Undaunted before Tabasco's notorious lack of archival sources, Terry Rugeley has produced an engaging history of the region's long nineteenth century that makes a serious contribution to understanding the period. The state's low population density and natural transportation obstacles limited its economic prospects. Small-scale farmers of sugar and cattle took a back seat to cacao, but even though Tabasco's climate was ideal for this crop, planters faced increasing competition from more efficient South American producers with fewer labor and transport challenges. The heart of the text deals with the years between independence and the establishment of the Porfiriato, a time that witnessed the slow decline of King Cacao but preceded the late nineteenth century lumber boom.
State-building, of which he finds little before the Porfiriato, occupies most of Rugeley's attention. He offers a devastating view of Tabascan federalist politics. Rooted in resentments of late colonial Bourbon meddling, it never grew beyond its base in the cacao elite, whose single-minded resistance to taxes and trade restrictions on their commodity proved to be a very narrow platform. Nonetheless, federalist state militias provided the hacendados with armed might to offset their limited political appeal. Federalism floundered due to the inability of the indirect electoral system to legitimize the government and the fragility of civilian politics and constitutional forms in a landowner-dominated society where illiteracy and gross inequalities prevailed.
In contrast to what has been concluded in much of the recent historiography, Rugeley finds “that patronage and coercion far outweighed some sort of broad cross-class ideological sympathies” (p. 107). Equally, centralism had few local advocates beyond the military commanders dispatched from the national capital to oversee understaffed garrisons. The Church, never more than a backwater to the clerical establishment in Mérida, experienced a slow decline, and there were no law-and-order social conservatives to play the role of hombres de bien.
While the casual reader may be bewitched by the engaging narrative of the flamboyant locals and foreigners grasping for power, the story Rugeley tells has wider implications for understanding Mexico's disorderly nineteenth century. In the context of a weak state that enjoyed little legitimacy, small bands of armed men could topple governments, and acts of political violence, bordering on murderous vendettas, became increasingly frequent. Two groups benefited: those able to generate followers through traditional patrimonial ties, and the more marginal men who combined charisma, violent recklessness, and an ability to play factions off one another to come out on top. The political realities produced opportunities for filibusterers, political adventurers, and assorted megalomaniacs to govern, albeit briefly. Coining the colorful phrase “Napoleonic free radicals” to describe them, Rugeley centers much of his narrative on the succession of pretenders who raised the flags of liberty, nation, liberalism, or federalism to control the state. Francisco de Sentmanat, a Cuban-born radical exiled to New Orleans, is the premier example. Recruited to aid local federalists, he quickly wiled his way to control of the state, manipulating federalist factions against each other and against the national government.
While Tabasco's characteristics made governing a challenge, they also made foreign conquest impossible. Efforts by the technologically adept armies of the United States and France to subdue the unruly land of rivers floundered. Although they were able to blockade ports and repeatedly reduced San Juan Bautista to rubble, they were effectively stymied by locals in their efforts to control the province. Interestingly enough, the author finds evidence of popular mobilizations against foreign invaders, even as fights for provincial causes were limited to patrimonial gangs of thugs.
Rugeley, admirably, places Tabasco in the midst of the Caribbean world. The Grijalva River served as a highway to a sea occupied by New Orleans exiles and freebooters, among them Texan scammers, unscrupulous British arms dealers in Belize, Spanish and Cuban merchants and adventurers, Yucatecan federalists, and Mexican state-builders. Locals became accustomed to seeking outside alliances and soldiers from beyond Tabasco, even when their stated claim was to protect local sovereignty.
Although his love of a juicy tangential detail sometimes gets the best of him, Rugeley has produced a book that the non-specialist can enjoy even while academics will find much to ponder, particularly since his narrative challenges the recent emphasis on popular politics in republican Mexico.
