In mid-nineteenth-century Mexico, garrisons, town councils, state
legislatures, and an array of political actors, groups, and
communities began aggressively petitioning the government at both
local and national levels to address their grievances. Often viewed
as a revolt or a coup d'état, these pronunciamientos were actually
a complex form of insurrectionary action that relied first on the
proclamation and circulation of a plan that listed the petitioners'
demands and then on endorsement by copycat pronunciamientos that
forced the authorities, be they national or regional, to the
negotiating table. In Independent Mexico, Will Fowler
provides a comprehensive overview of the pronunciamiento practice
following the Plan of Iguala. This fourth and final installment in,
and culmination of, a larger exploration of the pronunciamiento
highlights the extent to which this model of political contestation
evolved. The result of more than three decades of pronunciamiento
politics was the bloody Civil War of the Reforma (1858–60) and the
ensuing French Intervention (1862–67). Given the frequency and
importance of the pronunciamiento, this book is also a concise
political history of independent Mexico.