had issued a previous order from the Hacienda de Villachuato on October 27, 1814, which had led to his arrest of more than a hundred women in Pénjamo. The order provided for the separation of insurgents from loyal inhabitants and for the arrest of mothers, wives, and children of identified rebels who had not departed within three days from royalist-held villages. Seventeen of these women, appealing nearly two years later for their release from custody in Irapuato and Guanajuato, complained that at the time they had had no knowledge of Iturbide’s orders. According to their spokeswomen, the women, forced to walk to prison under escort, had endured privations. Iturbide, at that time in Mexico City to answer an array of charges of misconduct leveled against him, defended his measures on the grounds that they had offered the means of vigorously opposing the rebels. In his view, the result of this policy had led to the transfer of a large number of families that worked on hacienda lands or in ranchos to villages defended by troops. Irapuato, he argued, provided a case in point. There he had arrested “many more than a hundred women,” of whom only the seventeen petitioners remained in custody. Though even some of them had since been released, the rest would stay until their husbands applied for amnesty and took up residence in “organized townships or villages” garrisoned by royalist troops. According to Iturbide, the two authors of the women s petition, Francisca Uribe and María Bribiesca, were sisters of rebel chieftains, hardened cases, who should not be let out. A second women’s representation stated that Iturbide had arrested more than 300 women at the Rancho de Barajas in Pénjamo. The women appealed to Viceroy Apodaca to summon Iturbide to explain his “arbitrary and illegal” actions, which they held to be nothing less than a naked reprisal for rebel actions. Viceroy Juan Ruiz de Apodaca, Calleja’s successor, in this as in other instances, did not uphold Iturbide’s position, but, instead, on February 18, 1817, ordered the women’s release into the houses of trustworthy families.³¹

The Problem of the Border Zones

As a result of frequent lack of coordination between regional commanders, rebel bands continued to find havens in the border zones between the provinces.³² Such was the case with the borders between Guanajuato and Michoacán and between Guanajuato and Nueva Galicia. The vulnerability of these zones to rebel penetration exposed a serious weakness in Galleja’s regional strategy of counterinsurgency. Each provincial commander attended strictly to his own sphere of command, which radiated outward either from the provincial capital cities or from wherever he and his largest force happened to be at the time. In effect, the power of radiation diminished the farther it traveled from its center. No commander operated to capacity in the border zones. In Michoacán, hostility toward the royalist cause still simmered within the provincial capital and frustrated active attention to the countryside, let alone to the border regions. Five rebel attacks on the city had already been repulsed between May 1811 and December 1813. In the latter, Morelos himself, together with his best troops and commanders, Nicolás Bravo and Padre Mariano Matamoros, had advanced northward from the tierra caliente to join forces with the local rebel bands.³³ From the beginning of the insurrection, bands led by Manuel Muñiz, Padre Luciano Navarrete, José Antonio Torres (“El Ranchero”), Manuel Villalongín, and others controlled the Michoacán countryside and confined government control to the limits of a provincial capital that contained no more than one-third of its prewar inhabitants.³⁴ Iturbide and the military commander in Michoacán, Brigadier Ciriaco de Llano, joined forces to defeat at Puruarán on January 5, 1814, a rebel force of 3,000, which had chosen to fight a pitched battle for the first time since Puente de Calderón. Morelos gave battle against the advice of his principal commanders. The defeat, which resulted in the capture and execution of Matamoros, proved to be a disaster for the insurgent cause, and enabled the royalists for the first time to consider seriously the task of eliminating the rebel bands.³⁵

The border zones posed the most obvious problem for the royalist military, particularly the districts of Acámbaro on the Guanajuato side and Maravatío on the Michoacán side. Their location on the trade routes and their resources in silver, lead, copper, sulphur, and sugar, not to mention wheat, made them prime insurgent targets. For most of the decade the economy of Acámbaro remained in recession. Hacienda-owners, merchants, farm workers, and villagers all testified in September 1816 to the seriousness of rebel depredations. In consequence, they found it difficult to raise sufficient funds to maintain local self-defense forces.³⁶ Government troops, therefore, sought to forestall rebel seizure and fortification of exposed border positions such as Acámbaro and other Guanajuato towns—Yuriria, Salvatierra, and the more northerly Valle de Santiago, the town of San Pedro Piedragorda near the Nueva Galicia border, and the Michoacán town of Puruándiro. More than likely the strategy employed to deal with this problem originated with Calleja or Cruz rather than with Iturbide himself, who still remained very much their junior in rank and experience. This policy involved the formation of a defensive line passing eastward from Apaseo at the Querétaro end of the Bajío, northwestward through Irapuato to León, and ultimately to Lagos in Nueva Galicia. Iturbide for a time pressed energetically for the construction of a military cordon across the edges of the tierra templada, which could serve to push the rebels southward into the tierra caliente. The royalists hoped thereby to deprive them of the resources they had already secured from such highland towns as Pátzcuaro.³⁷

