Source One: “Ignacio Pesquiera: Sonoran Caudillo”
Rodolfo Acuña’s 1970’s article “Ignacio Pesquiera: Sonoran Caudillo” concerns the life of a former governor of Sonora, whose rise to power followed a “complete” caudillo narrative.
Born into a relatively affluent family, Pesquiera was educated in Spain and France where he was introduced to the liberal ideals that were taking hold in Europe in the 1830s. Upon returning to frontier of Northern Mexico in 1838, he quickly gathered a following of local men. His advanced education and reportedly magnetic personality allowed him to rise quickly through the ranks of the local militia. Sonora at the time suffered from continual neglect from the Mexican state. The state, concerned with constant upheavals close to Mexico City was unable to secure the Northern frontiers. Major Pesquiera gained much popularity by protecting the Mexican settlements of the region and amassed a loyal following.
Pesquiera was an opportunist, a quality shared by many caudillos throughout Latin America. The major was able to play local leaders against each other, at the same time as he created a network of personal alliances with wealthy rancheros, members of a rising merchant class, and many interior native groups. After militarily crushing a revolt by the previous governor, Pesquiera assumed the position of acting governor, before eventually being elected governor in his own right in 1857.
Throughout his term as governor, Pesquiera took every opportunity to expand with influence, including marching his personal army of 3000 volunteers across state lines, fighting of rival caudillos and picking up accepted titles in Sinaloa and Baja California. Locally, he reigned over Sonora with little to no support from the central state, and in fact Pesquiera was often at odds with Mexico City over the national government’s cooperation with American business interests in Sonora.
During the War of Reform that rocked mid-20th century Mexico, Pesquiera tried to continue growing his support base by balancing the interests of different local factions. However, many of his followers deserted him after he attempted to support Benito Juarez’s war against France. Acuña argues that the Sonorans that Pesquiera had sent had no sense of obligation towards the Mexican state and were unwilling to fight beyond their locality. This marked the beginning of the caudillo’s decline.
Although briefly ousted from power by invading French forces who had allied with Pesquiera’s local enemies, he maintained a small following and was able to retake his position in Sonora once the French retreated from Mexico. His second term as governor was a disaster, as the state’s economy plummeted as Pesquiera lost control of the various factions supporting him. As Porfirio Diaz’s new central government extended state control in the North, many of Pesquiera’s closest allies turned on him. As Sonora divided, the caudillo decided to retire to his hacienda in 1877. As the Porfiriato unfolded, the placement of railroad and telegraph lines across the frontier closed the distance between Sonora and Mexico City, effectively ending the era of the caudillo there.
Acuña’s piece serves to illustrate a specific example of a caudillo’s career, highlighting how the foundation of a caudillo power base was laid. Pesquiera’s two decades of control in Sonora were largely a result of his ability to rally people in the absence of any state involvement. His popularity was won after a series of triumphs that benefited the local people, but the eventual acceptance of the concept of a national government came at his expense.
Source Two: Making Sense of Caudillos in Nineteenth-Century Latin America”
While the first source followed one individual from whose story we can extrapolate a larger narrative of caudillismo, this next source, “Making Sense of Caudillos in Nineteenth-Century Latin America,” aims generally define the phenomenon of caudillismo throughout the entire region. Written by John Charles Chasteen and Published in “Problems in Modern Latin American History” in 2009, this essay draw on multiple examples from Mexico to Argentina, this essay attempts to highlight shared characteristics as well as differences between a wide variety of people who have all been termed caudillos.
The article starts out by showing how different caudillo leaders differed from one another. For instance, Juan Manuel de Rosas in Argentina was born wealthy, whereas Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna in Mexico built up a fortune through military triumphs. Different caudillos varied in wealth, education, occupation, and even race. The idea presented here is that caudillismo was not dependent on status, but in fact it reflected a lack of respect for that authority. The implication is that it’s for precisely this reason that caudillos became so powerful: their message was inclusive to the lower classes, and lower class people could find a place and rise within a caudillo’s social network. Caudillismo seemed to be a rejection of traditionally stratified society. Individual caudillos may have come from wildly different positions in society, but all filled a void left by the lack of an accepted state hierarchy.
Chasteen pays particular attention to what he calls “vertical patron-client relationships,” wherein a pyramidal hierarchy is formed by a national caudillo who gets his power from support by important landowning families, who in turn are lent support from respected institutions such as lawyers, judges, and military. In these instances, caudillos legitimized themselves through the use of accepted means of governance (national institutions thought to possess authority) and take on official titles. In reality, this was just for show and their power lay in the fact that they were supported by a network of personal relationships. These relationships would have to be continually demonstrated through face-to-face interactions; either through patronage or through military prowess shown by dealing with the frequent insurgency that characterized the twentieth century in Latin America.
In their own times, caudillos all earned the respect of their local communities; they built a base of support by providing security when state institutions could not. Caudillos across Latin America operated with a network of personal relationships, which was more accessible to the rural population than the ineffectual concepts of the nation-state that had taken hold among certain educated elites. Patronage structures seem more tangible than the loose concepts that structure a state society. Ultimately, the success and decline of caudillos in the region reflected symbolic identities of identity.