Anti-Reelectionism and a Porfirian Disciple’s Demise

By 1905, many in central Mexico opposed Governor Próspero Cahuantzi’s re-election. Cahuantzi, an Indian, native Tlaxcalan, and longest-reigning governor under President Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911), had ruled the small state of Tlaxcala since 1885. Factory workers, small landowners, and hacendados all publically pushed for regional political turnover, though their reasons for wanting to oust the governor varied widely. Textile workers bemoaned Cahuantzi’s close relations with industrial bosses while hacendados resented the state government’s close regulation of the region’s limited water supplies. Nearly all residents were fed up with the recent property tax hike.

This paper challenges the historical assumption that Díaz’s long-term governors were mere puppets of the national regime by explaining how and why Cahuantzi’s regime began to decline. It explores how pro-government supporters responded to anti-reelectionists’ demands by analyzing debates between newspapers both for and against Díaz and Cahuantzi’s respective regimes, as well as a collection of electoral broadsides in the Tlaxcalan state archive. These broadsides featured hundreds of citizens’ signatures meant to corroborate support for the governor during the 1904 and 1909 state elections. The existence of these broadsides—which, even if forged, required significant effort to compose—begs the questions: why did the state government insist on the illusion of democratic elections? Further, was it possible to denounce a stalwart Porfirian crony while concurrently supporting Díaz? Opposition to Cahuantzi, especially among elites, did not always signify alliance with the broader anti-reelection movement. Though revolutionary fervor was strong in Tlaxcala-Puebla, differences in anti-reelectionists’ ideologies and interests would eventually impede the development of a unified revolutionary coalition in the region. The paper thus debates whether peoples’ support or rejection of the national regime was necessarily shaped by their relationships with regional power brokers.