The Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposia - Smithsonian ...

1 4 8 • s m i t h s o n i a n c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o h i s t o ry a n d t e c h n o l o g ysquabbled with one another over jurisdiction in censorshipcases. Shortly after the execution of Maximilian, theycontinued to needle the federal government with complaintsregarding the shabby appearance and vigilance ofthe police force. And through this all, no complaints surfacedin the same arenas regarding the treatment of theclergy or their Catholic followers.In fact, Orizaba’s intellectual community was quick todisavow the town’s reputation as a mammoth monastery.In his Essay on the history of Orizaba (1867), JoaquínArróniz refuted this reputation at length, writing,He who believes that modern Orizaba had monasticand clerical origins is mistaken. Althoughthe preponderance of religious sentiment in thetown supports this viewpoint, its religiosity isoften overemphasized.The Spaniards who made Orizaba their principalresidence were drawn to it neither by conventnor by cross. They were attracted by theopportunities this location offered merchants toconduct business with travelers. They also camein search of the healthy condition they had loston the coast.The Church, the true center of all the populationsof America and Europe, came later, oncethe light of the true faith was known, to furtherstrengthen the vitality of our fledgling city. In thiswe differ from the foundation of the rest of ournation’s cities since it can be said that they wereborn of the altar. 5Why this comparative complacency regarding anticlericalreform? I will argue here that the anticlerical reformsof the nineteenth century spurred on public debateregarding the obligations that the government assumedafter depriving the public of church counsel. Correlationscan be drawn between anticlerical initiatives and demandsfor improved distribution, regulation, and protection ofprivate information circulating in the public sphere. Thatsaid, Mexicans in the nineteenth century acclimated tosecular society at a pace that only apparently stood atodds with their “parochial reputation.” Their demandsconformed to a holistic concept of church and state inwhich the duties of governing society were shared betweenthe two institutions. 6While residents of Orizaba demanded that the clergyretain their traditional duties through the first third of the1800s, they rethought their appeals beginning in the midnineteenthcentury. Rather than seek to preserve the centralpublic place of the clergy, orizabeños sought to foistsome of the traditional duties of the clergy, namely thediffusion of information, on the government itself. Whatone 1870 orizabeño editorial called “the vacuum left bythe exit of the religious communities” 7 needed to be filled.If the government wanted to assume the mantle of arbiterof public life, they reasoned, then the government wouldalso assume the obligations that came therewith. Theseobligations included keeping the public informed and protected,both traditional purviews of the clergy in Mexico.The process of resolving themselves to these changes andresponding with altered expectations of the clergy and thegovernment alike represented a declaration of faith in thepublic sphere. The public sphere, and with it public service,became sacred arenas and occupations. 8 Here I willexamine the chief government institution to which individualsturned for information and security in an increasinglyanticlerical age: the postal service.Several scholars have explained the growing “massparticipation” in the postal system in the United Statesduring this period as a result of improvements in printtechnology, literacy and transportation. The area understudy in this essay experienced improvements in both printtechnology and literacy in the nineteenth century. Anticlericalismis an important additional factor that must beconsidered in studying the development of the postal systemin any country in which the church played a centralrole in information diffusion. Many patronizing the postalsystem in the United States did so in hopes of maintainingcontact with far- flung relations and friends. By contrast,those patronizing the postal system in Mexico often experiencedless mobility and craved news of the wider worldin the form of newspapers and, to a lesser degree, personalletters. Before the liberal reforms of the mid- nineteenthcentury, many individuals turned to the Church as a sourceof information and answers. The closing of churches deprivedthem of this uniquely sanctioned information.Orizaba and Córdoba are particularly interestingcities to study because residents simultaneously bore theconsequences and enjoyed the fruits of nineteenth- centurymodernization. The anticlerical initiatives and demandsfor improved government services manifested in thesetowns fit squarely into two larger processes at work globallyin the nineteenth century – secularization and centralization.In Mexico, the Bourbon dynasty spearheaded bothprocesses in the late eighteenth century with reforms thatminimized the influence of the clergy and the autonomyof the colonial government. Secularizing and centralizinginitiatives persisted after Mexican independence. They experiencedrenewed popular approval after several stormyyears under the passage of a federal constitution in 1824.