About the project

PROJECT AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND HISTORY
PROJECT TEAM
PROJECT PUBLICATIONS
PROJECT AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND HISTORY

The three-year project on “The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico 1821-1876” was funded by the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) (2007-2010). It was led by Professor Will Fowler and comprised a team made up of two research fellows (Dr Natasha Picột [Nottingham] and Dr Germán Martínez Martínez [Essex]), two PhD students (Rosie Doyle and Kerry McDonald), and a designer / database developer (Sean Dooley). A further three PhD students worked on related topics under Professor Fowler’s supervision (Shara Ali, Melissa Boyd and Ana Romero Valderrama). The ultimate goals of the project were:

  1. To produce a major on-line relational database that includes transcriptions of over 1,500 pronunciamientos
  2. To publish three edited volumes on the origins, experience and memory of these forceful petitions
  3. To enable the PhD students to complete their dissertations successfully
  4. To assist Professor Fowler in collating the data that was to then be analysed in his monograph on the subject.

The Building of the Database
During the first year of the project, Sean Dooley (Database Designer and Developer) set up the Pronunciamientos website, creating the means whereby the research team was able to insert all the relevant information and transcriptions that can now be accessed here. At the same time, the research team tracked down pronunciamiento texts published in edited volumes, secondary sources, and facsimilar editions of primary sources. They drew up a list of located pronunciamiento texts, created entries for these on the database, and transcribed and digitised the target texts, noting in which archives the original documents were kept in Mexico. Some time was also spent carrying out archival research in the British Library. They spent the second year in Mexico and the United States, tracking down, transcribing, or copying pronunciamiento texts (pronunciamientos, actas, etc.) that had not been re-produced in their entirety in the secondary sources used in Year 1 of the Project (e.g., Planes en la Nación Mexicana, 5 vols. [1821-56] [Mexico City: Senado de la República/El Colegio de México, 1987], or inserted in the Pronunciamientos Database prior to their departure to Mexico. They also used this year to check the originals of pronunciamientos inserted in Year 1, i.e.: confirming their existence and location; and ensuring the secondary sources in which they appeared transcribed them correctly and in full. The Database Designer perfected the website and undertook regular troubleshooting tasks. In the final year of the project Dr Natasha Picột (NP) was given the responsibility of completing the Participants and the Glossary sections of the website, researching the better-known pronunciados and writing up their biographical entries with the assistance of the Diccionario Porrúa de Historia, Biografía y Geografía de México (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1970), as well as other sources. Dr Germán Martínez Martínez (GMM) revised all the pronunciamiento texts and analysed and specified their stated grievances. SRD finished developing the website you have before you. Throughout the project, our PhD students provided the team with transcriptions and references of pronunciamiento texts they located during the archival research in Mexico City, Jalisco, San Luis Potosí and Yucatán.

The database remains a dynamic resource, which Principal Investigator, Professor Will Fowler, is committed to updating, improving, and expanding. As noted on the website HOME PAGE should you know of a pronunciamiento that has not been included in the website please contact Principal Investigator Professor Will Fowler at: wmf1@st-andrews.ac.uk. All additional information will be duly acknowledged and credited.

The Project Conferences
Three conferences were held in St Andrews, based around three different yet interrelated cycles, namely:

  1. Forceful Negotiations: The Origins of the Pronunciamiento in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (20-22 June 2008)
  2. Politics, Conflict and Insurrection: The Experience and Development of the Pronunciamiento in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (19-21 June 2009)
  3. The Damned and the Venerated: The Memory, Commemoration and Representation of the Nineteenth-Century Mexican Pronunciamiento (11-13 June 2010)

Click on these events to see their respective programmes.

A selection of the papers presented at these events were included in three edited volumes, published and/or to be published by the University of Nebraska Press (for further details see Project Publications).

The Project PhD Dissertations
Dr Rosie Doyle and Dr Kerry McDonald were AHRC-funded project students. The titles of their dissertations are:

Dr Rosie Doyle, “The Pronunciamiento in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: the Experience of Jalisco 1821-1853,” 2012

Kerry McDonald, “The experience of the pronunciamiento in San Luis Potosí 1821-1849,” 2011.

