Bandit Nation, A History of Outlaws and Cultural Struggle in Mexico, 1810-1920

Abstract

The first chapter gives us a historical overview of banditry and the Mexican state, how bandits amplified their social and political space in the face of the chronic crisis of stability and order from the 1830s to the 1860s; and how it affected the view of the Mexican elites toward the popular masses where most of the bandits came from, and foreign views on Mexicans as a whole. While North Americans pointed to the defects in the Mexican national character, Mexican writers hoped for progress and civilization - goals that defined the popular classes as uncivilized, and banditry as an obstacle. The fourth chapter is the most interesting since it analyses the many published corridas that challenged the narrative strategies of the elites, expressing lower-class notions of justice that often defied the authority of the state.

- Bandit Nation, A History of Outlaws and Cultural Struggle in Mexico, 1810-1920, by Chris Frazer. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

In Frazer's view, bandit narratives in travel accounts, novels, ballads and corridas played a role in broader processes involving Mexican elites, foreigners and the popular classes, in forms of national and class struggle, to define and create the Mexican nation state (p. 2). He carefully discusses his study vis à vis the new cultural history of Mexico and does so from a Marxian perspective, that is, that culture determines and is determined by relations and struggles between contending social forces, especially those arisen from class (p. 17). Its application on the archipelago of cultural and ethnic identities of completely different and isolated local Mexican societies seems doubtful at least until the later Porfiriato.

The first chapter gives us a historical overview of banditry and the Mexican state, how bandits amplified their social and political space in the face of the chronic crisis of stability and order from the 1830s to the 1860s; and how it affected the view of the Mexican elites toward the popular masses where most of the bandits came from, and foreign views on Mexicans as a whole. The presentation of the Mexican elites and 'their' attitude towards banditry is convincing. As the colonial practices were rejected by the Liberals, new codes and laws were formulated, social space was amplified, and new avenues of profit were explored. By 1871 the republic was consolidated and the legal instruments in place, but it took, after ten years of war, far more time to reduce banditry. However, I doubt if one can say that the Porfirian Liberals no longer hoped to redeem the lower classes, but only to convince them to obey. On a local level, dozens of high-level Porfirian liberals sincerely believed in education.

The second chapter gives a good illustration of the construction of the North American image of bandits and the importance of banditry in Mexico since independence, an image neatly connected to North American perspectives on Mexican society. Frazer observes three stages in the construction of this image. The first one of the 1820s reflects North American prejudices based on superiority as a possible path towards order and progress. From the 1830s to the 1860s, the increasing despair among the Mexican elites is reflected in their North American views of a racially inferior Mexico, expressed par excellence in bandits and léperos. Under Diaz, order and progress went hand in hand with changes in Mexican elite and American images on society and the phenomenon of banditry. The former cultivated their myth of national origin giving Mexicans in the mestizo the best of both Europe and the Aztec Empire; the latter softened its image of Mexicans as irredeemably inferior.

The third chapter analyses banditry in Mexican literature. The earlier novelists saw the vices of Mexican society, including banditry, as a colonial heritage. After the triumph of the Liberal state, the ancien régime was no longer responsible, the 'dangerous' lower classes remained the obstacle to modernization, and empathy for bandits vanished from the novels. While North Americans pointed to the defects in the Mexican national character, Mexican writers hoped for progress and civilization - goals that defined the popular classes as uncivilized, and banditry as an obstacle. The fourth chapter is the most interesting since it analyses the many published corridas that challenged the narrative strategies of the elites, expressing lower-class notions of justice that often defied the authority of the state. Here also, ethnicity and gender have their role, where most constructions refer to mestizos as bandits and to gender in terms of the still dominant patriarchal relationships; for bandits to be a hero, they had to fall within those lines of conduct. Among the factors that define banditry during the Porfiriato, one seems to be missing. Rural population, especially the villagers, were tired of disorder and assaults, as can be read in dozens of letters written by village alcaldes, and that seems more important that 'the unity of the elite classes' (p. 164).

Survival of the fittest affected late nineteenth-century positivist criminology, and tainted with social Darwinism, it influenced Porfirian intellectuals preoccupied with their possibly degenerate lower classes. Frazer presents us with a good description of the increasing expressions of social tension in the late Porfiriato and the spectre of popular revolution unleashed by Francisco Madero. Survival of the fittest also holds for those who fought for power during the revolution, where the lower class representatives Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa are the losers and the middle class Norteños are the winners. In terms of regime, those Nortenos were not that far from Don Porfirio's authoritarianism, but they were no longer ignoring the masses and effectively incorporated them in their system. In terms of novels, Lizardi's Elperiquillo sarniento criticized the society the bandits lived in, and a century later Azuela did as well with Los de abajo.

My only criticism of this well-written book has to do with some historical inaccuracies. Ferdinand VII (p. 23) was never replaced by a Constitutional Republic; he was only forced to reinstate the Cadiz Constitution. The Liberal Constitution of colonial Mexico (1812) enshrined universal suffrage for men, and most of it was incorporated into the Federal Constitution of 1824. Venustiano Carranza (p. 194) was not the only legal successor to the assassinated Madero, but he took it upon himself as long as he was the only legitimate state governor who refused to recognize Victoriano Huerta. In the reiterated views the author presents us with on repression and exploitation of the masses, there is too much undue generalization in the style of erstwhile official history. But that could be the problem with a Marxian class analysis of nineteenth-century Mexico.