The Landscape of discontent : community and conflict in eighteenth century Papantla, Mexico

Abstract

This dissertation is an examination of the colonial Mexican town of Papantla, Veracruz in the eighteenth century. By examining a series of uprisings, this work argues that the underlying social and ethnic complexity of Papantla was far more nuanced than has generally been addressed in the scholarship. Papantla was a town that violated the notions of an ethnically ordered society. Nor did Papantla show any evidence that either the Spanish or native populations held any natural unity or cohesion of action. The study of Papantla serves as a useful guide to the type of upheaval faced by colonial communities during the era of the Bourbon Reforms. In many ways, the experience of this town was much like that of other communities in different parts of the colony, with similar events triggering unrest, a somewhat standardized progression of violent events, and typical Spanish responses. At the same time, Papantla faced the challenges of eighteenth-century colonial reform, in a way that was shaped by its own history and composition. As a long time agricultural center for tobacco, Papantla was particularly disrupted by that crop's monopolization in 1764. The five uprisings that occurred in the following decades were in part shaped by this change. These uprisings reveal that Papantla was a community that was formed as much by political and economic conditions as it was by any notion of ethnic solidarity.