La tradición indígena frente a los cambios liberales

Abstract

This article examines the development of the institution of cacicazgo in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its main aim is to demonstrate the effects of the Revolution of Independence on the structures of property ownership and social relationships that lay at the heart of the cacicazgo system. It concludes that cacicazgo prevailed well into the nineteenth century despite the reforms issued both at Cadiz and later on by liberal governments. It suggests that the structure of land ownership in the Mixteca Baja changed as a result of the imposition of taxation on private property, which rendered the extensive property holdings on which the cacicazgo was based overly burdensome, thus obliging caciques to sell off their extensive properties to their erstwhile tenants.