Mcleod Resistence

Native Resistcznce
and the Pax Colonial in New Spain
EDITED BY

SUSAN SCHROEDER

'4

4

I

University ofNebraska Press Lincoln and London

128 • CHRISTON I . ARCHER

the majority supported the rebel cause . The vicious combat centered the Mezcala Island fortress polarized society and deepened divisions the different sectors of the population . Merciless counterinsurgency ticed byCruz and his subordinates, such as Negrete, Quintanar, and royalist commanders, won back territory temporarily, but the process permanent enemies . Terror and violence-burning of crops and vill killing or driving off of livestock; executions ; forced labor of men in struction of defenses, in dangerous duty as pressed soldiers, and as o in the royalist fleet; and brutal treatment of women-combinedto stre resistance and rebellion and to produce guerrilla and bandit responses . Although the attitudes and feelings of the indigenous participants be interpreted in large part through written dispatches, propaganda both sides, and transcripts of prisoner interrogations, it seems clear th concept of Mexican independence was not a prime factor motivating insurgents . Their resistance and ideologyrelated to family, clan, ranch or pueblo and extended to district and region under the pressure of to military activity. The royalist garrisons and destacamentos volantes o army of Nueva Galicia bludgeoned the population but in the process stre ened negative attitudes against outsiders and foreigners-even those came from far-off Mexico City or Puebla. By hitting the formerly aut mous and isolatedIndian communities hard and by threatening their and perceived rights, the royalists pushed them into protracted rebe They made defensive arrangements, extended their own communicate and concluded alliances under the leadership of the priests and other le who subscribed to the broader struggle for political independence . though they resisted with great tenacity and cunning, over time the peo ofLake Chapala could not match royalist firepower or the gunboat flo that blockaded Mezcala Island and dominated the coastal villages . N theless, few royalist officers or soldiers cared to confront the indigenous diets in hand-to-hand combat at Mezcala Island . Long after the royalists parted from the region the Indian and mestizo people defended identified with their regions and districts ratherthan the Mexican natio its states . They struggled for traditional goals and idealized village soci rather than for the principles espoused for them by Mexican liberals and publicans who later wrote their history .

CHAPTER 6

Some Thoughts on the Pax Colonial, Colonial Violence, and Perceptions ofBoth
MURDO J . MACLEOD

hose who have written about colonialism and imperialism have beenoverhelmingly unfriendly to these alien and invasive systems of domination, ut many of these scholars have assumed and stated that, despite imposi. ons and oppressions, these regimes brought peace, often centuries of it . rom the Pax Romana, through the Pax Hispanica, to the more contempoary Pax Britannica and Pax Americana, western historiography has generly agreed that the great colonial empires,after bloody initial conquests, tamped out the tribal, petty state and internecine warfare that characterized many of the precolonial areas . Explanations for these long years of apparent peace have been varied . The existence of one large polity in the place of several small ones is the most obvious . Others stress that these colonial regimes were better organized, ompared at least to theirpredecessors, as far as the display and application of power were concerned . Moreover, they were more advanced militarily and administratively, and they knew how to use local, ethnic, or specialized elites as brokers-divide and rule-in a somewhat decentralized, federative structure . In general, although many imposed institutions and practices were disliked or even hated by the subject peoples, some...