Popular Politics in Mexico City: The Parián Riot, 1828 Open Access

On Thursday, December 4, 1828, as the Acordada revolt prevailed against the government of Guadalupe Victoria, a crowd five thousand strong attacked and pillaged the cluster of luxurious shops in the Parián building, located in Mexico City’s central square. Governor José María Tornel y Mendivil, in charge of restoring order to the shaken city, recalled how

The writer Guillermo Prieto, then a child whose father and uncle owned shops in the building, described in his memoirs how the Parián, “that temple of good taste,” suffered a “savage invasion,” an “avalanche of furies” who “broke down doors, flung jewelry and lace over the ground, shattered strongboxes full of treasure, wounded each other, and smothered themselves carrying off their loot.” ²

Although the rioting had dissipated within 24 hours, this uprising of the lower classes shook propertied Mexicans to the core. Those who lived through the violent episode never forgot that “stain on the pages of our history,”³ which discredited Mexico in the eyes of the world and reminded the elites of their fragile control over the urban poor. Yet the Parián riot has received little attention from historians, even though it was one of the few riots in the Mexican capital—indeed, the first in 136 years and the only large-scale riot of the nineteenth century. While rural communities were the scene of numerous popular protests in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and while provincial cities experienced violent outbreaks during the Bourbon reforms and independence wars, Mexico City —the stronghold first of colonial domination and then of republican rule —remained quiet.

Historians have much to learn from this incident. Like any moment of crisis, it highlights the way in which the system normally worked. The causes and development of the crisis show where the established order was vulnerable as well as where it was strong, for the riot failed to evolve into a meaningful mass movement. As studies of Europe and, more recently, Latin America indicate, the analysis of popular disturbances can illuminate the values and beliefs of the lower classes, who rarely appear in historical records. The elites’ response, in turn, reveals their views of the poor and their understanding of how social control is maintained. Finally, a comparison with other popular rebellions suggests some distinctive features of the Mexican capital, and how it had changed since the great riots of 1624 and 1692.

In the 1950s, Eric Hobsbawm and George Rudé, the eminent historians of urban riots in Europe, developed a powerful model for the study of crowds.⁴ Their portrayal of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rioters as heroic protesters, motivated by shared goals and an incipient sense of class struggle, changed the way historians see the nature of collective violence. This view contrasted sharply with previous elite condemnations of rioters as an irrational rabble, more criminals than champions of the people. Hobsbawm and Rudé’s approach provides many insights that help rescue the Parián rioters from the negative portrayal in contemporary Mexican accounts, for a close reading of the evidence reveals rational patterns in the crowd’s behavior. This essay finds, however, that if the rioters were not simply crazed criminals, neither were they as respectable, orderly, and purposeful as the crowds depicted by Hobsbawm and Rudé. Indeed, an emphasis on class solidarity, though not totally misplaced, obscures much of the significance of the incident. The riot, occurring against a background of economic discontent and electoral tension, reveals a new kind of populist politics where elite politicians mobilized the masses. Because the riot followed the lines of partisan politics, it was not directed against a particular class. Yet elite revulsion to the tumult caused politicians to shun popular support in the future, and helped usher in a century of increased social conservatism. Putting the Parián riot in this context supports the recent scholarly reappraisal of early republican Mexico. Far from being a laughable “opéra bouffe,” sometimes dismissed as a period of “marking time” until the Porfiriato,⁵ the early republic was in fact the crucible where many characteristics of the later nineteenth century were forged.

The Riot

The Parián riot is not easily studied, for the documentation is sparse and often contradictory. Although the standard histories of the period present their descriptions of the tumult as “fact,” there are few facts contemporary authors agreed on.⁶ Their version of the events depended largely on their stance toward the Acordada revolt, which culminated in the riot as the populace celebrated the rebels’ victory. The coup followed months of economic crisis and bitter factionalism. As the government approached bankruptcy and the general economy declined, discontent focused on the hotly contested presidential election of September 1828. The government party, the escoceses organized in a Scottish rite lodge, ostensibly won the election and prepared to place their candidate, Minister of Defense Manuel Gómez Pedraza, in the presidency. The yorkino opposition, organized in a York rite lodge, claimed fraud and pronounced in order to install their own candidate, Vicente Guerrero, in office. The yorkinos won, with Guerrero named president in January. Their victory was short-lived, however, since Guerrero was ousted from office and executed 12 tense months later.

