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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Californio Local Liberalisms: The Lasting Impact of Mexican Ideologies in California, 1848- 1890 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3v63x0n7 Author Riddell, Citlali Lucia Publication Date 2020 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Californio Local Liberalisms: The Lasting Impact of Mexican Ideologies in California, 1848-1890 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Citlali Lucia Riddell 2020 © Copyright by Citlali Lucia Riddell 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Californio Local Liberalisms: The Lasting Impact of Mexican Ideologies in California, 1848-1890 by Citlali Lucia Riddell Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2020 Professor Eric R Avila, Chair After the U.S.-Mexican War, the Californio people, recent Mexican citizens, engaged with their new American surroundings by drawing on the long history of liberalism in Latin America. Having recently left the shadows of Spanish colonialism, Latin America and the northern parts of Mexico included developed local varieties of liberal ideology. As such, the Californios brought their uniquely local brand of liberalism to bear on American ideas about race, local infrastructure, immigration, and the rights of Native Americans. Drawing upon memoirs, speeches, newspaper articles, and interviews, this dissertation demonstrates that the ii Californios used Mexican liberal traditions to both conflict with and support American political and cultural shifts in the periods before and after the Civil War. By focusing on the historical traditions of Mexican liberalism, this dissertation expands the perspective on the Californios to consider their ideologies. This dissertation outlines a case of ideologies continuing to exist among the Californios after the U.S.-Mexican War in the second half of the nineteenth century. iii The dissertation of Citlali Lucia Riddell is approved. Stephen A Aron Robin Derby Robert C Romero Eric R Avila, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2020 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Curriculum Vita viii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Impact of Mexican Liberalism 27 Chapter 2 El Clamor Público and the Making of a New Social Imaginary 57 Chapter 3 Mexican Liberalism Meets American Politics 85 Chapter 4 Californio Women and a Gendered Liberalism 108 Chapter 5 Liberalism and Californio Masculinity in Historical Memory 158 Conclusion 191 Epilogue 196 Bibliography 206 v Acknowledgements When I began thinking about the Californios I remembered my mother’s stories that I relished as a child about her childhood in Colton, California. She remembered living among Californios who lived where she grew up and she thought they were significant in her historical memory. She remembered them as people who lived in her Mexican neighborhood and she also remembered the impact of them in her classes where teachers assigned them to act as Indians in Spanish Fantasy plays. The impact of the Californios was not lost on my mother as she grew up and joined the Chicano Movement and the struggles for civil rights in the 1960s. In addition to origins of my ideas I want to thank the many people who helped me along the way. My professors and committee members helped to shape and sharpen my approaches to the field as I attempted to organize and make sense of this topic. I want to thank Eric Avila, Robert Chao Romero, Robin Derby, and Steven Aron for their support and helpful advice throughout this process. I want to also thank Vincent Bezares for his support and friendship while I was at UCLA. I also want to thank Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens at the History Department at CSUN for her wonderful support and for her academic feedback on Latin American work. I am grateful to the Chicano Studies Department at CSUN who helped keep me in graduate school when funding was difficult to obtain at UCLA. I want to thank Mary Pardo and David Rodriguez for their support. Like every historian, I owe a great debt to the help I received from writing groups with other graduate students at UCLA. I also want to thank Matt Luckett and Xochitl Flores-Ortiz for helping me in those early stages. I want to especially thank Laura Gutierrez, Jorge Nicolás Leal, vi and Lina Maria Murillo for being friends, confidantes, and a scholarly support group. I want to thank Jorge Nicolás Leal for meeting with me regularly throughout the entire project and providing the kind of unflinching support that made this research and program possible. I want to also send a shout out to my very supportive ‘boss’ at Pierce College, James McKeever who made my work possible and to all the wonderful