1998/08/01 by John Tutino · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Historical Studies in Latin America #Politics and Society in Latin America
paper · pdf · doi:10.1215/00182168-78.3.367
openalex publication_date 1998/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/22
The Hidalgo revolt of i8io marked the commencement of conflicts that brought independence to Mexico in I82I and then led to a series of revolutionary changes that endured for decades into the national era. As colonial rule ended the contested processes of nation-building began. Mexicans faced new links to the Atlantic economy: silver mining collapsed and struggled to recuperate; textile production foundered in the face of industrial imports, then began to revive with early industrialization in Mexico. A colonial state that was oriented to mediate conflicts gave way to a national polity in which diverse Mexicans saw the state as an agent of their interests in conflict. Elites and popular groups struggled, and at times fought, to determine who would control the state and participate in national, regional, and local politics. Many villagers saw the postindependence era of conflict as a time to renegotiate production and labor relations. And beginning with insurgency in i8io, rural families forced radical transformations in agrarian production and social relations in the region that had been the engine of commercial development in late colonial Mexico: the Bajio, a fertile basin that lay north and west of Mexico City and the central highlands. The interpretation just given challenges an entrenched vision of Mexican