Contemporary accounts of the riot are found in highly polemical works by supporters or opponents of the coup. These include, on the escocés side, the works of journalist Carlos María de Bustamante, professor of painting Francisco Ibar, and statesman Lucas Alamán, blaming the rebel leaders for the popular disorder; on the yorkino side, coup leaders Lorenzo de Zavala and Anastasio Zerecero, attempting to absolve themselves of guilt for the shameful incident, and Tornel, appointed interim governor of the Federal District on the day of the riot, defending himself from accusations of incompetence and corruption.⁷ Despite the reams of paper devoted to the Acordada revolt, only a few pages deal directly with the riot, although every historian and memoirist of the period mentioned the tumult in passages charged with emotion. Thus Zavala observed that, “filled with consternation at the sight of the terrible scenes caused by civil war,” he “sincerely would prefer to have suffered the effects of tyranny ... in the flesh than to have been witness and party to this catastrophe.” Bustamante repeatedly referred to the horrible specter of the “ignominious” masses, a “memory that despite the passage of time still distresses my spirit.” Prieto, in even more purple prose, insisted that “neither delirium, nor fire, nor earthquake, could have rivaled that invasion [of the Parián], cause of eternal shame and opprobrium to its authors.” And Deputy José María Bocanegra, decades later writing what he claimed was the only objective history of the period, labeled the event so “lamentable and disastrous” that “my memory saddens when remembering it, and my pen refuses to record it.”⁸ So the riot was an embarrassment writers did not elaborate on beyond a paragraph or two.

Indeed, they probably could not provide a fuller description because they lacked concrete information about the episode. Even the few supposedly first-hand accounts—all by elite observers—are severely flawed by questions about how much their authors actually saw. Ibar described the looters as they left the central square, but he was not present where they rioted. Tornel saw the crowd as it surged into the national palace, where he was with the president, but he did not witness the events in the Parián either, or at least he chose to tell us little more than the paragraph quoted above. Prieto’s description is clearly second hand, based on the impressions of one of his father’s friends who went to the Parián in a vain attempt to save his merchandise. And that account, which Prieto first heard when he was ten years old, was undoubtedly embellished and distorted by the time it appeared decades later in his memoirs. Similarly, though Bustamante described the tumult in his diary, his may not be a true eyewitness description either since he was apparently in bed with a fever that day. Bustamante provided vivid detail only for events after December 15, perhaps the first day he ventured out of his quarters. Indeed, Bustamante himself credits “some people who were there, including several deputies,” for part of his information.⁹

It is easy to understand why few nonparticipants witnessed the rioting. Because the Parián had closed sometime after the Acordada revolt began on November 30, the owners of its shops were absent at the time of the pillaging. By December 4, most wealthy residents of the capital had fled the city or locked themselves in their houses. Business throughout the city was at a virtual standstill, and no newspapers were published that week. The government’s forces had surrendered the night before, though the president did not capitulate until that evening. The congress and the city council, which normally met close to the Parián building, had adjourned earlier that day and had left the center of the city. The leaders of the Acordada revolt were busy holding down their positions and negotiating with President Guadalupe Victoria. And in the absence of any effective civil authority, the guards posted at the entrances of the Parián had left, and the municipal police had ceased functioning.

We do not even have police records or court cases that might provide descriptions of the event by the participants themselves, the sort of documents Rudé used to determine the composition and ideology of the European crowds he studied. Zavala, who masterminded the Acordada revolt, claimed that on hearing the news of the mob outburst he sent a highly disciplined artillery troop to stop the looting. His men were unsuccessful, he explained, because “the torrent of more than five thousand men from the barrios and from the army itself was impossible to contain. ”¹⁰ As far as I can tell, the troop left without making any arrests, and the crowd was dispersed that evening only by the firing of a cannon. In fact, surviving criminal records do not record arrests for theft or disorderly conduct connected with the riots—or, for that matter, arrests for possession and sale of stolen property—either on December 4 or the next few days.

The minutes of the city council touch on the incident, but they shed more light on its aftermath than on the riot itself. The council met twice on December 4 without mentioning the tumult. In an emergency session at 9 a.m., the members voted to draft a proclamation upholding the legitimate government of Guadalupe Victoria and denouncing the “anarchic” Acordada insurgents; at noon they returned and approved the final statement, still apparently unaware of any popular disturbance. At their next meeting on December 6, and in subsequent sessions, the council members discussed methods of restoring public order, recovering stolen goods, compensating shopowners, and—most important for them—ingratiating themselves with the new government many of them had originally opposed; they did not, however, directly discuss the riot.¹¹

Consequently, there is much that we do not know about the incident. We cannot be certain who the rioters were, only that they were members of the lower orders, and apparently soldiers as well. In a city of 160,000, a crowd of 5,000 was but a small percentage of the poor, though, and we do not know whether the rioters were mostly unemployed vagrants, solid artisans, occupants of nearby streets, or—as Zavala said—residents of outlying (and largely Indian) barrios. These distinctions, so important for Rudé in documenting the respectability of the crowd, were in any case lost on most elite Mexican observers, who betrayed their prejudices by referring to the mob not only as el pueblo and la plebe, but also by such derogatory terms as léperos and la chusma. Indeed, Ibar recalled several months later how he had seen looters on their way home, their faces displaying “the rabidity of the most savage and inhuman cannibals.”¹²

There is a consensus that soldiers participated in the looting; even Zavala’s description suggests that some of the men he sent to check the disorder joined the fray. There is disagreement, however, as to whether yorkino officers were involved. Ibar claimed that he had seen not only soldiers and “léperos in the streets burdened with their loot,” but also “anarchist” officers “with sabers in hand conducting to their homes the fruit of their perfidy and ambition.” Bustamante similarly charged that “the principal robbers were the captains” of the yorkino army.¹³ Still, their statements are not entirely reliable, because they were trying to discredit the yorkinos, just as Alamán later did by accusing the rebel officers (as well as soldiers) of participating in the crimes of the day.

