MADERA 1965: OBSESSIVE SIMPLICITY, the AGRARIAN DREAM, and CHE by Elizabeth Henson
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Madera 1965: Obsessive Simplicity, the Agrarian Dream, and Che Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Henson, Elizabeth Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 27/09/2021 19:34:07 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/560861 MADERA 1965: OBSESSIVE SIMPLICITY, THE AGRARIAN DREAM, AND CHE by Elizabeth Henson ____________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2015 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Elizabeth Henson, titled “Madera 1965: Obsessive Simplicity, the Agrarian Dream, and Che,” and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________________________________________________________ Date: William H. Beezley _______________________________________________________________________ Date: John R. Womack, Jr. _______________________________________________________________________ Date: Kevin Gosner _______________________________________________________________________ Date: Fabio Lanza Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: Dissertation Director: William Beezley 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: Elizabeth Henson 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Too many people for me to name have helped me over the nine years I have worked on this project. I am especially grateful to my committee: William H. Beezley, John R. Womack, Jr., Kevin Gosner, and Fabio Lanza, for their support, encouragement, and rigor. To the Department of History of the University of Arizona for providing me with an intellectual home I am sorry to leave. To Victor Orozco Orozco, Susan Deeds, and Carmen Nava, and to Patricia Ravelo, Sergio Sánchez, and my colleagues in the CIESAS Permanent Seminar on Violence, Gender, and Different Sexualities: I am grateful for all your suggestions, including the ones I did not follow. To the Anthropologist Augusto Urteaga Pozo-Castro, whose support was invaluable and whose untimely death cut short certain avenues of investigation. I am grateful to the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program, who financed a year in Mexico City and Chihuahua, and to the Tinker Foundation who funded some of the initial research. To the archivists: Liliana Rascón and Bill Israel of CIDECH, for performing the long-awaited and heroic revival of Chihuahua’s archives; to Concepción Franco of the State Normal School; to Mitchell Alberto Gárnica Flores and Arturo Santana of the State Judicial Archives; and to Juan Hernández López of Special Collections at the Autonomous University of Juárez. To the staff of the Archivo General de la Nación and the Hemeroteca Nacional in Mexico City. To Pedro Muñoz Grado for providing me with a copy of the Registro Agrario Nacional of Chihuahua. To those who submitted to interviews, although I was unable to include the interviews as such, your accounts informed and strengthened the work: Herminia Gómez, María Aurelia Gaytán, Fernando and Manuel Sandoval Salinas, Eduardo Gómez, Minerva Armendáriz, Pedro Uranga, Luis Urías, Miguel Angel Parra Orozco, Alvino Rivas, and Antonio Becerra Gaytán. To Raúl Florencio Lugo Hernández for giving me his memoirs and providing an example of steadfastness. To friends who opened their homes, hearts, and minds. In Chihuahua: las comadres, Lourdes Carrillo, Lorena Talamás, and Estela Fernández, and Hugo Carrillo, Nithia Castorena, Patricia Ochoa, Randy Gingrich, Ramón Antonio Armendáriz, Pety Guerrero, and Mague, Adela, and Beatriz Lozoya. In Mexico City: Patricia Ravelo, Sergio Sánchez, Susan Deeds (again), and Ilse Gradwohl. In Arizona: Carmen Megeath, Robin Zenger, and Toni Sodersten, who accompanied me to Madera on September 23, 2007. And finally to Adela Cedillo, for her own work, her help in translation, and for giving me hope. 5 Dedicated to Toni Sodersten and Augusto Urteaga, who supported this project in the beginning and who live forever in our hearts. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………... 7 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….... 8 Chapter 1: The Miracle and the Revolution…………………………. ……………………... 37 Chapter 2: El Estado Grande………………………………………………………………. 48 Chapter 3: From the Unión General de Obreros y Campesinos de México to the First Encounter of the Sierra.………………………………………………….. 78 Chapter 4: From the First Encounter to the Grupo Popular Guerrillero…………………... 147 Chapter 5: The Story of the Story, Primeros Vientos……………………………………… 266 Chapter 6: Literature Review……………………………………………………………… 273 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….... 280 Appendix I: Map………………………………………………………………………….. 289 Appendix II: List of Acronyms……………………………………………………………. 290 Appendix III: Corrido de Arturo Gámiz………………………………………………….. 292 References:………………………………………………………………………………. 294 7 ABSTRACT On September 23, 1965, a small group of campesinos, teachers, and students attacked the army base in Madera, Chihuahua. In Mexico, this attack is widely considered to be the first of the socialist armed movements of the late 1960s and ‘70s, inspiring the 23 rd of September League and others. Nearly all the existing literature focuses on the group’s turn to armed struggle—but is this what we should remember them for? The attack was preceded by five years of public mobilizations in support of the agrarian struggle and broader demands, involving vast numbers throughout the state, in a movement that transcended political parties and engaged in direct action. It was this broad social movement that nourished and gave birth to the armed movement; it was as innovative as Arturo Gámiz’s application of Che’s Guerra de Guerrillas to the sierra. I further argue that the armed struggle itself, which developed in the remote backlands, derived as much from a long tradition of armed self-defense endemic to the region as it did to the Cuban example. I also look at the participation of women, both voluntary and involuntary, in these events and the uses to which the assault on the base has been put in recent times. 8 Madera 1965: Obsessive Simplicity, the Agrarian Dream, and Che Introduction Madera, Sierra of Chihuahua. Just before dawn on September 23, 1965, 1 a squad of thirteen poorly armed young men who called themselves the Grupo Popular Guerrillero de la Sierra (Popular Guerrilla Group of the Sierra, GPG) attacked an army base on the edge of this town of twelve thousand inhabitants. They had expected to find some seventy soldiers asleep in the barracks, instead there were 125, who after a brief fire fight killed eight guerrillas while five escaped with the help of townspeople into the surrounding mountains. Four soldiers were killed and a fifth died of wounds; one civilian was killed by soldiers. The bodies of the dead guerrilleros were paraded around town in the rain. The governor of the state, General Práxedis Giner Durán, refused efforts to remove the bodies and ordered them thrown into a common grave without shrouds. “¿Querían tierra? ¡Dénles tierra hasta que se harten!” (“They wanted land? Give it to them until they choke!)” he announced. 2 On September 28, the governor signed an order granting 39,000 hectares to seventy-seven campesinos of Huizopa, affecting 1,534 hectares of Los Alisos of José Ibarra; four hundred hectares of El Naranjo and Arroyo Bonita, belonging to the son of Tomás Vega; and five thousand hectares of Dolores; along with lands belonging to Bosques de Chihuahua and the federal government.3 Ibarra and Vega were the principal caciques of the region and Bosques de Chihuahua (Chihuahua’s Forests), a timbering company, was the guerrilla’s principal antagonist. On October 1, 1965, El Heraldo de Chihuahua announced the distribution of five thousand hectares to the Ejido Cuauhtémoc, in the municipality of Ascensión, on former lands of the 1 Various connections to that date have been suggested but given the improvised planning of the event, I believe it was chance. 2 Carlos Montemayor, Las armas del alba: Novela (Mexico, D.F.: