Abstract

This article highlights the impact of symbolic acts in the process of institutionalizing social order. During the imperial crisis of the Spanish monarchy due to the Napoleonic wars the Constitution of Cádiz, one of the most ‘liberal’ constitutions of its time, was promulgated in the Spanish empire in 1812. Its impact on the ethnically diverse society in New Spain with its large percentage of indigenous inhabitants has recently become an important topic in Mexican historiography. Whereas some historians believe that the constitution changed politics in indigenous villages immediately after its promulgation, this study argues that an interpretation on the basis of the written constitution alone is not sufficient to understand the process of constitutionalisation. Therefore, the article analyzes the constitutional festivities in the southern Mexican province Oaxaca. The region was divided into a Spanish city and the countryside dominated by indigenous people and political institutions. In the countryside, district administrators of the Crown planned and directed the promulgation. The article will show that they influenced the performance in a way that contradicted the two main ideas of the new order – popular sovereignty and legal equality.