Dr. A. Lauria-Santiago
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Questions for class discussion of readings this week--Week 2

1. Why were Mexico's initial decades as an independent Republic so plagued by instability and conflict?
2. What was the role of foreign powers in Mexico's experience as an independent republic between the 1820s and 1850s?
3. What was the state of Mexico's peasantry during the first decades of the Republic?
4. What role did Santa Ana play in Mexico's early Republic?  What conditions allowed one man to play such an important role in the politics of the country?
5. How would you characterize the forces that participated in the national politics in Mexico during the 1820-1867 period?  What issues separated them and why did they enter into conflicts with each other?
6. What conditions in Mexico encouraged and promoted foreign interventions?  Describe the reasons and outcomes of Mexico's conflicts with Spain, England, France, and the U.S. between the 1820s and the 1860s.
7. What were the origins of the liberal revolution of the 1850s and the civil war that followed?  What issues were at play and what forces were mobilized?
8. What was the basis for the liberal victory under Juarez and what kind of government resulted from this victory during the 1860s and early 1870s?
9. How did sections of Mexico's peasantry relate to the political, military and social struggles of the 1850s and 60s?
10. How would the History of Mexico's Republic up to 1876 look like from the perspective of any individual region or town
11. How and why is gender an important category in the analysis of rural society?
12. How were peasant communities in mid-nineteenth century organized?
13. How did Mexico's region differentiate themselves during the nineteenth century?
14. How did Peasants and Rancheros experience the period between the 1830s and 1870s?  What is meant by agrarian decompression?
15. How did the emergence of new middle sectors affect the national politics of the mid-century?
16. How did peasants and their leaders come to participate in the politics of the larger nation-state?
17. How did the development of agrarian capitalism benefit sectors of Mexican society before the 1880s?
18. How was the power and autonomy of local peasants asserted despite the existence of laws that would potentially harm them?
19. What role did the different peasant revolts of the mid-century have in the formation of regional politics and local society?  How did they respond to national politics?
20. How did the process of distribution and privatization of communal lands proceed during the mid-century?