Iturbide identified the situation in Michoacán as the source of most of the trouble on the borders. As a result, he sought to coordinate tactics with Llano in Michoacán and Cruz in Guadalajara, particularly since the latter’s two lieutenants, Pedro Celestino Negrete and Luis Quintanar, were already active in the campaign. Iturbide advised application of the “line” strategy to the Michoacán borders, but stressed that to give it proper effect, only experienced commanders, versed in the region’s topography and characteristics, would be any use. Common tactics in both Guanajuato and Michoacán implied a coordinated attack on rebel positions. Iturbide envisaged a two-pronged thrust: (a) from the north with troops from Guanajuato to push through San Pedro Piedragorda, Pénjamo, Valle de Santiago, and Salvatierra to La Piedad, with the object of establishing government control as far as San Francisco Angamacutiro inside the Michoacán border; and (b) from the west with troops from Nueva Galicia to advance from Colima and Zapotlán to Sayula, Jiquilpan, and Los Reyes, and southward to Uruapan and Apatzingán in the tierra caliente, where Morelos’s second-in-command, Matamoros, had operated. Once these spears had been driven into two sides of Michoacán, the royalist commanders could begin systematically to recover territory lost to the rebels since the beginning of the insurrection. Iturbide stressed throughout the principle already implicit in other regions, that a sharp demarcation should exist between loyalist and rebel towns: the demarcation thesis. We shall examine shortly the practical implementation of this principle.³⁸

The line strategy received more immediate application in Guanajuato than in Michoacán. Iturbide began to establish a defensive line across central and southern Guanajuato. Royalist forces intended to put all villages along this line in a position to defend themselves. This defensive line policy formed the prelude to an offensive coordinated with the military command in Guadalajara and Valladolid, with the object of pacifying the border zones. Nevertheless, the royalists had still not completed the pacification of the intendancy of Guanajuato, and could not, therefore, fully commit themselves to the pursuit of rebel bands in Michoacán. They suffered a constant shortage of manpower. As a result, the Rayón brothers and other leaders continued to harrass royalist positions there. Although Iturbide hoped to employ 3,355 troops in this projected joint offensive, the fact remained that Torres’s band, for instance, still threatened the security of the two Guanajuato districts of Pénjamo and Salvatierra. Iturbide sought to counter this threat by a combination of fixed garrisons in the towns or estates and mobile patrols through the countryside. In this way the royalist military strove to expel rebel bands from the best agricultural properties and to deprive them of lucrative resources. Once these bands had been driven out, regular troops could then extend the defensive line, leaving patriot and urban companies to hold the rear. In Iturbide’s view, the pacification of the highland towns of Michoacán such as Jiquilpan and Los Reyes depended upon the security of the border between Guanajuato and Guadalajara, particularly across Piedragorda. Everything depended upon coordination between provincial commanders.³⁹ At the same time, royalist officers never ceased to stress the urgency of stationing infantry battalions on haciendas at the owners’ cost for the immediate defense of properties, for the pursuit of marauding bands, and for the revival of agricultural production. The three threads of counterinsurgency strategy—the organization policy, the line strategy, and the demarcation thesis—came together in this principle of self-defense in accord with regular troops.⁴⁰

Probably the greatest obstacle to the realization of Iturbide’s pacification policy proved to be the burden of pecuniary contributions levied upon private estates by the royalists to maintain such forces. Both Iturbide and his fellow commander, Colonel Antonio de Linares, complained of property-owners’ recalcitrance. Although many, such as those in the San Juan del Río district south of Querétaro, complained that rebel depredations had reduced their incomes to nothing, Iturbide often attributed this unwillingness to contribute to veiled insurgent sympathies. As a result, he occasionally acted indelicately. He threatened, for instance, to auction part of the Hacienda del Molinito to the sum levied upon it, when its owner, retired Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Crespo, maintained that rebel damage precluded payment.⁴¹ Iturbide’s high-handed pressure on such individuals formed part of the charges leveled against him in 1816. Furthermore, the possibility exists that the royalist commander was, in fact, engaged in unsavory dealings, and that his real intention was not pursuit of government objectives, but the exaction of protection money. Serious attacks on Iturbide’s character and conduct had already come from the Corregidor of Querétaro, Miguel Domínguez, who complained of his unilateral appropriation of royal revenues. Although Dominguez had been politically compromised in the insurgent cause in 1810, another witness provided similar evidence. Pedro Otero, owner of the Hacienda de Cuevas, pointed to Iturbide’s exactions on his estate.⁴² The most devastating attack proved to be the accusation in July 1816 by the well-known Guanajuato cleric, Dr. Antonio Labarrieta, that Iturbide had been profiteering through the prolongation of the war. Labarrieta, who had successfully defended the Valladolid conspirators of 1809, had protested earlier at Iturbide’s arrests of suspected insurgent women.⁴³ Disputes of one kind or another never ceased to bedevil Iturbide’s conduct in the royalist army. For his part, Iturbide portrayed his assailants as crypto-insurgents, and declared his aim to rebut the atrocious and denigrating calumnies hurled against me by four or five malicious individuals.”⁴⁴

