Its indifferent title does little justice to this excellent volume so ably introduced and contextualized by Karen Racine and Graham Lloyd and so illuminating of Mexico's decade-long independence struggles. James A. Brush was a Scottish soldier who cut his teeth in Spain in the aftermath of Napoleon's 1808 invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, seeing action in several battles over the course of five years. Observant, well acquainted with the Spanish world of the early nineteenth century, presumably fluent in Spanish, and eager to pursue the fight against French and Spanish imperialism, Brush joined forces with Francisco Xavier Mina, a wealthy revolutionist from Navarre who had similarly resisted the French invasion and was now bent on opposing tyranny in the New World. The editors sketch Mina's dazzling story well, cobble together what is known about Brush's background, and chart the convergence of a soldier from Glasgow and a firebrand from northern Spain who, along with many others, boarded a ship in Liverpool one auspicious day in May 1816 with the intention of emancipating Mexico.
The first clue that this would be more than a run-of-the-mill journal is that Brush begins with an informative section about Mexico's geography, history, and racial and ethnic divisions, as well as a meaty discussion of the country's revolutionary movements up to 1816. Here we learn not only about the Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos but also about lesser figures like Albino García, whose usual mode of marching was “in a carriage full of women, himself seated in the midst of them with a bottle of brandy, of which he made liberal use,” and trailed by his guitar-playing officers (39).
The middle section is probably the least insightful, as the motley group of foreigners moves from the parched Gulf of Mexico coast toward the Bajío, a wealthy region in central Mexico dotted by silver mines that had been the cradle of the early independence movements. Once the expedition reaches the Bajío, Brush's journal comes alive again. General Mina's adventure took place during a very low moment for the Mexican rebels, when the royalist government was on the ascendency and the insurgencies of Hidalgo and Morelos seemed like a distant memory. Brush describes some of the last bastions of resistance in the region. One was Jaujilla, a large fortress on an island in the middle of a lake near Zacapu, Michoacán, built with sundried bricks. As the fortress occupied the entirety of the island, “with the water reaching to the foot of the walls,” it could only be entered in canoes (125). Jaujilla was advantageous militarily, but those who held it suffered greatly as the vapors that raised from the lake rendered it very unhealthy, according to Brush. Their tenacity is evident.
Another site of this geography of resistance was the Valle de Santiago, a municipality and town midway between the two principal cities in the region, Morelia (then called Valladolid) and Guanajuato. After the fighting between 1810 and 1817, both cities experienced considerable population losses. In stark contrast, Valle de Santiago grew tremendously, becoming the largest town in the region with a majority of residents committed to the cause of independence, according to Brush. Yet, like other places in the Bajío, the Valle de Santiago had been devastated so that its former beauty “could only be inferred from the churches and fragments of broken architectural ornaments” and the residents occupied temporary buildings raised “amongst the ruins” (127).
Insights like these make Brush's journal extremely valuable for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of life in Mexico's during the wars of independence.
