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Another civil and military upheaval - rather, a series of these - took place in the 1850's and 1860's throughout Mexico and in Chihuahua. The first was a civil war between two factions - the Liberals and the Conservatives, over the initiation of a Mexican constitution modeled after certain European countries, particularly France, where the ideas originally set forth by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington have now been reworked by, first, the principal protagonists of the French Revolution, Danton and Robespierre, and then the person who expanded and transplanted - by force - these principals to other quarters: Napoleon. When Napoleon overran Spain and set up a puppet government there, these events led to the eventual independence of Mexico. In the process, two political camps were created in the country - those who defended the principles of Robespierre - the Jacobin Club, of which "The George Washington of Mexico" - the Jesuit Priest Miguel Hidalgo was a member, and the so-called "reactionaries", who wanted to bring back the principal of divine right of kings.
By the 1850's the Liberals, the heirs to the legacy of Hidalgo, and Robespierre before him, and George Washington before that, had a constitution in place and a set of laws known as the "Reform Laws", which, among other things, took away a lot of the power and the wealth of the Catholic Church. The leader of the liberals was Benito Juarez. These people eventually won this war, and they assumed total power. However, their enemies now invited the French emperor, Napoleon IV, to back them up, and he installed a member of the royal family of Austria, the Archduke Maximilian of Hapsburg, to become the "Emperor of Mexico". Maximilian began ruling the country from Mexico City, but he was unable to defeat Juarez and his Generals, led by Juarez's chief of staff, a Zapotec Indian from the state of Oaxaca, Porfirio Diaz. In fact, Diaz actually defeated the French army at a key battle, the Battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862. This anniversary is celebrated as a national holiday in Mexico, known simply by the date, "Cinco de Mayo."
In general, however, the Mexicans were not able to defeat the French on the open battle field, and Juarez was not even able to gain the support of the entire population, The reactionaries actually had a large a loyal following, who may have resented the French, but were motivated largely by religious reasoning - call it propaganda if you will - wherein conservative priests would pronounce anathema on the liberals and influence the faithful in their reasoning by that means.
In the state of Chihuahua, Benito Juarez, having fled the French in the south, set up his provisional government. The forces of his cause had already set up a state regime and they had installed a Juarista governor there, and man of Basque extraction by the name of Manuel Ojinaga.
Besides preparing to hold off the French - or, more likely, to try and organize an orderly retreat when they decided to advance in their direction - the Juaristas in Chihuahua also had to fight battles with communities inside the state who supported the reactionaries. In addition to the miltry action, it was a battle for the hearts and minds of the inhabitants. Since there were frontier communities which had been largely independent of the central government, and had mainly been concerned with developing the agricultural land that had been granted to them in exchange for their fighting the Apaches, many of these settlers didn't too look favorably on Juarez, Ojinaga, or any of the other Liberals. The saw them as an extension of the government that had been in place since the end of the Spanish period, which had not helped them, but had rather only taxed them and tried to conscript them into military service, had tried to restrict trade, and had been seen as a hostile, bothersome, and almost foreign presence; while they were more loyal, in fact, to what has been called the "patria chica" - which is to say, the concept of their own region or community as the political entity to which their allegiance lay. In fact, since the nation of Mexico had only been existence for a few short decades, whereas the Spanish crown had been a political reality since the time of the Crusades, the concept of Mexican nationalism as we know it today was hardly a factor at all in the minds of the inhabitants of the militarized settler communities of Namiquipa, Julimes, Janos, Cuchillo Parado, San Antonio, San Carlos, and Ojinaga. For this reason, even though "official" history states that Manuel Ojinaga was killed by the French, heroically defending the cause of Benito Juarez and national sovereignty of Mexico, he was actually killed in a skirmish with the inhabitants of Namiquipa, who supported the reactionaries, whether or not there might be any French involvement in the fight, and there was, in fact, not a Frenchman or any other foreigner even present in the action wherein Ojinaga lost his life.
Nevertheless, as a political statement in order to show the consolidation of Liberal power in the state after the conflict finally ended, the town of Presidio del Norte, on the spot formerly known as the Indian Pueblo of Guadalupe, overlooking the confluence of the Rio Bravo and the Rio Conchos, was officially renamed "Villa Ojinaga", in 1867. It is doubtful that the person of Manuel Ojinaga ever even set foot in the region. It is likely, however, that the Juaristas detected that inhabitants had been, like their co-nationals of the "patria chica" in Namiquipa, sympathizers of the Reactionaries, having a nostalgia for the Spanish crown and a distaste for the Mexican government of Mexico City. |