The subject of the most heated controversy is whether the yorkino leaders authorized the pillage. On this question contemporaries again divided along partisan lines. Alamán accused both Zavala and the rebel General Lobato, who led the victorious troops into the Zócalo that day, of “offering the sack of the Parián” to the people of the capital in order to attract followers to their cause. Ibar blamed only Lobato. H. G. Ward, the former British chargé d’affaires, claimed (on information sent to him in England) that Vicente Guerrero, the defeated yorkino presidential candidate, publicly licensed the sack from the windows of the Acordada by promising the assembled crowd, “¡Hijos, para ustedes es el Parián!” Tornel and Bustamante, instead of fingering any individual, blamed the yorkinos in general for marking the Parián, in Tomei’s phrase, “as booty in the immoral war that gripped the unhappy city.” Bustamante also held the entire movement accountable for undermining the rule of law and order, thereby giving rise to the frenzy of the mob.¹⁴

Although Zavala and Zerecero accepted indirect responsibility for having led a movement that unleashed the masses, they vigorously denied any direct responsibility for the riot. They insisted that it was unforeseen and beyond their control, despite the concerted efforts of yorkino officers to quell the disorder. Indeed Zavala not only defended himself, but also Guerrero, by saying that the general had only been at the Acordada a few hours before leaving the capital, and Lobato, by saying that “at the time no one mentioned anything about Lobato’s authorizing the sack.”¹⁵ Taking a position between these two, several contemporaries absolved the yorkinos of guilt in instigating the riots, but accused them of failing to take energetic measures to bring the mob under control.¹⁶ Since all these positions are plausible, new eyewitness accounts will have to be discovered if the controversy is ever to be resolved.

Other contradictions in surviving accounts, such as about the time the rioting began and how long it lasted, can be resolved more easily. Most eyewitnesses time the riot from the early afternoon of December 4, after the de facto surrender of the National Palace. Bustamante and Senator Luis Gonzaga Cuevas merely wrote that it began in the afternoon; Joel Poinsett, the U.S. minister in Mexico City, placed it shortly after noon; and military officer Juan Suárez Navarro specified that it began after two o’clock, while the president met with Zavala in rebel headquarters at the Acordada prison.¹⁷ Zavala alone claimed that the riot began at ten in the morning. The other accounts seem more plausible, however. At ten in the morning, Zavala was in the Acordada, more than ten blocks away from the central square (see map). The Chamber of Deputies, meeting in the National Palace until two minutes to twelve, and the city council, meeting at noon in the municipal building across the street from the Parián, were unaware of any tumult, even though it would have been within earshot of their chambers. It is, furthermore, improbable that the city council members would have walked through an angry crowd to keep their noon appointment, as 11 of them did. By 3 p.m., however, the situation had changed. Bustamante reported that, though Congress had dissolved that morning, some senators and deputies still in the National Palace had to leave through the stables in disguise to avoid the dangerous mob.¹⁸

Zavala’s account of the evening appears more reliable, since he actually walked through the Zócalo that night to meet with President Guadalupe Victoria. In a passage since copied by most writers on the tumult, Zavala described how

In another of his writings, Zavala reiterated his view of the evening quiet: “It is very rare that a sack can be contained on the afternoon of the first day, being worthy of note that no robbery at all occurred during the night, and though the next morning some looting did occur, the excesses did not last longer than two hours.”¹⁹

Although Bustamante and Tornel claimed that the riot continued all night, it appears to have ended that evening, as Zavala indicated. Indeed, Tornel contradicted his own statement by praising Lieutenant Colonel Alejandro Zamora for services rendered on the evening of December 4, when he took a squad and cannon to the Zócalo and “made the looters of the Parián retire, thereby saving several exterior shops that had not yet been sacked.” Tornel also supported Zavala’s claim that by the next morning the fury of the mob had been spent, for Tornel claimed that on December 5—though he found part of the Parián still burning and a crowd milling about—it took him and his men but half an hour to snuff out the flames, disperse the crowd, and set up pickets to guard the desolate building.²⁰ Thus, the incident was basically over the first day. Its duration was somewhere between 2 to 3 hours (according to Poinsett) and less than 12 (according to the merchants of the Parián).²¹

This was, as the liberal theoretician José María Luis Mora emphasized eight years later in his México y sus revoluciones, a relatively short time as riots went. Indeed Mora, attempting to correct European misconceptions about Mexico, argued that the Parián riot demonstrated the good nature of the Mexican people.

—where hundreds died, large sections of the cities were destroyed, and the rioting lasted for days before it could be quelled. Europe, he concluded, was more “ferocious and barbaric” than Mexico.²² Mora had conveniently forgotten the Mexico City riots of 1692, when the National (then Viceregal) Palace as well as the original Parián were burned to the ground. Beside that earlier tumult, the 1828 riot also paled.

