Warriors and Children of the Pueblo

This article illustrates how village social networks organized around gender obligations sustained rural insurgents during the darkest years of Royalist ascendency (1815–21). Community survival rested upon the successful protection and reproduction of families, creating village norms that stressed social commitments between men and their families. Insurgents reproduced traditional communal networks even as they maintained armed resistance to the viceregal government. Gendered communal principles motivated rebels to keep fighting to protect their families and preserve their honor as dutiful hijos del pueblo in the face of government offensives. Military reports describe Royalist tactics designed to threaten rebel women and families to force their male relatives to lay down their weapons, but such policies often backfired since they challenged the insurgents’ sense of honor and inflamed their will to resist. Lists of amnestied rebels confirm the significance of family ties and gendered honor in explaining the insurgency’s persistence.