The Rebel Bands and the Question of the Royalists’ “Decisive Blow,” 1814-15

The persistent activity of rebel bands begged the question of when the royalist commanders would deliver the “decisive blow.” With this object in view, Iturbide conferred with Negrete and Colonel José Antonio Andrade at La Piedad during the night of June 10-11, 1814. Iturbide informed both Llano and Calleja of his hopes that this conference would lead to the definitive resolution of the border question.⁴⁵ In particular, rebel bands threatened La Piedad, Arandas, and Lagos. Their fall would endanger the small loyalist villages where garrisons remained insufficient to resist large enemy forces. Eleven such villages and several haciendas with troop detachments already present required, and had been promised, effective government protection from the considerable number of bands operating in the region. Iturbide offered to supply some 500 men for this vast western border zone, but they would be inadequate to pacify the region, especially since a rebel band called the “Nogaleños,” particularly dangerous in Michoacán, had moved into Guanajuato from Los Reyes, where Dr. José María Cos still held out. Padre Torres, with as many as 2,480 men, had already tried to seize Salamanca and had pushed on in the direction of Pénjamo and Valle de Santiago. The band led by Matías Ortiz, known as “El Pachón,” had moved into the same districts. Rafael Rayón, Encarnación Rosas, and Ortiz had managed to install themselves in northern Guanajuato with a permanent force of 1,500 men and the apparent capacity to recruit a further 1,200 men from the rancherías with insufficient work for them. The bands of Hermosillo, Padre Uribe, Rosales, and Lucas Flores operated in western and southern Guanajuato with an estimated total force of 1,300 men. In Michoacán the bands led by Navarrete, Joaquín Arias, Manuel Villalongín, and Najar further endangered the weak royalist position there. Such bands could count on villagers’ support. They often consisted of the ranchero population, and they could defeat a royalist division below par. Morelos himself was in Huetamo in the tierra caliente with the apparent intention of joining Francisco Rayón at Jungapeo and attempting the reconstitution of an insurgent provisional government. Ignacio Rayón had returned to his home town of Tlalpujahua from José Francisco Osorno’s Puebla stronghold of Zacatlán, which had fallen to the royalists on August 23, 1813. This rebel threat to Tlalpujahua compromised the road to Zitácuaro and security of the Maravatío district, which Iturbide had consistently regarded as one of the keys to the control of the Michoacán border zone. Iturbide frequently complained that Llano had not been sufficiently active in pursuit of rebel bands in Michoacán. He alleged that the latter s negligence had enabled insurgent fortification of the Cerro de Cóporo near Jungapeo in May 1814. It is difficult to ascertain the facts of the matter, but Llano’s activity in Puebla during the winter of 1811-12 certainly did not bear out this intimation of negligence.⁴⁶ Iturbide had his own ideas concerning the disposition of Llano’s forces, which he wanted to see in operation across a vast area stretching northward from Uruapan through Zamora to Penjamillo. At the same time, he thought that they should destroy rebel armaments’ workshops in Tancítaro and Apatzingán in southern Michoacán. The weakness of the royalist position in Michoacán contributed to the worsening of the situation in Guanajuato. By September, Torres’s bands controlled the districts of Pénjamo and San Pedro Piedragorda. El Pachón’s band of some 400 men attacked León on December 13.⁴⁷

The rebel position at Cóporo presented such a threat in Michoacán that Calleja in December ordered Iturbide to join Llano in an assault upon it. Iturbide complained that if his forces were diverted from Guanajuato they would not be able to deliver the decisive blow in the districts of Celaya, Silao, and Salamanca. He pointed to the impending success of royalist efforts in the intendancy against the rebel bands, which had “never [been] so scattered since 1811” and the organized towns, never so well maintained. Iturbide argued that his transfer to Michoacán would lead to the deterioration of the royalist position in Guanajuato. Calleja, however, overruled him.⁴⁸ Even so, the attack on March 4, 1815, was repulsed with heavy losses. Iturbide blamed Llano.⁴⁹

