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Article Excerpt
The traditional view of Latinos (1) in California from statehood in 1850 to the early twentieth century is captured in the title of one the most widely known histories of the period: The Decline of the Californios. In his foundational text, Leonard Pitt points to the negation of Mexican land grants in the early statehood period and a concomitant loss of economic power and political office as causes of Latino diminishment. Although Pitt focuses narrowly on the Latino landed gentry, his framework generally has been assumed by other scholars to apply to the entire Latino population. (2) In this generalized version of Latino history, the state's once-thriving Latino communities--foundations of civil life in dozens of towns and settlements--suffered an irreversible political and economic decline in the latter half of the nineteenth century and have returned to public notice only through recent immigration.
According to this scenario, decline in the mid-nineteenth century was followed by displacement. The Foreign Miners' Tax (1850) and Atlantic-American (3) vigilantism during the 1850s drove Latino miners out of the gold fields. In urbanizing areas, such as Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, Latinos gradually were displaced into small, shrinking barrios. Disappearance followed decline and displacement. Latinos left California, some returning to Mexico and others drifting to other states. As the number of marriages and baptisms plummeted and as elite Latinos were absorbed culturally through intermarriage with Atlantic-Americans, (4) the Latino population dwindled to near oblivion. Through such mechanisms of decline, displacement, and disappearance, Pitt's account implies, Latinos virtually vanished from California just at the time the modern state was being shaped, and they apparently had little to do with its development.
Events publicized in the Spanish-language press during the early statehood era, however, tell a different story. At least twenty newspapers were published by and for California's Spanish-speaking population, both immigrants and Californios. (5) Beginning with La Estrella, the Spanish-language half of the Los Angeles Star (1851-55), and El Eco del Pacifico, the Spanish-language section of the French-language L'Echo du Pacifique in San Francisco (1852-65), a number of newspapers kept California's far-flung Latino communities informed about local, state, and international events. Los Angeles subsequently had two Spanish-language newspapers, El Clamor Publico (1855-59) and El Amigo dei Pueblo (1860-62). La Gaceta was begun in Santa Barbara in 1855 as the Spanish-language pages of the Santa Barbara Gazette. As San Francisco rocketed into prominence as a result of the Gold Rush, Spanish-language publications exploded there, too: La Cronica (1854-56); El Sud-Americano (1855); La Voz de Mejico (1862-66); La Bandera Mexicana and El Semanario Mejicano (1863); El Nuevo Mundo (1864-68); El Correo de San Francisco (1865); La Voz de Chile and El Observador (1866); the combined paper La Voz de Chile y el Nuevo Mundo (1867-68, continuing afterwards until 1884 as El Voz del Nuevo Mundo); El Bien Social, La Prensa Mexicana, and El Republicano (1868); and El Tiempo (1869). (6)
These newspapers documented the activities of a lively, engaged Latino population throughout this period of presumed decline, displacement, and disappearance. Latinos responded to events that affected them, from mob vigilantism in California to the French invasion of Mexico, by creating and adapting the juntas patrioticas (patriotic assemblies), organizations that managed and channeled their political and economic resources in ways that changed events around them. Because they tracked the activities of these juntas, Spanish-language newspapers provide a detailed view of how Latino communities remained active in the issues of the day, including civil rights, political participation, community services, and international affairs.
Furthermore, an analysis of the growth and membership of the juntas during this time suggests a considerable numeric and geographic expansion of Latinos throughout California in its first twenty years as part of the United States. Driven especially by the Gold Rush-induced immigration, the Latino population grew significantly, extending from the original eighteenth-century coastal settlements to virtually every town and mining camp, from Yreka to Hornitos, Red Bluff to Stockton.