Still, the Parián riot was not quite as tame as Mora claimed. The two murders he referred to may have been the only casualties among upper-class Mexicans—and, significantly, carried out by the hands of their peers, not the lower orders—but numerous rioters died, according to Tornel’s description of “corpses strewn here and there” in the streets.²³ Thus, we cannot say, as Rudé does of European crowds, that they consistently attacked property rather than people. Further, though it is true that the looting was mostly restricted to the Parián, it was not their only target. The National Palace and a few portals surrounding the Zócalo (especially the shops in the Portal de Mercaderes) appear to have suffered some damage. Both Bustamante and Alamán said that warehouses in the palace were sacked, and Bustamante added that the chambers of congress were broken into. Tornel self-servingly credited himself and two colonels with fighting off the surging mob before it pillaged the entire palace.²⁴

Although Bustamante stated that a few private houses close to the Zócalo were also sacked, there is no evidence to support Ward’s claim that “the Léperos… spread themselves, like a torrent over the town, where they committed every species of excess,” breaking into and plundering the houses of many wealthy individuals. Zerecero insisted that the timely intervention of General Lobato prevented the pillage from spreading beyond the Zócalo. And Ibar, who emphasized the violence, only blamed the looters for destruction in the central square; he attributed other losses to the previous three days of street fighting and crossfire between government and rebel forces that damaged buildings throughout the city and created, by his estimate, two thousand victims. Ward’s description thus illustrates how events became exaggerated as they were retold, especially among potential investors in far-away London.²⁵

Most accounts suggest that though the rioting was restricted to a relatively small time and space, anarchy reigned for days afterward. There were those who took advantage of the disorder to settle old scores. The statesman Manuel Payno, then a student in Mexico City, later wrote that “during that time, robbery, murders, and the most outrageous scandals were the order of the day.”²⁶ Unlike the three days of street fighting that preceded the tumult, the riot scared the well-to-do off the streets; for more than a week afterward the capital belonged to the lower orders and the victorious soldiers. Ibar recounted that “the hombre de bien did not dare step out of his house because of the provocations and insults of those triumphant tigers.” And Bustamante, who set out for the post office on December 15, soon returned home because of “the multitude of canaille” that populated the streets, showering him with insults, and the dismaying scenes of plundered jewels, crystal, and cloth sold on the streets with impunity—soldiers allegedly carrying off the best of the loot.²⁷ The disorder was such that food became scarce because, as Bustamante explained, the city’s suppliers stayed away when they learned of the commotion. The price of bread shot sky high and had to be fixed by a decree of December 7, which also ordered the bakers back to work. And, though Tornel claimed that the situation was under control by December 8, when he allowed the city’s markets and bars to reopen,²⁸ the city council minutes demonstrate that it was several weeks before complete order was restored. Indeed, for more than a month, according to Payno, “stolen goods were sold publicly in the plazuela of Santo Domingo”—where some of the original owners managed to recover a few of their belongings, especially, according to Bustamante, the book dealers whose wares were not appreciated by those who stole them.²⁹

Moreover, the riot had a lasting impact on the merchants of the Parián. Some lost everything and were, in their own words, “reduced to mendicity in less than twelve hours.”³⁰ Other merchants recovered what they could and opened shops in new locations away from the central square—or moved to Europe when the decree expelling Spaniards was promulgated early the next year. The few who stayed in the Parián had to wait five months for the building to reopen. Even then, it was only partially repaired, remaining a half-empty eyesore and constant reminder of that “black day” until it was torn down in 1843. For 23 years, the shopowners unsuccessfully petitioned the government for compensation; only in 1851 was an indemnization finally approved. And the city also suffered a loss, for with its demolition the ayuntamiento lost the rents the Parián shopowners had paid.³¹

Popular Objectives

It is difficult to determine with certainty what ideas motivated the rioters. Unlike the elites, the rioters left no written records, had no spokesmen, and made no demands on any authorities. Given the unreliability of existing accounts, we cannot even be sure of the slogans they may have voiced as they milled about the central square. It is nonetheless possible to draw several tentative conclusions about popular objectives.

First, it appears that the rioters broadly supported the Acordada revolt, since chroniclers on both sides agree that the yorkino rebels enjoyed wide popular allegiance, while the escoceses did not. By all accounts, thousands of lower-class supporters joined the insurgency. Soon after the coup began on November 30, enthusiastic crowds began forming outside the Acordada and other rebel strongholds; in the next few days the rabble —or the citizenry, depending on the writer’s viewpoint—were decisive in assuring the yorkino victory. As Tornel described it, “the semidisciplined corps of rebels fought surrounded by an immense sea of riff-raff, armed with whatever they managed to pick up in a moment of ire, … and giving the impression of a swarm of terrifying furies from hell.” Zavala, more sympathetic to his party’s supporters, described how “the people of Mexico en masse decided for those who were in the Acordada: the most humble and poverty-stricken citizens ran to their aid, carrying munitions, pulling the artillery, moving the wounded, and helping in whatever way they could a cause they believed to be theirs.” Indeed, if we are to believe Zavala’s numbers, 30,000 to 40,000 people, perhaps one-fourth of the capital’s residents, fought with the rebels.³² In contrast, not a single observer mentioned any popular support for the government; and Ibar noted that most government soldiers deserted to the rebel side, leaving the government defenseless.³³

