Trama de una guerra conveniente

In this thought-provoking work, Sara Ortelli combines social, economic, and ecological history to challenge the traditional historiography on eighteenth-century Nueva Vizcaya, the largest province of northern New Spain, which included the present-day Mexican states of Chihuahua and Durango, as well as parts of southern Coahuila. Drawing on a wide array of archival sources from multiple repositories in Mexico and Spain, Ortelli argues that the “Apache war” that purportedly afflicted this region between 1748 and 1790 was actually a discursive strategy employed by the local elites to maintain their privileges in the face of increasing interference from representatives of the Spanish Crown.Ortelli does an excellent job at exposing how captains and other characters related to the presidios (frontier military posts and garrisons) profited from the colonial order to become powerful landlords, miners, and merchants. She also points out convincingly the many people who directly or indirectly benefited from the military expenditures incurred upon by the crown in Nueva Vizcaya. By projecting the idea of a dangerous Indian war, she argues, the provincial elites attempted to defend their privileges and preserve the degree of autonomy that they had traditionally enjoyed as frontier dwellers. The material benefits to be obtained or maintained in this manner ranged from tax exemptions to access to indigenous labor in the form of war captives or through the mandamiento system, an institution that enabled miners, landlords, and missionaries to draw Indian workers from the native villages and missions in the region.At midcentury, Nueva Vizcaya officials blamed the Apache, an enemy labeled as “external,” for much of the turmoil experienced in the province. To Ortelli, however, the term “Apache” was a catchall term liberally applied to not just Athapaskan-speaking indios bárbaros (unconquered non-Christian Indians) but also to anyone who lived in the margins of colonial society and engaged in illegal activities. By the 1770s, the violence that troubled Nueva Vizcaya was generally attributed to a number of bands integrated by individuals of heterogeneous ethnic, social, and legal extraction, who were accused of the crime of infidencia, that is, disloyalty to the crown. Along with the violence that Apaches and infidentes reportedly deployed, they shared an inclination to steal livestock, particularly horses, and to take refuge in mountain ranges or in the inhospitable Bolsón de Mapimí, at remote locations which served both as hideouts and operation bases. From there, Ortelli contends, the thieves drove the stolen livestock to distant markets north of the Rio Grande and west of the Sierra Madre. In her view, the violence attributed to Apaches and infidentes was largely a product of this illegal livestock traffic. A third group of enemies consisted of local abigeos, that is, individuals accused of poaching livestock, who often had strong ties to prominent members of the region’s elite. In Ortelli’s view, the relative peace that according to the official discourse began in Nueva Vizcaya and other Spanish-American frontiers around 1790 had more to do with the control of infidentes and abigeos, that is, “internal enemies,” than with the policies of pacification implemented against “external” bárbaros.Ortelli’s narrative is well supported with carefully crafted maps and tables. Her style is lucid, yet occasionally repetitive. She meticulously reconstructs the kinship and trade networks of some individuals and groups that played prominent roles in the history of the region, such as José de Berrotarán, commander of the presidio of San Francisco de Conchos, or the gang of the Sáenz brothers, which operated from the rancho of San Antonio del Tule near San José del Parral.The inspiration that Ortelli reportedly found in the historiography on other areas of colonial Latin America (p. 20) may have biased some of her interpretations. Apache raiding, which she arguably underestimates, was a serious threat to the stability of many areas along the northern frontier of New Spain during the second half of the eighteenth century, including parts of Nueva Vizcaya. Ortelli herself mentions official reports written by diverse individuals at different times who disagree with regard to the impact of Apache raids in the province. On the other hand, the suggestion that the Nueva Vizcaya elites adamantly opposed the so-called Bourbon Reforms is hard to reconcile with the fact that, in the long term, such reforms earned those elites even more power than they originally had. Finally, while the passage of livestock between northern Mexico and the United States by independent Indians as well as by citizens of both states is well documented for the nineteenth century, the existence of an equivalent traffic between 1748 and 1790 has yet to be proven.This revisionist book is highly recommended for those interested in colonial New Spain and the Spanish-American borderlands. It will doubtlessly become a mandatory reference for researchers of Nueva Vizcaya for years to come

Autonomy · Colonialism · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Ethnology · Face (sociological concept) · Frontier · Geography · Historiography · Indigenous · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Archaeology and Natural History · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Latin American history and culture · Law