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Inasmuch as the functioning of community organizations provides clues to the dynamics of the communities and societies in which they operate, this essay examines the structure and function of the juntas patrioticas during a crucial period in the formation of Latino civil society in California-the years just prior to and the two decades following statehood--with a special emphasis on the period between the American Civil War and the French Intervention in Mexico (1861-67). The juntas' continuing existence from their establishment in the 1840s, when California was part of the Republic of Mexico, to their sudden, vigorous growth and expansion during the 1860s argues for a Latino civil society that, far from disappearing before an Atlantic-American cultural onslaught, was alive and well, changing and adapting to new conditions. Our analysis of the activities of the juntas patrioticas, as published in the Spanish-language press, replaces an account of decline, displacement, and disappearance with alternative narratives of empowerment, expansion, and engagement.
EARLY HISTORY OF LAS JUNTAS PATRIOTICAS
Four years after Mexico won her independence from Spain, the planning and implementation of the annual celebrations of Mexican independence in Mexico City, fiestas patrias, were entrusted to a nongovernmental group called the Junta Patriotica. First organized in the summer of 1825 by a group of citizens, the junta held annual elections for a president and officers to plan the celebrations--music, a parade, fireworks, temporary stands for orators, flags and decorations, food, drink, a ball, and perhaps a bullfight--and collected funds to underwrite their cost. After publishing a summary of expenses and funds received, the junta then essentially disbanded until the following year. The tradition of a voluntary junta patriotica undertaking the organization of the annual fiesta patria spread throughout Mexico, and eventually most large cities came to have one. (7)
Although this custom may have arrived in Alta California with the 1834 Hijar-Padres colonizing expedition, the earliest documented existence of a junta patriotica in California dates from a decade later. In 1845, the president of Los Angeles's junta, Jose Antonio Carrillo, sent an invitation to Antonio F. Coronel (originally a member of the Hijar-Padres colony) to serve as chair of the dance committee for the ball that was part of that year's festivities. (8)
In 1848, within weeks of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the Mexican-American War (1846-48), a public announcement of the discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada caused a momentous demographic shift in California's population. Quite well documented is the sudden influx of tens of thousands of Atlantic-American gold-seekers who brought with them largely British-based customs, language, laws, and organizations. Less well known is the equally momentous impact of the Gold Rush on California's Latino society: thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of Latino immigrant gold-seekers poured in, not only from Mexico, but from all over Latin America--Chile, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, and Central America. The most recent immigrants from Mexico brought their tradition of the junta patriotica to the inland mining areas, where they established some of the first gold-mining towns and camps in the state: Hornitos, Melones, Sonora, Vallecito, San Andreas, Columbia, Jackson, Spanish Flat, and others. The junta in Hornitos, thirty miles east of Merced, built the town's first fraternal lodge in 1850, when Hornitos was barely two years old. (9) These new Latino settlers frequently bypassed the established Latino population centers of coastal California in favor of inland mining regions in the northern and central portions of the state. As a result, the Latino population in the southern part of the state remained predominantly Californio while the mining regions in the north became predominantly immigrant.
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Despite their new American citizenship, Los Angeles's Latinos retained a sense of loyalty to Mexico as well and continued to celebrate Mexican Independence Day festivities after 1848. In 1854, an unnamed group of "cinco ciudadanos [five citizens]" shouldered the full cost of a week-long celebration of "tiempos antepasados [old times]," with a ball and daily bullfights, lasting from September 16 to 20. (10) While neither the sponsoring groups nor the individuals were specifically named in the published account of the celebrations, the timing and form of the events certainly recall the functions of the junta patriotica.