Why did the masses consider the yorkino party their own? There is no controversy about the rebel goals; they called for the annulment of the allegedly fraudulent presidential election and the installation of their candidate, Vicente Guerrero, in office; at the same time, they denounced the infringement of political liberties under Guadalupe Victoria, demanded the immediate resignation of the minister of defense and escocés presidential candidate Gómez Pedraza, and—taking up the issue that divided the two parties most bitterly—called for the expulsion of Spaniards from Mexican territory. It is unlikely that the curtailment of elite politicians’ freedoms aroused strong feeling among the populace, but the yorkino candidate and two of his policies did.

The candidacy of Guerrero, the uneducated mestizo hero of the independence wars, was immensely popular. Because of his past heroism, he embodied the untarnished cause of national independence. The lower classes could identify with him because of his social background, his dark complexion, and the derision he elicited from high society. On a personal level, he represented the possibility for upward mobility; on a political level, he also represented egalitarian aspirations, for his supporters and opponents alike believed that he wanted to establish, in Zavala’s words, “absolute equality, despite the present state of society, and democratic liberty, despite the differences in civilization” among Mexico’s citizens.³⁴ Although the texts of Guerrero’s public speeches have not survived, he apparently appealed to the “leveling instinct” that Rudé identified as a value consistently held by the crowds he studied. And, as Zerecero and Zavala recounted, Guerrero cultivated a highly populist style in his public pronouncements.³⁵ His leadership of the party made plausible the yorkinos’ claim that they were the “popular” party opposing the “aristocratic” and “hierarchical” escoceses.³⁶

Guerrero struck a popular chord on another issue as well, for at a time when Mexican artisans were buffeted by competition from cheap European imports, he favored high tariffs to protect the domestic textile industry on which so many in the lower and lower-middle classes depended. Their situation had been growing increasingly desperate since independence, as Mexico experimented with freer trade. In the months preceding the coup, artisans (as well as industrialists and cotton producers) petitioned the government to exclude the damaging textile imports. And, as Robert Potash has noted, artisan discontent played a significant—though largely unexplored—role in the yorkino victory. Indeed, one of Guerrero’s first acts in office was to raise tariffs on imported textiles, a measure that might be construed as a reward to his followers.³⁷

Guerrero’s call for the expulsion of Spaniards (again translated into law soon after he became president) also gained his party a mass following, for most observers believed that anti-Spanish measures “complied with the demands of the multitude.”³⁸ Barely seven years after independence was won, the few thousand Spaniards residing in Mexico not only symbolized colonial rule, but also became scapegoats for the new nation’s ills. Because many of them still retained great wealth and influence, they were the target of popular resentment. They were, in addition, the large-scale import merchants most visible to protectionists. Finally, as rumors spread of Spanish plans to reconquer the former colony, they were suspected of being an enemy within. The expulsion measure was heatedly debated in elite circles, and—at a time when popular opinion counted because there were few restrictions on male suffrage—the yorkinos’ anti-Spanish rhetoric helped them win local elections. A weak version of the expulsion bill passed in December of 1827, but it failed to bring public calm because most Spaniards obtained exemptions. The tension, heightened by the discovery of an alleged Spanish invasion plot and by mass demonstrations against Spaniards in small towns surrounding the capital, reached fever pitch during the electoral campaign of August 1828, for the escoceses were known as the pro-Spanish party. Their victory was therefore considered (in yorkino circles, at least) a victory for Spain.³⁹

Of course, we cannot be sure that these views were held by the rioters who sacked the Parián; we cannot even be certain that the crowds of yorkino supporters were the same as those who pillaged. Some individuals lacking political motivation surely took advantage of the temporary absence of public authority to steal at will. Yet observers on both sides believed that most rioters were yorkino followers reveling in their party’s triumph. Ibar claimed that as the mob surged into the Zócalo, ringing the bells of the cathedral and charging the National Palace, it cried “Viva Guerrero!” and “to the Parián!” Payno said that the looters cried “vivas to liberty” as they threw themselves on the building. And Zavala, though intent on defending his party, admitted that discipline deteriorated among the mass of his volunteer followers, as “the sovereign people” celebrated the yorkino victory “in their terrible and accustomed manner.”⁴⁰

Historian Manuel Rivera Cambas claimed a half century later that, as the léperos rushed to the Parián, they raised the old cry of “¡Mueran los españoles!”⁴¹ Although I have not been able to substantiate his version in earlier accounts, it certainly fits the contemporary view that the rioters were propelled by hatred of Spaniards. The mob chose as its main target a building not only conveniently located and full of riches, but also one that had long symbolized Spanish domination, for most Spanish import merchants had their shops there. Indeed, during the Mexico City riots of 1692, furious crowds had similarly attacked the Parián while shouting anti-Spanish slogans.⁴² The building was further marked as a Spanish stronghold when, in 1808, Spanish merchants plotted from within its walls against a viceroy sympathetic to Mexicans.⁴³ In the weeks preceding the tumult, the yorkino newspaper, Correo de la Federación Mexicana, had targeted the “parianistas” as staunch supporters of the pro-Spanish escocés party.⁴⁴