In Michoacán, Iturbide found strong evidence of continuing insurgent support in the small towns of the sierra. Captain Luis Quintanar and Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Orrantia had proposed to attack Ario in mid-May in pursuit of the remaining members of the itinerant rebel junta. When Orrantia reached Uruapan, however, he found only a parish priest, too sick to flee. Iturbide encountered a similar situation farther north, in Pátzcuaro. Michoacán presented other such instances of the flight of the local populace from the advance of royalist troops. This problem, which reflected not merely insurgent sympathies, but also fears of depredations by both sides in the military struggle, illustrated the difficulty of pacification and defense. In consequence, Iturbide advocated, as other royalist commanders had before him, the reconcentration of population into villages and haciendas that royalist forces could effectively control.⁵⁰ The continued failure to pacify Michoacán delayed the delivery of the “decisive blow” in Guanajuato and frustrated the elimination of insurgent pockets of resistance in the border zones. Cruz and Iturbide attempted to reach agreement on joint strategy for the border region of Guadalajara and Guanajuato at their meeting in the Hacienda de Arandas on July 22, 1815. The royalist commanders proposed to organize the area from León to Jalpa, Corralejo, Cuerámaro, and Pénjamo, which they had failed to accomplish during the previous two years. The bands led by Torres, Hermosillo, Santos, and Aguirre continued to operate in this area. In the following month, Calleja welcomed such projects, and similarly envisaged joint action by Iturbide and Llano to strengthen the royalist position in such weak spots as Acámbaro, Salvatierra, and Valle de Santiago. Within Michoacán, Calleja envisaged an operation by Llano designed to hold a defensive line southwest of Valladolid from Tacámbaro to Zacapu, and to prevent incursions from rebel bands based in the tierra caliente. Franciso and Ramón Rayón, however, were reported in the vicinity of Pénjamo, and on October 24 Torres attacked San Pedro Piedragorda. As a result of rebel actions, Calleja complained in December that he had still to see the positive results of his commanders’ projects.⁵¹

The Resettlement and Demarcation Policy

Royalist commanders applied a policy of population resettlement in areas dangerously exposed to rebel attacks or from which rebel bands operated. The object was to create demarcation zones between the pacified sector of the population and insurgent groups in the field, in order to deprive the latter of their sources of food supply, information, and refuge. Prime importance could then be given (1) to adequate defense of loyalist-held areas, and (2) to extending the circumference of royalist- controlled areas, within which more and more of the rural and small town population could he concentrated. This, in turn, implied (3) the relocation of population by the systematic clearance of indefensible or marginal zones, and (4) the transformation of these cleared areas into war zones, within which all persons encountered would be treated as rebels and accordingly shot.⁵² Such policies, however, presented political difficulties and could easily prove counterproductive. Llano had already made this discovery early in the war during September 1811 when he had attempted to pacify the Llanos de Apan, a long-standing trouble spot. Llano’s forces had set on fire many rancherías, scattered settlements in which insurgents took refuge. The intention was to oblige the rural population to take refuge in towns garrisoned by royalist forces. Accompanied by widespread requisitioning of livestock, these measures had driven many villagers to join Osorno’s rebel band.⁵³

In June 1816 Iturbide recommended the application of resettlement policies to the Bajío.

The military commanders shall delineate, after proper reflection, the places and estates to which all the districts’ inhabitants are to be reconcentrated. Those small villages which our troops cannot patrol shall be abandoned. The immense number of rancherías throughout the hills and mountain villages are to be destroyed without exception: all who are found beyond the loyalist demarcations established in each province shall be declared rebels and subjected to capital punishment.⁵⁴

Rebel fortification of strong positions, however, threatened to frustrate the application of such a policy. Rebel bands waged a guerrilla war from their mountain bases against the loyalist demarcations and royalist troops in the field. The rebel stronghold at Cerro de Cóporo had precisely such a purpose. Until each of these positions could be systematically reduced, royalist commanders sought to restrict the rebel bands’ areas of maneuver by confining them within an ever tighter circumference. In the Bajío, Iturbide planned, in conjunction with royalist forces from Querétaro, San Juan del Río, and Toluca, to mop up the small rebel bands and groups of bandits still operating within the perimeter of towns from San Miguel and Pénjamo to Maravatio. The organization policy would be applied first to Dolores and San Luis de la Paz, then to Pénjamo and Piedragorda, and finally to Maravatío. A patrol through the Michoacán towns and villages from Uruapan to Zitácuaro was designed to complement the effective establishment of the military circle within the Bajío. The organization of Puruándiro would be the prelude to a thrust into rebel-held territory in Michoacán. Iturbide estimated that an effective force of 3,468 men would be needed to give effect to his policies, taking into account the forces at Orrantia’s disposal. A substantial number of these four divisions would garrison cities, towns, villages, and haciendas: 300 men, for instance, should reside in Acámbaro, a district in the process of organization. Even so, the military circle policy, and the demarcation strategy with which it was inextricably linked, still depended upon the expulsion of the rebels from Pénjamo, Pueblo del Rincón, Valle de Santiago, Puruándiro, and Yuririapúndaro; this the royalists would not accomplish until 1820. In southwestern Guanajuato, between León and Celaya, some 800 rebels held out, despite the doubling of royalist forces between 1813 and 1816. According to Iturbide, rebel forces had fallen to one-tenth of their previous number. Sustained resistance in such vital localities pointed to the tenacity of the remaining guerrilla bands. Orrantia constantly complained of his lack of sufficient forces to root them out, and in December 1815 requested to be relieved of his post. Though this was a standard complaint of field officers, Orrantia’s appeals revealed, nevertheless, an appreciation of the need to increase the government military presence in the disputed regions to the maximum.⁵⁵

