Forceful Negotiations: The Origins of the Pronunciamiento in Nineteenth-Century Mexico(The Mexican Experience)

Often translated as "revolt," a pronunciamiento was a formal, written protest, typically drafted as a list of grievances or demands, that could result in an armed rebellion. This common nineteenth-century Hispano-Mexican extraconstitutional practice was used by soldiers and civilians to forcefully lobby, negotiate, or petition for political change. Although the majority of these petitions failed to achieve their aims, many leading political changes in nineteenth-century Mexico were caused or provoked by one of the more than fifteen hundred pronunciamientos filed between 1821 and 1876. The first of three volumes on the phenomenon of the pronunciamiento, this collection brings together leading scholars to investigate the origins of these forceful petitions. From both a regional and a national perspective, the essays examine specific pronunciamientos, such as the Plan of Iguala, and explore the contexts that gave rise to the use of the pronunciamiento as a catalyst for change. Forceful Negotiations offers a better understanding of the civil conflicts that erupted with remarkable and tragic consistency following the achievement of independence, as well as of the ways in which Mexican political culture legitimized the threat of armed rebellion as a means of effecting political change during this turbulent period.

Table of Contents:
Preface     Acknowledgments   Introduction: The Nineteenth-Century Practice of the Pronunciamiento and Its Origins      Chronology of Main Events and Pronunciamientos, 18211853      1. Iguala: The Prototype      Timothy E. Anna 2. Agustín de Iturbide: From the Pronunciamiento of Iguala to the Coup of 1822      Ivana Frasquet and Manuel Chust 3. Two Reactions to the Illegitimate Succession of 1828: Campeche and Jalapa  Josefina Zoraida Vázquez 4. Municipalities, Prefects, and Pronunciamientos: Power and Political Mobilizations in the Huasteca during the First Federal Republic      Michael T. Ducey 5. The Origins of the Pronunciamientos of San Luis Potosí: An Overview  Kerry McDonald 6. The British and an Early Pronunciamiento, 18331834   Michael P. Costeloe 7. The Origins of the Santiago Imán Revolt, 18381840: A Reassessment      Shara Ali 8. A Reluctant Advocate: Mariano Otero and the Revolución de Jalisco    Melissa Boyd 9. Constitution and Congress: A Pronunciamiento for Legality, December 1844   Reynaldo Sordo Cedeño 10. "The Curious Manner in Which Pronunciamientos Are Got Up in this Country": The Plan of Blancarte of 26 July 1852     Rosie Doyle 11. Inventing the Nation: The Pronunciamiento and the Construction of Mexican National Identity, 18211876  Germán Martínez Martínez 12. "I Pronounce Thus I Exist": Redefining the Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico, 18211876      Will Fowler Bibliography      Contributors       

About the Author :
Will Fowler is the Director of Research of the School of Modern Languages at the University of St. Andrews. He is the author of many publications, including Latin America since 1780; Tornel and Santa Anna: The Writer and the Caudillo, Mexico, 1795–1853; and Santa Anna of Mexico, available in a Bison Books edition. Contributors include Ivana Frasquet, Manuel Chust, Josefina Vázquez, Michael Ducey, Shara Ali, Reynaldo Sordo, Timothy E. Anna, Kerry Anne McDonald, Michael Costeloe, Melissa Boyd, Rosie Doyle, and Germán Martínez Martínez.

Review :
"The questions raised by the authors are important and the empirical contribution of the volume significant."—Eric Van Young, Journal of Interdisciplinary History