Bustamante and Ibar, who vehemently opposed the expulsion of the Spaniards, tried to persuade their readers that the Mexican people were not really hostile to Spaniards, because they indiscriminately pillaged the property of Mexicans who had recently come to own shops in the Parián.⁴⁵ It is unreasonable, however, to expect the average resident of the capital to have known this, especially since the shopkeepers of the Parián, according to Prieto, scrupulously maintained Spanish traditions. Although it is certainly possible that for some rioters the Spaniards merely provided a pretext for stealing from the wealthy, even the escocés Alamán acknowledged that the Parián was the center of Spanish commerce.⁴⁶ It thus remained the symbol of both the centuries of Spanish exploitation and the continuing Spanish presence despite the achievement of independence. And—though contemporaries failed to mention this connection—the imported goods sold in the Parián represented unwelcome European competition for Mexican artisans as well.⁴⁷

Moreover, there are other indications of virulent anti-Spanish sentiment. In provincial cities, mass demonstrations erupted against Spaniards throughout 1828. In Mexico City itself, immediately after the riot, Tornel genuinely feared for the lives of Spaniards when the populace, exhibiting a classic conspiracy mentality, apparently blamed them for the shortages of food. He accordingly took precautions to ensure their safety, even escorting a group of Spanish citizens out of the capital under armed guard.⁴⁸ The hostility against Spaniards did not, apparently, extend to foreigners in general. Only Ibar raised this possibility. But his claim that during the riot the “rabble” attacked the British Consulate in Mexico City and trampled its flag is called into question by the omission of this incident from British consular records. His contention that a few English and German shops were sacked is contradicted by assurances from Ward, as well as from the British chargé d’affaires, Robert Pakenham, that “not a single British merchant was plundered.” Poinsett likewise reported no attacks on U.S. citizens or property.⁴⁹ It therefore appears that the Spaniards were singled out as a symbol of colonialism, wealth, foreign imports, and the escocés party simultaneously. The tense climate caused by the threat of a Spanish invasion, the economic decline of the artisans, and the hotly contested election made the combination electric.

This evidence suggests that the rioters were not as irrational, senseless, and disorderly as many elite observers believed. Although it is dangerous to assume that everyone in the crowd shared common ideas and motives, it appears likely that many shared what sociologist Neil Smelser terms the “generalized beliefs” that direct collective behavior.⁵⁰ In this case, such beliefs included, as I have argued, enthusiasm for Guerrero and his party, a desire for the protection of domestic industry, and hostility toward Spaniards. Indeed, the latter fits Smelser’s conclusion that most riots vent popular rage against a particular individual, group, or institution held responsible for an undesirable state of affairs. Moreover, since the rioters for the most part limited themselves to looting the Parián, their behavior —though seemingly chaotic—had an internal structure. Not only did their main target correspond to their politics, but the looters may have believed they had some kind of permission for attacking the Parián. For even if we reject the charges that yorkino leaders instigated the looting, the rhetoric that targeted Spaniards and “parianistas” gave a patina of legitimacy to the violence. Certainly the looting was partly sanctioned by the type of ideas voiced by a member of the city council a month after the riot: in a discussion on whether to compensate the Spanish shopkeepers of the Parián, the first síndico held that their property was the ill-gotten fruit of conquest and, by implication, fair game.⁵¹ Thus, as Hamlet might have said, the crowd had a certain method to its madness.

The riot further suggests that the xenophobia so prevalent during the Mexican Revolution of the twentieth century had deep roots, at least in urban areas. Since antiforeignism, even in its more restricted anticolonial form, is an incipient form of nationalism, this conclusion challenges the views of Mexican leaders of the midnineteenth century who bemoaned the lack of national loyalty among their people. Indifference to the fate of the nation may have characterized Indian villagers, especially during the Mexican-American War, but indifference did not characterize the lower classes in the capital, who in 1828 as well as 1848 exhibited as much nationalism as their social superiors.

Still, it is easy, in following Rudé and Thompson, to overemphasize the rioting crowd as the embodiment of national identity and as champions of the people. Both logic and the paucity of data caution against forcing five thousand people into a homogeneous mold, especially when the available evidence shows untidiness at every turn. We know, for example, that though the Spanish stronghold of the Parián was their main target, it was not the only building they looted, and more widespread damage might have occurred had it not been for the timely intervention of authorities. Furthermore, though the Parián riot demonstrates that class conflict was always beneath the surface in such a highly stratified society, it was given focus by nationalism and partisan politics. The opportunity to pillage, a kind of leveling by taking from the rich, certainly played a part. It is difficult, however, to argue that a crowd that killed its peers but not its social superiors, and that allied itself with one elite faction, was primarily motivated by an unconscious sense of class solidarity.

