Rebelión de San Martín Texmelucan, Puebla 1879

On April 22, 1879, the peasant farmers of the town of San Martín Texmelucan, Puebla, rose up in arms, inspired by the ideology of the Community Central Committee formed on August 15, 1877, and by "La Ley del Pueblo" ("The People's Law") a manifesto written by Alberto Santa Fe (1839–1904). The peasants first took the San Rafael hacienda, adjacent to Texmelucan, to recover the lands that the hacienda had appropriated from them. They then set out for Cholula and Atlixco, where they attacked haciendas, merchants, and roads. The uprising ended when army troops captured the movement's leader, Santa Fe, on May 8.

Santa Fe and Manuel Serdán founded the Socialist Party on July 15, 1878, and published the newspaper La Revolución Social, which carried Santa Fe's famous manifesto, "La Ley del Pueblo. The manifesto, which was inspired by the ideas of the French philosopher Charles Fourier (1772–1837), whom Santa Fe knew through Fourier's disciple, Victor Considerant (1808–1893), is an agrarian and nationalistic manifesto proposing redistribution of the lands of the large haciendas, the development of a national industry, the replacement of the army with a people's militia, and the establishment of free, compulsory education. Santa Fe had developed these ideas while serving in the army during the war of reform and the French intervention. Santa Fe was freed two years after the uprising of San Martín Texmelucan and rejoined the army, but he was separated from the peasant movement.

See alsoChalco Agrarian Rebellion of 1868; Díaz, Porfirio; Movimiento Chamula 1869; Tomochic Rebellion.

                               JosÉ R. Pantoja Reyes