La participación indígena en la construcción de la república de Guatemala, S. XIX

This very interesting and provocative book has a somewhat misleading title. Although the content is all about the political participation of Indian communities in Guatemala, Indians themselves rarely appear. Rather, the book primarily reflects the debates of liberal and conservative elites over the communities’ participation. Alda Mejías’s principal argument is that indigenous communities did participate in the political construction of the nation, appropriating the political ideologies of both liberals and conservatives to forge a political space for themselves in the new republic. Rarely has this topic been explored as deeply as in this work, though the main argument does not completely fit the evidence presented.The author posits a conflict between indigenous communities and Guatemalan elites, both liberal and conservative. According to Alda Mejías, the communities wished to maintain their corporate status and privileges, whereas the elites wanted to “civilize” the Indians by Westernizing them. The liberals attempted to do this through elections and education, while the conservatives adopted a more gradualist approach. But in the end, both political parties shared the same goal: creating a culturally homogenous population that participated in the value system shared by the Europeanized elites. Initially, liberals thought that assimilation could occur through political participation, and so legislation toward voting and citizenship was close to universal male suffrage. The author shows that the Cádiz constitution of 1812 was essential to early republican conceptions of Indian participation and citizenship.Ironically, as the Indians refused to assimilate, both conservative and liberal elites argued that to create real democracy, the “savage” Indian — too ignorant to vote properly — should be excluded from suffrage. However, the author argues, both parties also needed the Indians’ electoral support. The Indians did not necessarily favor one party over the other; community members were tied through patron-client networks to members of both parties, who tried to get the vote out for their respective candidates.The best parts of the book are the chapters on the electoral system. Alda Mejías shows a sophisticated understanding of nineteenth-century voting and offers a very good discussion of the various laws and the ideas behind it, exploding many myths about liberals and conservatives. She shows how fraud and accusations of fraud (which signaled divisions among the elites) made possible greater participation of Indians in the political process. In the last chapters, the book deals with municipal-level politics, where much of the struggle between Indians and non-Indians played out. The liberals’ idea of citizen equality was highly disadvantageous to Indian communities, because wherever Indian towns contained some non-Indians (called ladinos), they claimed and received half the municipal offices, while Indians occupied secondary positions. This unfair distribution brought about conflict, since ladinos claimed that they could not be ruled by Indians, and Indians insisted on autonomy. According to Alda Mejías, this was one of the major causes of the 1838 – 39 Indian uprising and the rise of Rafael Carrera, the towering conservative figure of nineteenth-century Central American politics. The conservatives initially supported the mixing of ladino and Indian in the communities; only in 1851 were the Indians able to win separate municipal offices again (though with the loss of direct participation as citizens). The distinction between citizens and electors also virtually eliminated Indian electoral participation, though Indian community officials continued to be eligible to vote throughout the nineteenth century.Indigenous action sometimes also appears, though infrequently. When it does, it is often intriguing, such as the author’s assertion that Indian communities usually voted unanimously as a corporate body for candidates, rather than as individuals. She also shows that the traditional village elites remained largely in power throughout the nineteenth century. It would have been good to explore further the implications of these topics for Maya political culture, but the book unfortunately is bereft of ethnohistorical analysis.There are some other problems as well, such as the author’s refusal to try to quantify the importance of Indian votes or to assess the relative importance of Indian resistance to elite efforts at Westernization. Moreover, Alda Mejías refers frequently to traditional historiography that assumed only Indian passivity or victimhood, rather than engaging consistently in the new historiography of nineteenth-century subaltern political participation. Also, it is curious that Rafael Carrera, who had such an important leadership role from the 1838 – 39 rebellion until his death in 1865, is rarely mentioned. Overall, the book is important for understanding nineteenth-century political thought and serves to fill an important hole in the literature of nineteenth-century Guatemala

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