Forms of collective action and emergence of the hidden discourse in Aguascalientes during the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920

Abstract

Using James Scott's concepts of "resistance" and "hidden discourse", as analysis tools, this article studies the group of autonomous collective actions and of popular character that took place in Aguascalientes between 191 O and 1920. The objective is to demonstrate that in the state, during the violent years of the revolution, there was a weakening process of the government's structures and of economic crisis that propitiated the emergence of what until then had been consiqered a hidden discourse among the popular groups. This discourse was expressed by practices such as robbery, crime, mutinies, anonymous threats and the invasion of lands, those which, in spite of their apparent disorganization, possessed internallogic and defined objectives. The analysis of these practices and activities sustain, contrary to what commonly is postulated, that the popular groups in Aguascalientes actively participated in the revolutionary process that the state lived at the beginning of the XX century.