The size and scope of these Los Angeles celebrations grew year after year. By 1855, Francisco P. Ramirez, the young editor of El Clamor Publico, wrote, "Not since California passed into the power of the United States has the anniversary of the independence of Mexico been celebrated in this city as well as it was this 16th of September. (11) During the 1850S, Mexican independence also was celebrated in many other parts of the state. "Mexicans living in California everywhere have celebrated the glorious anniversary of their country's independence," Ramirez proudly proclaimed. (12) By 1859, sponsorship of these celebrations was attributed to a Junta de Mexicanos; juntas patrioticas were most likely functioning at some level wherever celebrations were recorded. (13)
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SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXTS
Times were hard for most Latinos after 1848, when to a large extent they lost whatever political power and recourse they had enjoyed during the era of Mexican rule. Whereas Latinos once occupied nearly all civil and military offices in Mexican Alta California, after California became part of the United States the numbers of Latinos holding such offices dwindled significantly. In northern California, for example, Latinos were swept almost completely from office, with only an occasional sheriff, assembly member, or county supervisor remaining. (14) Latinos also were subjected to generally negative government policies throughout the 1850s, developments about which they were kept informed by the Spanish-language press. The Foreign Miners' Tax of 1850, designed to favor "American" miners in the gold fields, was followed by the Land Commission's declaration in 1852 that all Mexican and Spanish land grants were null and void unless title could be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. The resulting lengthy and expensive title litigation helped drive many a Californio rancher to ruin, and squatters in some areas claimed possession of their lands. (15) The "Greaser Law" of 1855 punished Latinos who had no readily visible means of support. (16) Legislative attempts were made to abolish the bilingual provisions of the state constitution and to abrogate women's right to own property independently of their husbands, a traditional Hispanic legal right that had been acknowledged in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and in California's original constitution. The platform of the Know-Nothing party, virulently anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant, included a proposal to strip Californios of their citizenship. (17) Throughout these developments in the 1850s, the juntas maintained a fairly low-key, temporary profile, out of public sight, except during the fiestas patrias. Little information on their political activities, if indeed there were any, has been found to date. But this political nonparticipation was about to change, as news of events outside the state's borders occupied the Spanish-language press.
Despite a time lag of four to eight weeks, the newspapers carried stories about the French incursion into Mexico. California's Latinos learned about the landing of the Triple Alliance in Veracruz to collect debts contracted by previous administrations, (18) the agreement of Soledad in which President Benito Juarez pled national bankruptcy and asked for an extension, the withdrawal of the English and Spanish forces on the strength of Juarez's promises, and the menacing French presence, continuing after the Spaniards and English had departed. In May 1862, events took a serious turn when the French broke off diplomatic relations with Mexico, complaining of "outrages of which the victims have been French subjects" living in Mexico. Just as suddenly, the French found an interest in helping Mexico find governmental stability. This help would take the form of "their advice and moral support, [which] would be given to the people, but never violence or a resort to brute force." Yet Latinos in faraway California read with horror that France had marched its troops from Veracruz to Orizaba, then on to Puebla, gateway to the capital of the Republic of Mexico, "without encountering much opposition." (19)
The news from the Atlantic Coast of the United States, where the Civil War was under way, was no happier for supporters of legally elected governments: the world's first encounter between iron-clad ships, the Federal Monitor and the Confederate Merrimac; the dreadful carnage of the battle of Shiloh; and Lee's spirited defense of Richmond, capital of the Confederacy, which had stopped the Union advance cold. Bad news from Mexico followed bad news from the eastern states, week after week. But then, on May 5, 1862, there was a sudden flash of hope--the outnumbered, ragtag Mexican army repelled the seemingly inexorable French advance at Puebla, sending the French troops, victors of Crimea, Sebastopol, and the Italian campaign, reeling back to Orizaba to lick their wounds. When the news reached California, the Spanish-language headlines were enthusiastic: "Hurrah for Mexico!! Hurrah for independence!! Hurrah for the valiant Mexican soldiers!! Hurrah for the heroic General Zaragoza and his comrades!!" For California's Latinos, U.S. citizens and immigrants alike, this news was a bracing tonic. Suddenly, they were part of a force to be reckoned with. Their peers at Puebla had taken a daring stance and had emerged victorious against the odds. Spontaneously, Latino residents of the gold country town of Columbia, in Tuolumne County, celebrated "our triumph against the French" by firing artillery salutes, singing patriotic songs, and toasting Mexico's success. (20)
EMPOWERMENT
Giddy with joy, many Latinos wanted to participate somehow in this Mexican feat of arms. They sent letters from Los Angeles, Tuolumne, Mariposa, Napa, Calaveras, and San Luis Obispo counties to the editor of La Voz de Mejico Manuel E. Rodriguez, voicing their desire to march to Mexico and join the defenders of Puebla. A few days later, the paper reported that a fund...
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