Royalist commanders sought to recover control of rural areas, in order to guarantee the safety of the agricultural labor force and enable the recovery of food production. In the context of the Bajío, resettlement rarely involved transfers of large numbers of peasants from ancestral lands to alien regions, since the royalists had for several years put into effect their reorganization policies in several of the principal localities. Since 1813 Iturbide had organized San Miguel, Chamácuero, Salamanca, San Pedro Piedragorda, Salvatierra, and Acámbaro. The resettlement policy was designed to complement these efforts. It generally involved the clearance of scattered hamlets and the scouring of the hills. More than likely only small numbers of individuals were regrouped in the protected areas of the cereal-producing plateau. Such a limited policy did not present overwhelming obstacles. By 1820, Anastasio Bustamante and his fellow officers reported many apparently successful instances of resettlement and organization throughout such districts as Silao, Salamanca, Irapuato, and, finally, Valle de Santiago.⁵⁶

Royalist commanders such as Iturbide attributed the recovery of agricultural production to protection of estates and villages, especially in the central-southern belt of Guanajuato. Even so, rebel incursions still ensured that maize would be in short supply in the organized villages. According to Iturbide’s information, however, the maize price in the pacified zones remained considerably lower than in areas under rebel occupation. In the former the maize price at its highest point reached 3 pesos 4 reales (28 reales) per fanega, even in San Miguel and the provincial capital. In rebel-occupied zones in Pénjamo and Puruándiro, the price reached 5 and 6 pesos, and in Michoacán passed 9 pesos. The recovery of the regional economy could not progress unless the rebel bands were entirely driven out and units of production adequately protected. These problems remained. From February 1815 rebel bands had laid waste haciendas in Acámbaro to such effect that even into the autumn of 1816 they remained without livestock or inhabitants. The local artisan industry remained in decay and the principal residents had already by April 1816 left the town. Royalist commanders had stationed detachments on several estates in Salvatierra—the haciendas of La Zanja, Santo Tomás, San Nicolás, La Magdalena, San José, Parrales, and Ojo de Agua. Viceroy Apodaca rapidly became aware of the continued dangers posed by rebel bands.

From Nueva Galicia, Cruz similarly reported insurgent attacks on organized villages from the rebel base on the island of Mescala in Lake Chapala, which he did not manage to reduce until November 25, 1816, and from bands operating across the borders of Guanajuato and Michoacán. Nevertheless, Colonel Cristóbal Ordóñez had pacified the Querétaro region and removed the threat by the Villagranes to the route between Mexico City and the silver mines of the interior. As a result, Querétaro had become one of the wealthiest cities of New Spain through the reopening of trade with its northern hinterland. Troops and self-defense forces garrisoned the region’s haciendas and villages, and escorted convoys and mail. In the north, San Luis Potosí had also recovered to become the emporium between the gulf port of Tampico and the Pacific port of San Bias.⁵⁸

The importance attached to patrols and convoy escorts across the Bajío to the silver-mining zones enabled the gradual recovery of production. Calleja had never ceased to stress the urgency of safe conduct of silver from Guanajuato to Querétaro every month. Early in 1816 even the Guanajuato mines, especially the Milanesa, showed signs of recovery from their long depression. Workers had moved there in search of work. In view of the customary unruliness of Mexican mining zones, the intendant feared collusion with rebel bands lodged in the sierras. Anxious to prevent insurgent seizure of newly lucrative mines, the intendant supported the mining deputation’s request for a garrison in the Real del Monte de San Nicolás, northeast of the city. The intendant suggested a garrison of 200 men plus a small artillery piece. Apodaca corroborated this selective recovery of the mining sector by the end of 1818 and stressed that Zacatecas presented the most striking instance. Although Guanajuato had been the mining zone most seriously affected by the insurrection, it continued to show signs of recovery. Military patrols and fortified positions had enabled the supply of necessary commodities at moderate prices: salt and magistral used in mining had become available once again after a long shortage. The absence of investors, however, constituted the central obstacle to the rehabilitation of the mining industry.⁵⁹

