Power of the Pen or Mindless Paperwork? The Petition and Political Culture in Mexico

In this paper, I explore how writing petitions served as a primary mechanism for collective popular engagement in politics from the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century in Mexico.  During the colonial era, subjects petitioned the Spanish King, Viceroy, and local authority figures for counsel, protection, and intercession. After Mexico’s political independence from Spain, the 1857 Constitution embodied a new version of the colonial moral economy, drawing on paternalist notions of government protection.  The petition was central to the local negotiations over nineteenth-century legal codes and regulations---which codified rights, responsibilities, duties, and obligations of both government and the governed.  The shift in political culture during and after the Mexican Revolution, again, involved the collective petition as a foundational vehicle for negotiating the demands of a range of group associations---from vendors unions to neighborhood association.  Certainly, the petition served many purposes for both petitioners and petitioned.  It represented a logistical strategy to engage in dialogue, a rhetorical tool to position oneself in a certain light, and an outlet to channel popular discontentment.  The petition is a clear example of the blending of colonial, republican, and revolutionary notions in Mexico’s malleable political culture.  One could argue that one of the most participatory features of republican and revolutionary governmental practices was rooted in long held colonial traditions, namely the right to petition authorities.