Dr Shara Ali, with a Scholarship from the School of Modern Languages of the University of St Andrews, wrote her dissertation about:

Shara Ali, “The Pronunciamiento in Yucatán: From Independence to Independence (1821-1840),” 2011

PROJECT TEAM

The following scholars participated in the project: Project Coordinator: Professor Will Fowler; Project Staff: Sean Dooley, Dr Germán Martínez Martínez, Dr Natasha Picột; PhD Students: Shara Ali, Melissa Boyd, Rosie Doyle, Kerry McDonald, Leticia Neria, Ana Romero Valderrama; Project Advisor: Dr Josefina Zoraida Vázquez (El Colegio de México); Contributors: Dr Catherine Andrews (Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas), Professor Timothy E. Anna (University of Manitoba), Professor Linda Arnold (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), Professor Raymond Buve (University of Leiden), Sergio Ca&ntilda;edo Gamboa (El Colegio de San Luis), Dr Manuel Chust (Universitat Jaume I), Professor Michael P. Costeloe (University of Bristol), Dr Michael Ducey (Universidad Veracruzana), Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso (University of Warwick), Dr Antonio Escobar Ohmstede (CIESAS/El Colegio de San Luis), Dr Eduardo Flores Clair (DEH-INAH), Dr Ivana Frasquet (Universitat de Valencia), Professor Paul Garner (University of Leeds), Professor Andrew Ginger (University of Stirling), Professor Brian Hamnett (University of Essex), Dr Mark Harris (University of St Andrews), Professor Alan Knight (University of Oxford), Dr Iona MacIntyre (University of Edinburgh), Dr Luis Medina Peña (CIDE), Rodrigo Moreno (UNAM), Dr Juan Ortiz Escamilla (Universidad Veracruzana), Dr Erika Pani (El Colegio de México), Dr Francisco Parra (Universidad de Murcia), Dr Antonia Pi-Suñer Llorens (UNAM), Professor Terry Rugeley (University of Oklahoma), Dr Flor de María Salazar Mendoza (Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí), Professor Pedro Santoni (California State University San Bernardino), Dr José Antonio Serrano Ortega (El Colegio de Michoacán), Dr Natalia Sobrevilla (University of Kent), Dr Reynaldo Sordo Cede&ntilda;o (ITAM), Dr Anne Staples (El Colegio de México), Dr Guy Thomson (University of Warwick), Dr Deborah Toner (University of Warwick), Professor Richard A. Warren (St Joseph’s University), Dr Verónica Zárate Toscano (Instituto Mora).

PROJECT PUBLICATIONS

The following publications, whether in print, in press, or in preparation, have all been written or are being completed as a result of the research undertaken as part of the AHRC-funded Pronunciamientos project.

Will Fowler, “El pronunciamiento mexicano del siglo XIX. Hacia una nueva tipología,” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México 38 (julio-diciembre 2009), pp. 5-34.
http://www.iih.unam.mx/publicaciones/revistas/moderna/vols/ehmc38/432.pdf

Will Fowler (ed.), Forceful Negotiations: The Origins of the Pronunciamiento in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2010).
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Forceful-Negotiations,674679.aspx

Its contents include: Preface; Acknowledgments; Contributors; Chronology of Main Events and Pronunciamientos, 1821-1853; “Introduction: The Nineteenth-Century Practice of the Pronunciamiento and Its Origins,” Will Fowler; 1. “Iguala: The Prototype,” Timothy E. Anna; 2. “Agustín de Iturbide: From the Pronunciamiento of Iguala to the Coup of 1822”, Ivana Frasquet and Manuel Chust; 3. “Two Reactions to the Illegitimate Succession of 1828: Campeche and Jalapa,” Josefina Zoraida Vázquez; 4. “Municipalities, Prefects and Pronunciamientos: Power and Political Mobilizations in the Huasteca During the First Federal Republic,” Michael T. Ducey; 5. “The Origins of the Pronunciamientos of San Luis Potosí: An Overview,” Kerry McDonald; 6. “The British and an Early Pronunciamiento, 1833-1834,” Michael P. Costeloe; 7. “The Origins of the Santiago Imán Revolt (1838-1840): A Reassessment,” Shara Ali; 8. “A Reluctant Advocate: Mariano Otero and the Revolución de Jalisco,” Melissa Boyd; 9. “Constitution and Congress: A Pronunciamiento for Legality, December 1844,” Reynaldo Sordo Cedeño; 10. “‘The Curious Manner in which Pronunciamientos are Got Up in this Country’”: The Plan of Blancarte of 26 July 1852,” Rosie Doyle; 11. “Inventing the Nation: The Pronunciamiento and the Construction of Mexican National Identity, 1821-1876,” Germán Martínez Martínez; 12. “‘I Pronounce Thus I Exist’: Redefining the Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico, 1821-1876,” Will Fowler; Bibliography

Will Fowler, “Entre la legalidad y la legitimidad: Elecciones, pronunciamientos y la voluntad general de la nación, 1821-1857,” in José Antonio Aguilar Rivera (ed.), Las elecciones y el gobierno representativo en México (1810-1910) (Mexico City: IFE/FCE, 2010), pp. 95-120.