“The New Political and Military Order”: The Situation after Iturbide, 1816-20

Iturbide’s much criticized activities led to his removal from the Bajío in April 1816, when Calleja summoned him to the capital in order to answer the charges leveled against him.⁶⁰ The opponents of Iturbide, as noted above, concurred in the allegation that he had neither contributed to the pacification of his region nor assisted the recovery of economic activities. On the contrary, he had deliberately protracted the war in order to benefit from it. According to Labarrieta, Iturbide had used the military power at his disposal to create trade monopolies, in which he operated either directly or through commissioners as a commercial entrepreneur. He had categorized his own items of trade as official and held back convoys in order to send his own products to market first. Under the pretext of military necessities, he had not only plundered the estates of private individuals, but had appropriated silver resources vitally needed for the recovery of the economy, not to mention a total of 1,300,000 pesos from the public treasury of Guanajuato. Instead of defending the Bajío as he claimed to be doing in his official correspondence, Iturbide had, in fact, left the region defenseless in face of insurgent attacks. Labarrieta implied that Cruz and Negrete, the bishops of Guadalajara and Michoacán, and the city councils would corroborate these allegations. Three months after the summons of Iturbide to Mexico City, the military commanders in the Bajío had tirelessly pursued the rebel bands. Iturbide had simply protected his own trading activities.⁶¹ In essence, these complaints reduced themselves to the statement that Iturbide had become his own man in Guanajuato rather than the loyal instrument of government policy. Similar charges were examined and dismissed by the metropolitan government in Madrid early in 1817. Calleja exonerated Iturbide of all the allegations.⁶² Apodaca, however, did not restore him to his command, but on October 24, 1816, appointed Orrantia to take command of the Northern Sector Army in Guanajuato, based in San Miguel. Apodaca read Iturbide’s letter accusing Labarrieta of collusion with the rebels, but does not appear to have taken it seriously, since no action was taken.⁶³

Iturbide’s successors continued and developed the strategy he had attempted to put into practice. The greatest problem, however, still continued to be Michoacán. Despite the clearing of the highway between Maravatío and Valladolid and the reopening of access to the mining zones of Sultepec and Tlalpujahua, the government’s position in the province still remained precarious as late as September 1816. The Rayón brothers continued to hold out in the fortresses of Cóporo and Jaujilla, the latter above Uruapan, which had always been a strong rebel area. Linares, military commander in Michoacán since August 1816, advised full application of the demarcation policy: “little profit can be derived from these regions until some strategic points are organized as a center of action to assist the loyal part of the population and contain the dissident element.” On patrol through the region during the late summer and early autumn of 1816, Linares noted villagers’ fear at the approach of royalist forces, which he took as evidence of past abuses of discipline.⁶⁴ Linares and Orrantia attempted to coordinate their activities in pursuit of the rebel bands under Torres, Huerta, Flores, and others. Muñiz and Sánchez still operated in the regions of Ario and Tacámbaro, and the royalist commanders were able to prevent them from joining forces with Dr. Cos and the Rayóns in Uruapan, which appeared at first to pose a threat to Valladolid. The Rayóns, however, attempted once more to reconstitute a provisional government. These efforts came to nothing in face of hostility from Muñiz and Torres to any semblance of political control. Insurgent forces once more broke apart. As a result, Linares and Cruz began to plan the siege of Jaujilla.⁶⁵ Royalist efforts were assisted by the opposition within the insurgent camp between the juntas of Jaujilla and Cóporo. Ignacio Rayón, in the latter, sought to reassert his claims to be the rightful heir to Hidalgo’s authority and, as president of the defunct Junta of Zitácuaro, held that only he was the political leader of the revolution. Neither Nicolás Bravo nor Pablo Galeana, who had risen with Morelos, accepted this position, and a bitter antagonism developed. Similarly, Muñiz disputed the military leadership with Víctor Rosales.⁶⁶

