ABOUT THIS BOOK

Between 1750 and 1850 Spanish American politics underwent a dramatic cultural shift as monarchist colonies gave way to independent states based at least nominally on popular sovereignty and republican citizenship. In The Time of Liberty, Peter Guardino explores the participation of subalterns in this grand transformation. He focuses on Mexico, comparing local politics in two parts of Oaxaca: the mestizo, urban Oaxaca City and the rural villages of nearby Villa Alta, where the population was mostly indigenous. Guardino challenges traditional assumptions that poverty and isolation alienated rural peasants from the political process. He shows that peasants and other subalterns were conscious and complex actors in political and ideological struggles and that popular politics played an important role in national politics in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Guardino makes extensive use of archival materials, including judicial transcripts and newspaper accounts, to illuminate the dramatic contrasts between the local politics of the city and of the countryside, describing in detail how both sets of citizens spoke and acted politically. He contends that although it was the elites who initiated the national change to republicanism, the transition took root only when engaged by subalterns. He convincingly argues that various aspects of the new political paradigms found adherents among even some of the most isolated segments of society and that any subsequent failure of electoral politics was due to an absence of pluralism rather than a lack of widespread political participation.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Peter Guardino is Associate Professor of History at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico’s National State: Guerrero, 1800–1857.

REVIEWS

“The Time of Liberty is a welcome and much needed addition to the literatures on popular political culture, indigenous politics, independence, and the first half-century of Mexico’s independent political life. It will be influential in debates on nineteenth-century Mexican history and more broadly."—Florencia E. Mallon, author of Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru

“The Time of Liberty takes on the most important issues around Mexican independence and draws fundamentally important and transforming conclusions. It is the finest analysis yet written of politics and political culture before, during, and after Mexican independence.”—John Tutino, author of From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940

“[A] pathbreaking study. . . . Guardino casts new light upon regional political life in Oaxaca in both the city and in the rural villages of Villa Alta. . . . [T]his fascinating study opens new windows to explain a regional political picture that until now has been quite murky.”

-- Christon I. Archer Hispanic American Historical Review

“[T]his is an extremely important study of regional and national politics in Mexico. . . . By taking a broad view of politics, culture, and society during the formative period of nation-building in Mexico, Guardino offers a new perspective on peasant politics and on connections linking the village, region, and state.”

-- Scott Eastman Ethnohistory

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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