Abstract
In January 1847, a massive insurrection rocked northern New Mexico. A group of local Mexican leaders rebelled against Governor Thomas Bent and the newly installed American government. The United States Army under the command of General Charles Kearny had only recently pacified the region—what would become the New Mexico Territory—and much of the military had moved on to capture California. While Governor Bent had lived in New Mexico for nearly two decades and was generally a well-liked individual, many New Mexicans were displeased with the contingent of American troops who remained in New Mexico. Under the command of the racist General Sterling Price, these soldiers formed the bulk of local law enforcement, were a visible sign of American dominance and control in the region, and, according to Governor Bent himself, abused the Mexican population in New Mexico. Bent complained about General Price shortly before the revolt, noting that “there is a great want of discipline and subordination of the troops here.” He argued that Price should impress upon the troops the need for “rigid care with regard to the treatment of the inhabitants,” adding that the American soldiers “must conciliate, not exasperate.”1
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Notes
David Lavender, Bent’s Fort (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1954), 293.
See also Carlos R. Herrera, “New Mexico Resistance to U.S. Occupation,” in The Contested Homeland: A Chicano History of New Mexico, ed. Erlinda Gonzales-Berry and David R Maciel (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000);
Andrés Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
For an overview of these events, see Laura E. Gomez, Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race (New York: New York University Press, 2007), chapter 1; William H. Wroth, “The Taos Rebellion—1847,” accessed February 24, 2012, http://www.newmexi-cohistory.org/filedetails.php?fileID=515.
The long history of the Mexican community and its relationship with American law enforcement has yet to be written. For a good starting point, see Armando Morales, Ando Sangrando (I Am Bleeding): A Study of Mexican American-Police Conflict in Los Angeles (La Puente: Perspective Publishing, 1972);
Edward J. Escobar, Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999);
William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb. “The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928,” Journal of Social History 37, no. 2 (Winter 2003): 411–438;
William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, “Muerto por Unos Desconocidos (Killed by Persons Unknown): Mob Violence against Blacks and Mexicans,” in Beyond Black and White: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the U.S. South and Southwest, ed. Stephanie Cole, Alison M. Parker, and Laura F. Edwards (College Station: Texas A&;M University Press, 2003);
William Carrigan, The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836–1916 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006);
and William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, Eorgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848–1928 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 2–3.
Wlliam Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), chapter 1. The struggle of white power with ethnic communities in the Southwest is not altogether different than that discussed by authors such as Thomas Hietala, Arnoldo de Leon, and Reginald Horsman.
See Thomas R. Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985);
Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981);
Arnoldo De Leon, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821–1900 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983).
See Tim Carrigan, Bob Connell, and John Lee, “Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity. Theory and Society 14, no. 5 (September 1985): 551–604;
R. W. Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987);
R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995);
R. W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender and Society, 19, no. 6 (December 2005): 829–859.
For some of those critiques, see Demetrakis Z. Demetriou, “Connell’s Concept of Hegemonic Masculinity: A Critique,” Theory and Society 30, no. 3 (June 2001): 337–361;
Cliff Cheng, “Marginalized Masculinities and Hegemonic Masculinity: An Introduction,” Journal of Men’s Studies 7, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 295–315;
Richard Howson, Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 2006).
Jacqueline N. Moore, Cow Boys and Cattle Men: Class and Masculinities on the Texas Frontier, 1865–1900 (New York: New York University Press, 2010), introduction and chapter 1. Moore does write about Mexican-descent people, but does not clearly discuss Mexican masculinity and marginalized masculinity.
See Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) 82–83.
On effeminacy scholarship, see Peter Hennen, “Powder, Pomp, Power: Toward and Typology and Genealogy of Effeminacies,” Social Thought and Research 24, no. 1 and 2 (September 2002): 121–144;
Peter Hennen, Fairies, Bears, and Leathermen: Men in Community Queering the Masculine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), particularly chapter 2.
Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba, Modernity and the Nation in Mexican Representations of Masculinity: From Sensuality to Bloodshed (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 1.
See also Robert McKee Irwin, Mexican Masculinities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).
Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Tos Angeles Barrio 1850–1890: A Social History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), 108–109;
Lawrence E. Guillow, “The Origins of Race Relations in Los Angeles, 1820s–1880s: A Multi-Ethnic Study” (PhD diss., Arizona State University, 1996), 98–108.
For the fullest account of slavery and Mexicans, see Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989).
See also Jesus F. de la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguin (Austin, TX: State House Press, 1991).
Campbell, An Empire for Slavery, 218, 219; David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 25–30.
Lynching has gained increasing scholarly attention over the past few years as scholars have expanded the focus on such extralegal violence out of the South. See, for example, Carrigan and Webb, Forgotten Dead; Manfred Berg and Simon Wendt, eds., Globalizing Lynching History: Vigilantism and Extralegal Punishment from an International Perspective (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011);
Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández, Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011);
and Michael J. Pfeifer, ed., Lynching Beyond Dixie: American Mob Violence Outside the South (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013).
See Edward Lawrence Abney, “Capital Punishment in Arizona, 1863–1963” (MA thesis, Arizona State University, 1988), 41–42.
Frances Esquibel Tywoniak and Mario T. García, Migrant Daughter: Coming of Age as a Mexican American Woman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 2–8.
Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (New York: Dial Press, 2004), 127
Elva Treviño Hart, Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child (Tucson, AZ: Bilingual Review Press, 1999), 61.
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Behnken, B.D. (2015). Controlling Los Hombres: American State Power and the Emasculation of the Mexican Community, 1845–1900. In: Andersen, P.D., Wendt, S. (eds) Masculinities and the Nation in the Modern World. Global Masculinities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137536105_8
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