Apodaca’s amnesty policy enabled the royalists to draw political advantage from the continued disintegration of the insurgent movement. The amnesty orders of November 10, 1816, and June 28, 1817, granted royal pardon to rebels who handed over their arms to local royalist commanders. The amnesty permitted former insurgents to select their place of residence, with no other restriction than that they should live neither in Mexico City nor Puebla until the final pacification of the realm. Although the object was the recovery of economic activities through the performance of useful services under the vigilance of commanders of fortified villages, there was often little possibility of employment, particularly in the urban areas where many amnestied rebels continued to pose a threat to law and order. Frequently, moreover, they defected to rejoin rebel bands or form part of bandit groups. Individuals were known to apply for amnesty several times over. Nevertheless, the lists of amnesty applications present a challenging body of documentation, though its significance is still difficult to assess. The mother of the Rayón brothers, who had already lost her youngest son, Francisco, tried to persuade the remaining brothers to apply for amnesty. On the Guadalajara-Michoacán border, the insurgent chieftains José María Vargas and Salgado presented themselves for amnesty later in 1816, and handed over the fortress of Cuitzarán with thirteen pieces of artillery. The pacification of the Valle de Peribán followed. After the capitulation of the island fortress of Mescala, and the defenders’ request for amnesty, Cruz felt able to report the imminent completion of the pacification of Nueva Galicia. Cruz requested Linares to garrison Uruapan and Tancítaro at the edge of the tierra caliente of Michoacán, in order to protect local villages from marauders. Ramón Rayón surrendered Cóporo on January 7, 1817. Nicolás Bravo, under instructions from the rival rebel junta in Jaujilla, had arrested Ignacio Rayón in the previous month, in order to prevent him from applying for amnesty as his brother had done. The royalists, however, captured Rayón on December 11, 1817, and kept him in confinement until November 1820. Jaujilla fell on March 6, 1818, when its defenders requested amnesty.⁶⁷

Muñiz secured an amnesty from General Miguel Barragán, operating in the Ario area, in May 1817, and assisted the royalists to hunt down and kill Rosales. Muñiz, however, promptly defected to join Javier Mina’s expeditionary force, only to be captured and executed on January 1, 1818.⁶⁸ Vargas applied for amnesty and assisted Colonel Quintanar by tricking the rebels in Zárate (Turicato) into capture in February 1818. The remnants of the rebel junta regrouped in Huetamo, where they were harrassed by Colonel Gabriel de Armijo on campaign against Vicente Guerrero. The royalists, however, still failed late in 1818 to capture either Huetamo or Apatzingan. Dissension and defection continued to be the rule in the rebel camp. Allegedly, Miguel Borja ordered the murder of José María Liceaga, who had been a member of tbe Junta of Zitácuaro; Padre Torres was killed in a dispute over a horse; Padre Navarrete and five other chieftains secured amnesties.

According to Viceroy Apodaca, the royal government issued 29,818 amnesties by December 31, 1818. In Zacatecas, the band of Santiago González, which had operated in the Valle de Huejúcar, applied for amnesty at the end of 1819. In Guanajuato, Linares reported that fifty- nine individuals had applied for amnesty in León, all of them residents of the haciendas and villages of the district. All seventeen rebels who in December 1819 applied for amnesty in Silao were hacienda, rancho, or village dwellers, or from the cities of Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí.⁶⁹

Between 1818 and the end of 1820, royalist commanders finally reduced the outstanding pockets of insurgent resistance in and around the Bajío, and carried into effect the aims of the organization or fortification policy. By the end of March 1818, the royalists had completed the fortification of the town of Pénjamo and the Hacienda de la Cantera. The fortification of the Villa de San Felipe was completed by the end of June. The rebels who had dominated the region since the beginning of the revolution had begun to apply for amnesty. Orrantia had formed with 1,296 line infantry and cavalry and 695 irregulars a military zone composed of San Felipe, San Miguel, and Dolores. Troops were stationed in the main towns, villages, and estates, which included a total of 14,732 families, 57 haciendas, and 160 ranchos. In Puruándiro on the Michoacán- Guanajuato border, troops from Guadalajara garrisoned the district. Linares defined the whole object of counterinsurgency strategy as “the recovery of agriculture, in which the entire community has an interest.” In April 1818 the viceroy instructed him to “settle farmers on haciendas and ranchos across the royal highway between León and Apaseo,” but, in reality, landowners, reluctant to see their properties whittled away by colonists, proved uncooperative. Torres’s band remained the only serious threat in the southern Bajío, and Bustamante’s cavalry section managed to expel these remaining rebels from the haciendas of Zurumuato, Huammaro, Pantoja, and La Calle.⁷⁰ The situation in the Valle de Santiago district, nevertheless, continued to be serious, in view of the damage to the agricultural sector. As a result, the commander of local forces felt able to impose only a small contribution to raise funds for his sixty-man Royalist Infantry Company. He hoped ultimately to increase this force to one hundred men and expel rebel bands from the remaining occupied ranchos. Indeed, a rebel band appeared in the vicinity of the town on June 24, 1818, only to be driven off. Even so, during the following month, marauders rustled all the livestock in the district and thereby delayed planting for the season.⁷¹