students I have been able to work with. A special thank you to Tomás Catalan Espinoza and Miguel Fuentes for your assistance with my work. Lastly, I must thank my wonderful family who may have left this world but continue to nourish me with my memories of them. I miss all of you are who gone but not forgotten, my grandparents for their intellectual support, Luz Paz and Gregoria, my wonderful family Librada, Irma, and my father William. My father did so much work to help me with my translations and with organizing my research notes. He always believed in me. Thank you Daddy. During the last nine years my partner, Jorge Anaya, supported my work and helped keep me balanced with his loving support and kind words. I want to also thank my dogs who may not always be supportive of my writing but who know when I need to exercise, Pinole, Reina, and Moose. To my family who continues to support me including my brilliant and kind mother Adaljiza Sosa-Riddell, my cousins Josh and Matt Sosa, and my ride or die family members Lisa, Melissa Ann, Miguel, and Cosette. Thank you all for being with me on this journey. vii Citlali L. Sosa-Riddell Curriculum Vitae EDUCATION Ph.D.... University of California, Los AngelesAngeles, History, expected Winter 2020 Dissertation Title: “The Impact of Mexican Ideology on the American Californios: The California State Convention, , and Historical Memory; 1849-1880” Dissertation Advisor, Eric Ávila Committee Members, Stephen Aron, Robin Derby, Robert Romero M.A. University of California, San DiegoDiego,, Ethnic Studies, June 2000 Master’s Thesis: “Re-configuring Chicanismo: Nationalist Identity and Educational Discourse” B.A. Pomona CollegeCollege, Sociology,, Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, May 1997 Senior Thesis: “Chicana Responses to the Media: A Reassessment” TEACHING EXPERIENCE/ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT Fall 2016- current Associate Professor, Pierce College, Los Angeles, CA Department of History ACADEMIC AWARDS 2019 – 2020 Stanford Education Partnership for Internationalizing Community(EPIC) Community College Fellowship Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA Spring 2015 California State University, Northridge, Los Angeles, CA Spring Programming Funding viii LECTURES, CONFERENCE PAPERS, PANELS, AND CONFERENCES Invited Lectures 2016 “Californios, Public History, and Latino Americans(PBS)” Oviatt Library and the College of the Humanities, CSUN Conference Papers Presented April 2018 The Forms of Recovery: A Roundtable on Historical Silences, Restoration, and Commemoration Organization of American Historians, Sacramento, CA August 2017 “Post-Civil War Reconciliation in California: Remembering the Bear Flag Revolt” Nineteenth-Century California in History and Memory: Race, Capitalism, and Violence Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, Northridge, CA April 2017 “Controlling Native Women: Catholicism and Conservative Ideology Among Californio Women in the 1870s” Religion, Citizenship, and Struggles in California History Western Association of American Historians, San Diego, CA Nov. 2016 ““All the Work that was Seen in California Was the Work of Indians”: Mexican Liberal Thought Among the Californios; 1848-1861” Borderlands and Latina/o Studies Seminar Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL June 2016 “Race and Citizenship: Californios and Americans at the California Constitutional Convention of 1849” Law, Race, Honor Across United States-Latin American Borders Law and Society Association, New Orleans, LA May 2015 “Demanding Remembrance of the Mexican-American War: Califorñianas, Honor, and the American Civil War, 1870-1875” Violence of U.S.-Mexican Border Creation: Masculine Honor, Modes of Authority, and the Sexual Abuse of Women, 1850-1930 Western Association of American Historians, Sacramento, CA ix INTRODUCTION The Californios were part of a worldwide community that was deeply influenced by the ideological tide of liberalism. Liberalism had become tied to nation building in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as nations struggled to actualize its philosophical ideas into practical ones. For the Latin American countries, liberalism had swept the nations and changed the most rigid institutions to their very cores, like the Catholic Church. Perhaps for this reason and their own racial mixtures, Latin Americans believed themselves to be uniquely positioned in the mid-19 th century to offer suggests to the newly expanded American society with newly added multiple racial and ethnic groups. Latin America was transformed by the development of the Constitution of Cádiz of 1812. The constitution was created when Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808 and toppled the Spanish monarchs leading to the creation