Will Fowler, “Rafael del Riego and the Spanish Origins of the Nineteenth-Century Mexican Pronunciamiento,” in Matthew Brown and Gabriel Paquette (eds.), Connections after Colonialism: Europe and Latin America in the 1820s (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, in press).

Will Fowler (ed.), Malcontents, Rebels, and Pronunciados: The Politics of Insurrection in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2012). http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Malcontents-Rebels-and-Pronunciados,674984.aspx

Its contents include: Preface; Acknowledgments; Contributors; Chronology of Main Events and Pronunciamientos, 1821-1876; “ Introduction: Understanding Individual and Collective Insurrectionary Action in Independent Mexico, 1821-1876,” Will Fowler; 1. “The Compass Points of Unrest: Pronunciamientos from Within, Without, Above, and Below in Southeast Mexico, 1821-1876,” Terry Rugeley; 2. “The Rise and Fall of a Regional Strongman: Felipe de la Garza’ pronunciamiento of 1822,” Catherine Andrews; 3. “Veracruz: The Determining Region. Military Pronunciamientos in Mexico, 1821-1843,” Juan Ortiz Escamilla; 4. “The Clergy and How it Responded to Calls for Rebellion Before the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Anne Staples; 5. “José Ramón García Ugarte: Patriot, Federalist, or Malcontent?” Linda Arnold; 6. “Ponciano Arriaga and Mariano Ávila’s Intellectual Backing of the 14 April 1837 Pronunciamiento of San Luis Potosí,” Sergio Cañedo Gamboa; 7. “Ayuntamientos and Pronunciamientos During the 19th Century: Examples from Tlaxcala between Independence and the Reform War,” Raymond Buve; 8. “The End of the ‘Catholic Nation’: Reform and Reaction in Puebla, 1854-1856,” Guy Thomson; 9. “In Search of Power: The Pronunciamientos of General Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga,” Josefina Zoraida Vázquez; 10. “The Pronunciamientos of Antonio López de Santa Anna, 1821-1867,” Will Fowler; 11. “Intervention and Empire: Politics as Usual?” Erika Pani; 12. “A Socialist Pronunciamiento: Julio López Chávez’s uprising of 1868,” Eduardo Flores Clair; Bibliography

Will Fowler (ed.), Celebrating Insurrection: The Commemoration and Representation of the Nineteenth-Century Mexican Pronunciamiento (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013). http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Celebrating-Insurrection,675573.aspx

Its contents include: Preface; Acknowledgments; Contributors; Chronology of Main Events and Pronunciamientos, 1821-1910, “Introduction: The Damned and the Venerated: The Memory, Commemoration and Representation of the Nineteenth-Century Mexican Pronunciamiento,” Will Fowler; 1. The “Memory and Representation of Rafael del Riego’s Pronunciamiento in Constitutional New Spain and Within the Iturbide Movement 1820-1821,” Rodrigo Moreno Gutiérrez; 2. “The Damned Man With the Venerated Plan: The Complex Legacies of Agustín de Iturbide and the Iguala Plan,” Richard Warren; 3. “Refrescos, Iluminaciones and Te Deums: Celebrating Pronunciamientos in Jalisco in 1823 and 1832,” Rosie Doyle; 4. “The Political Life of Executed Pronunciados. The Representation and Memory of José Márquez and Joaquín Gárate’s 1830 Pronunciamiento of San Luis,” Kerry McDonald; 5. “Memory and Manipulation: The Lost Cause the Santiago Imán Pronunciamiento,” Shara Ali; 6. “Salvas, Cañonazos y Repiques: Celebrating the Pronuciamiento during the United States-Mexican War,” Pedro Santoni; 7. “Contemporary Verdicts on the Pronunciamiento During the Early National Period,” Melissa Boyd; 8. “The Crumbling of a ‘Hero.’ Ignacio Comonfort from Ayutla to Tacubaya,” Antonia Pi-Suñer Llorens; 9. “Porfirio Díaz and the Representation of the 2nd of April,” Verónica Zárate Toscano; 10. “Juan Bustamante’s Pronunciamiento and the Civic Speeches that Condemned It. San Luis Potosí (1868-1869),” Flor de María Salazar Mendoza; 11. “‘As Empty a Piece of Gasconading Stuff As I have Ever Read:’ The Pronunciamiento Through Foreign Eyes,” Will Fowler; Bibliography.

Will Fowler, The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico, 1821-1858 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, in preparation).