In effect, by the end of 1819 the insurgency consisted of little more than raiding parties dedicated to the theft of cattle and horses. Although Miguel Borja’s band still harrassed the Irapuato district, it could achieve little in face of the mobile detachments stationed on such haciendas as Burras. By the beginning of 1820, royalist commanders were reporting that amnestied rebels had been widely relocated in the organized positions under the surveillance of their forces. According to Linares, they dedicated themselves to the labors of the field, convinced that the insurrection had breathed its dying gasp. He cited León and Silao as two cases in point. Silao had become the operational base for the 102-man Mixed Corps of Loyal Royalists, distributed through five nearby haciendas. Linares optimistically envisaged the resettlement of all the population of the province in organized positions as a guarantee of safety for farming and commerce. By the beginning of September 1820, the armed positions in Silao had reached thirty-nine, twenty-two of them haciendas and seventeen ranchos. Of this total, field guards (guardacampos) garrisoned thirty-four. Into all these armed positions the local command had apparently assembled the folk who had formerly dwelt scattered throughout the countryside, with a view to exercising surveillance over them. These field guards consisted of loyalist farmers and their dependents, men of substance, who elected a leader from among themselves. They formed an armed and mounted body of vigilantes, the effective law in the locality. It would not be surprising to find, however, that among the men who formed these bands were amnestied rebels, whose loyalty remained contingent upon the absence of insurgent groups from their locality. In this sense, estates would be guarded by those who previously had been raiding them, a situation that did not make for long-term stability. Linares practiced a similar resettlement policy in the Celaya district, while through the summer of 1820 Bustamante completed the fortification of sixty-two positions in Valle de Santiago, forty-eight of them under field guards. He envisaged such fortified positions as polls of attraction for the dispersed inhabitants of the district, havens of refuge for those who under the impact of warfare had abandoned their homes. Bustamante duly reported the destruction of ranchos and other settlements formed in the hills and woodlands by refugees and the burning of all farms belonging to opponents of the pacification. With these final measures and the organization of San Pedro Piedragorda, El Rincón, Presa de Jalpa, Pueblo Nuevo, and the last positions in Pénjamo, district commanders presented the pacification of the Bajío as eompleted.⁷²

Conclusions

The counterinsurgency sought to control population and restore social stability through the employment of military power. Although the insurgents failed to defeat the government on the field of battle, rebel bands, often scarcely distinguishable from bandit groups, subjected royalist forces to a long and expensive war of attrition. Rarely, if ever, did royalist commanders have at their disposal sufficient troops to control effectively any one sector. Provincial commanders similarly failed until the later 1810s to coordinate strategy, with the result that the border zones, particularly those of difficult terrain, continued to pose problems as the refuge of rebel bands. For most of the decade, the strong rebel presence in Michoacán, where five times the provincial capital was attacked, frustrated the pacification of Guanajuato. Only when the rebel bands were pushed back into the tierra caliente of Michoacán late in the 1810s could the counterinsurgency claim to be winning the struggle in Guanajuato. Iturbide’s controversial career, which culminated in his removal in 1816, increased the enmity toward the royalists in the Bajío. The detractors of Iturbide argued that he obstructed rather than assisted the pacification of the region. It should be stressed, however, that the principal detractors, Domínguez and Labarrieta, were compromised through insurgent sympathies. It seems likely, nevertheless, that, given the distance of the viceregal authorities and the general weakness of civilian authority, Iturbide (and indeed other royalist commanders as well) interpreted his mandate in his own interests rather than in those of the government. Calleja’s emphasis on the regionalization of the counterinsurgency unintentionally contributed to the creation of military satrapies in the provinces. By 1820-21 it could be argued that the effective power in New Spain lay in the hands of these commanders. Throughout the 1810s these officers had gained greater influence and power in what before the insurrection had been purely civilian spheres. Even so, the conclusion should not be drawn that the royalist military by 1820-21 wielded an absolute and unchallenged power throughout New Spain. A civilian tradition—reinforced by liberalism—remained, and ecclesiastical influence continued to be strong. Most notably, however, the pacification was not completed by the time Iturbide, restored to a command, issued the Plan of Iguala in February 1821. In Guanajuato, districts such as San Felipe, Pénjamo, Piedragorda, and Valle de Santiago were not fully under royalist control until 1820. Rebel bands still controlled much of southern Michoacán, most of present-day Guerrero, and the hinterland of Veracruz. Though much of the pacification had been completed on the central plateau, royalist commanders still found that they had to elicit the cooperation of the remnants of the insurgent movement, in order to bring to fruition their plans to remove the viceregal government in 1821.

Author notes