Pedro Salmerón S. /IV and last
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Human culture is not possible without salt, or not as we know it. Some human beings are the salt of the earth, as were the rebels of Juchitán, Zapotecs from the isthmus who between 1834 and 1853 defended their rights to the use of salt and the collective ownership of their lands. Salt mines so valuable that Hernán Cortés put them in his name when he invented the Marquisate of Valle.
Without large-scale trade, capitalism is not possible. Some human beings are the predators of the earth, like the imperialists who wanted to build an interoceanic canal in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec at all costs, destroying the Zapotec communities that lived there. The history of the Juchiteco rebels, which intertwined with the life of Benito Juárez, helped prevent this.
Here is the story: in 1833-4 Valentín Gómez Farías nationalized part of the estates Marquesan
(Hernán Cortés’ legacy), including the salt producers of the current Salina Cruz, and tried to collect taxes from the indigenous people of Juchitán who had the immemorial right to extract salt for consumption and sale to nearby communities. In 1842 President Santa Anna (who at that time came to power with the program of the good men
who governed in the name of the Church, the Army, usurers, big merchants and landowners) privatized them in favor of a partner and front man of his (the fleeting former president Francisco Javier Echeverría, his contemporary and countryman, the hinge between the mandate of the conservative Bustamante and this dictatorial attempt by Santa Anna).
The new owner took away from the people of Juchitán their right to salt. The following year, Santa Anna gave another loan shark friend of his (operator of the great British capital) the concession to build the interoceanic route, depriving the people of Juchitán of the lands over which the canal would pass. And in 1844 They disappeared
from the town halls of Juchitán the titles and map that protected the lands and rights of the town (today this would not have happened, since they would be kept by the General Agrarian Archive).
For these reasons, the indigenous people rose up in arms. They were led by a liberal who had been an officer of the immortal Mariano Matamoros and who later became a supporter of the popular federalists Vicente Guerrero and Valentín Gómez Farías: Colonel José Gregorio Meléndez (Zapotecized as Che Gorio Melendre).
Now the connection: Che Gorio allied himself with Benito Juárez in 1847, and the new governor appointed him head of the Tehuantepec National Guard, but since the owner of the salt mines insisted on denying the indigenous people their rights, Melendre rebelled again. Documentation shows that Juárez repeatedly tried to reconcile the rebels and find a political solution to the conflict, and he managed to get Melendre to agree to a truce. Don Benito tried to force the owner of the salt mines to allow the Juchitecos to exploit the salt mines, but the federal government sided with the usurer.
That is why Che Melendre took up arms again in 1850: the usurer not only prevented the natives from exploiting salt, but also began to destroy the surplus to maintain a high price. Once again, the documents show Juárez negotiating with the rebels and understanding the reasons for their rebellion. No condemnation of communal property appears in the documentation. The following year, Don Benito moved to Tehuantepec to seek a way out of the conflict, insisting on the return of the ancestral rights of the communities. He issued a pardon and a broad amnesty.
It was in 1853, with Juárez exiled and Santa Anna in power, that the privatization of the salt mines became irreversible, a new concession was granted to Americans for the construction of the interoceanic railroad, and the mysterious death of Che Gorio occurred (apparently perpetrated by someone who a few months earlier tried to kill Juárez).
Now, there are documents from the governor that are very harsh against the rebels, documents that, out of context, are used to strengthen the legend of Juárez being anti-indigenous, as is the accusation that he was accused of ordering the burning of the town, which Juárez vigorously rejected. However, Juárez ended up cornering the rebels and not the usurers and landowners: things are more complicated than they seem. And for Juárez it was a matter of State, of sovereignty, since the rebellion was simultaneous with the imperialist pretensions regarding the planned interoceanic route. Juárez closed the way to attempts to send commissions scientific
and colonization projects; and in this framework their response to the instability
caused by the Juchiteca rebellion. We focused on this particular case, because its specific study would show Juárez to be much more understanding towards the community and the indigenous problem than the one portrayed by his Porfirian epigones (whom his later biographers follow too closely: I will have to revise my own writings in light of what I discovered on my trips to the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca) as well as the right-wing falsifiers.
P.S.: All the data (although not necessarily its interpretation) is in a study by Margarita Guevara Sanginés that you can download here to delve deeper into the subject (chapter 9): https://shorten.link/XTIBSr