The Political Context

In discussing the causes of riots, Hobsbawm emphasizes the economic context, where the dislocations of expanding capitalism undermined the social order. Certainly, the impoverishment of the artisans through foreign competition helped prepare the ground for the Parián riot, as did the hardships created by the increasingly penurious government which was unable to pay many of its employees by 1828. Yet in the next three decades the Mexican capital suffered a downwardly spiraling economy without producing another popular disturbance. Thus, economic distress is a necessary, but not sufficient, explanatory factor. What distinguishes the 1828 incident is the political context. It is important to remember that this riot, like many outbreaks of lawlessness in Latin America studied in Richard Slatta’s Bandidos,⁵² coincided with partisan struggles among the elites that weakened the central authority. One further factor was necessary: as with provincial riots during the independence wars, the populace had been mobilized by one elite faction. Although elite leaders soon lost control, it is doubtful that the urban poor would have risen up without their initial encouragement. Especially in the huge capital, where nearly half the poor were migrants from widely disparate areas, they lacked the communal structure and leadership that facilitated organization in Indian villages. And they had not yet developed strong associational organizations that would foster collective independent action.

The Parián riot must therefore be viewed as the byproduct of a new kind of democratic politics ushered in by the independence wars. Since 1810, members of the Mexican elites appealed to the people, first to support them in the struggle against Spain, and then to support their candidates at the ballot box. The result, as Alamán noted, was not infrequently violence and looting, the Parián riot and Hidalgo revolt being the most extreme examples.⁵³ The politics of the early republic thus differed from colonial politics in the extent of mobilization of the urban poor. Many contemporaries charged the yorkinos with being demagogues, pandering to the masses in order to build a following. Bustamante and Ward accused them of organizing the demonstrations that shattered the peace through out 1828. Suárez Navarro, exonerating the Mexican masses, accused the yorkinos of “seducing the simple people” and taking advantage of their innocence.⁵⁴ Whether or not the rioters actually understood or agreed with yorkino politics, it is apparent that they came from the crowd mobilized by the yorkino cause, and the yorkino rhetoric helped to define the context in which the rioters acted.

Because of its relationship to partisan politics, the tumult of the Parián fits Eric Hobsbawm’s and Charles Tilly’s classification of a “modern” rather than “traditional” riot of the “Church and King” variety (which Tilly later termed a “proactive” rather than “reactive” collective action). Although the distinction is probably overdrawn, it is useful for highlighting the unusual features of the riot. According to Hobsbawm’s and Tilly’s formulation, crowds in the earlier type of riot, prevalent in Europe until the eighteenth century, invoked the name of “Church and King” as they tried to defend traditional rights and customs, either by resisting new demands imposed by outsiders (as in the tax revolt) or by fighting to enforce popular standards of justice (as in the food riot). In contrast, modern crowds wanted to change rather than preserve an old way of life; instead of invoking traditional norms and symbols, they proclaimed the goals of political clubs or parties, secret societies, and workers’ organizations; and their riots often grew out of political demonstrations and strikes. As Richard Bendix has pointed out, the new forms of popular protest reflected the growth of democracy in Europe. But they also reflected deep-seated changes in the organization of daily life. For while traditional rioters usually represented a close-knit community, modern rioters usually represented supporters of a particular creed or program. Thus, in Tilly’s words, “collective violence, like so many other features of social life, changed from a communal basis [of organization] to an associational one.”⁵⁵

The Parián riot indicates that, to the extent that Mexico City had made the transition from “traditional” to “modern” forms of collective violence, it had more in common with European cities of the time than with the rural areas of Latin America. Recent studies of Latin American village riots in the nineteenth century, as well as the colonial period, indicate that they were of the “Church and King” variety, as were the great riots that shook Mexico City in the seventeenth century. Unlike the Parián rioters, rural protesters throughout Latin America reacted against a specific injustice imposed on them from the outside, made well-defined demands (such as the return of a parcel of land or the removal of an abusive official), and usually had visible leaders.⁵⁶ The Mexico City rioters of 1624 and 1692, though not representing a cohesive community, also wanted to preserve certain customary arrangements, the tumult of 1692 being a fairly classic food riot (albeit with anticolonial overtones), and that of 1624 protesting a viceroy who trampled community norms.⁵⁷ It might be argued that the Parián riot similarly embodied a desire to return to the norms of colonial commerce overturned by free trade; but its anticolonial character, along with the fact that Spain never intentionally protected the Mexican textile industry, makes this argument difficult to sustain. The rioters’ affiliation with electoral politics highlights the degree to which Mexican politics had changed over a century and a half. The contrast with village riots that appealed to authorities to right specific wrongs also suggests the degree to which the nineteenth-century capital (along with a few provincial cities) remained distinctive in a largely rural country.⁵⁸

