Policing the Pueblo: Vagrancy and Indigenous Citizenship in Oaxaca, 1848–1876

This article explores the politics of citizenship in Zapotec communities in nineteenth-century Oaxaca, Mexico. Several studies discuss how Indigenous peoples were incorporated into the Mexican nation-state during this period, but few have examined how state law and Indigenous customs meshed to produce modern Mexican citizenship. This study examines the construction of Mexican citizenship through Zapotec people’s experiences with vagrancy laws. For Indigenous peoples, two forms of citizenship existed: a republican citizenship that was reserved for all adult males and upheld by Mexican law, and an unwritten Indigenous citizenship that included both adult males and females. Based on close readings of criminal records, government reports, and correspondence between state officials and local Zapotec authorities in the Tlacolula Valley, this article demonstrates that, unlike Mexican citizenship, membership in Indigenous communities, which the author calls “Indigenous citizenship,” rested on members’ payment of state taxes and provision of financial and labor contributions for the pueblo (community). Those who refused to pay their state taxes or rejected the gendered customs of their pueblo were punished by the community: females were punished by the patriarchs of the family while males were punished through state institutions. As the state’s repressive institutions expanded throughout the course of the nineteenth century, Indigenous leaders found more recourse to punish males who failed to live “honorably” as members of Indigenous communities. Considering the interplay between Mexican and Indigenous citizenship, this article explores how Zapotec communities utilized vagrancy laws, in particular, to police and criminalize males who threatened Indigenous social life by behaving in dishonorable ways.