Yet the new populist politics did not last, in part because of elite revulsion to the riot. The immediate reaction of the capital’s propertied classes was to call for a stronger police force to maintain public order. This was not the first time they had done so—the city had reorganized its police force in the late eighteenth century, and only the preceding spring, as the effects of the economic crisis became evident, the city council had set up a vagrants’ tribunal to round up potential troublemakers. But the tribunal barely functioned in the months before the riot, and the police force was likewise ineffective.⁵⁹ In fact, in the days after the tumult, it became obvious that the police contributed more to the city’s problems than to their solution, for the city council received so many complaints about corrupt policemen carrying out new robberies in the guise of recovering stolen loot that it had to revoke a decree ordering the police to search the city for plundered goods.⁶⁰ Thus, as Tornel explained, public order before the riot had been maintained not so much by force as by the “docility” of the lower orders.⁶¹ And their betters had exhibited a remarkable complacency, fearing threats from the rural areas far more than they feared an uprising of the urban poor. By labeling the Parián riot the worst catastrophe ever to befall the capital, Mora and Ibar suggest that the well-to-do had quite forgotten the outbursts of the seventeenth century.⁶² In the aftermath of the uprising, however, the gente decente regarded congregations of poor people with horror, the city government reorganized and strengthened the police force, and the vagrants’ tribunal began pursuing the capital’s paupers in earnest.⁶³

It is interesting to note that the church played a smaller part in restoring order in 1828 than it had in 1692, when processions of friars and a Nahuatl-speaking priest had calmed the rioting crowd.⁶⁴ To be sure, after the Parián riot, the governor of the Federal District convinced the church to excommunicate those who possessed looted goods,⁶⁵ but it was soldiers and cannon—not churchmen—that dispersed the rioters at the Zócalo. Despite the proximity of the Parián to the cathedral and numerous convents, not a single religious attempted to halt the disturbance, probably viewed as the yorkinos’ doing. Their reluctance not only suggests the growing estrangement of the yorkinos from the church, but also its lower profile in an increasingly secular world. My impression from reading the minutes of the city council is that the decline in the role of the church was not entirely due to partisan politics, for escocés as well as yorkino members preferred reliance on an expanded armed force to reliance on a strong church.

Just as the riot led the elites to conclude that the city needed more armed force to control the poor, it also helped persuade them that it needed less democracy, now stained by association with riot, plunder, and the threat of class war. Tornel believed the Parián riot “effectively dissipated all illusions” about democracy. Contemporary writers proved him right by deploring “popular doctrines that undermine subordination and obedience” and denouncing “the ills of unlimited popularism and exaggerated democracy.”⁶⁶ Indeed Prieto, who admitted that his first political notions were forged by the tumult, stated that “the democratic program was summarized by the plebs in the phrase, ‘¡Vivan Guerrero y Lobato/y viva lo que arrebato!’”⁶⁷ Even Zavala and Zerecero were repelled by the uprising of the poor. Thus, Zerecero later regretted his part in the Acordada revolt, confessing “before God and man that he had done wrong” because the revolt ended in the sack of the Parián. Zavala likewise denounced that “horrible revolution,” disastrous because of the popular disorders that accompanied it.”⁶⁸ And though it is hardly surprising that in its aftermath Bustamante and Ibar openly proclaimed their disdain for the masses, these sentiments were also expressed by Zavala about the lower-class followers he had originally courted.⁶⁹ The riot therefore reinforced class prejudice, as yorkinos and escoceses alike feared that mobilization of the masses might lead to anarchy and class war.⁷⁰

The unhappy experience with popular participation contributed to the social conservatism that would characterize both liberal and conservative parties throughout the nineteenth century. The riot, though just one episode in one city, was a pivotal event in dampening the democratic idealism of early independent Mexico. Because it elicited such generalized repugnance among the establishment, the triumph of the Acordada revolt was, as many commentators noted, the downfall of the popular party. Those who a year later deposed Guerrero and imposed a dictatorial regime were able to portray themselves as “fighting the war of civilization against barbarism, of property against thieves, of order against anarchy.”⁷¹ The new government soon began to revise the surprisingly democratic electoral laws that granted suffrage to men regardless of literacy and wealth.⁷² And the Constitution of 1836 introduced literacy and income requirements for suffrage. Thus, within 12 years, Mexico’s leaders had lost the optimism that informed the first constitution in 1824.⁷³ By revealing the dangers of mass mobilization, the summer and fall of 1828 may have witnessed the last populist campaign until the elections of 1909 unleashed the Mexican Revolution.

The contrasts between the two upheavals are instructive, since every riot carries with it the potential for a prolonged breakdown in social control. Both the twentieth-century revolution and the Parián riot came on the heels of economic crises, widespread dissatisfaction, and a division among elites. Controversial elections followed by repression of the opposition caused the government to lose some of its legitimacy. And the disaffected faction of the elites appealed to the people for support in its bid for power. Yet in 1828, the popular uprising quickly subsided. Elite factions, not yet alienated from the system, immediately closed ranks without providing sustained leadership for the masses. Since the urban lower classes did not have strong associational organizations of their own, even the vicious intraelite conflicts that followed during the Reforma did not lead to popular disturbances. Without a crossclass alliance, mass protest did not develop into a challenge to the established order. But Mexican leaders had forgotten that lesson by 1910. As in the century after the great riots of the seventeenth century, they had become complacent and ignored the reservoir of dissent among the lower orders that could easily ignite when it became linked with the grievances of other social groups.

Author notes