Ducey, Michael T. 1960- (Michael Thomas Ducey, Mike Ducey)

PERSONAL:

Born March 5, 1960. Education: University of Colorado, B.A., 1983; University of Chicago, Ph.D., 1992.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Colorado, Denver, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Department of History, Campus Box 182, P.O. Box 173364, Denver, CO 80217-3364. E-mail—michael.ducey@cudenver.edu.

CAREER:

Writer, historian, and educator. University of Colorado, Denver, associate professor of history and director of international studies major.

WRITINGS:

A Nation of Villages: Riot and Rebellion in the Mexican Huasteca, 1750-1850, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including Americas and Hispanic American Historical Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Michael T. Ducey is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado, Denver. In addition to his academic work, Ducey also serves as the director of the international studies major at the university. His teaching interests center on Latin America, Mexico, and issues facing Latinos in the United States. Ducey stresses the meaning of encounters between distinct cultures, and he also helps students to "experience history as a discovery of the other," he stated on the University of Colorado Denver Department of History Web site. "I design my classes to inform students not only of the political and economic evolution of Latin American societies but also to recreate a worldview distinct from their own," Ducey continued. As an academic, Ducey studies political and social issues in Mexico and Latin America. Among his research topics is the changing nature of popular culture in nineteenth-century Mexico, following the tumult involved in the country gaining its independence.

Ducey's first book, A Nation of Villages: Riot and Rebellion in the Mexican Huasteca, 1750-1850, "offers a wealth of detail on the obscure topic of Mexican peasant rebellions of the late colonial and early national periods," commented Prisco R. Hernandez, writing in the Military Review. Based on the dissertation research he conducted for his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, the book contains Ducey's evaluation and analysis of the various social traumas that occurred in Huasteca, a south-central region that borders on the Gulf of Mexico. Huasteca was made up of four modern Mexican states, each dotted with numerous villages where Indian groups lived difficult, impoverished agrarian lives in jungle areas, tough hilly terrain, and other rugged, often inhospitable landscapes.

In this work, Ducey "examines riots in the waning decades of Spanish rule, insurrection during the Mexican insurgency between 1810 and 1821, and the politics of rebellion in this region in republican Mexico with particular focus on the 1836 Papantla rebellion and the Caste War of the Huasteca (1845-1850)," reported Susan Deans-Smith, writing in the Bulletin of Lain American Research. He "traces the shifts which occurred in objectives, tactics, ideologies, and political identities" in the difficult years between 1750 and 1850, and considers how the villagers and their dissatisfaction with their lives helped shape the political environment of early national Mexico, Deans-Smith continued.

Although the book is concerned with rebellion and social upheaval in the Huasteca region, its major focus is not on these travails, nor is it on military action. Instead, the "emphasis is on the underlying socioeconomic causes of these rebellions and their effects on Mexican political and social history," Hernandez noted. Ducey is interested in the origins of the social conflict experienced in the area, and the characteristics of the region as it transformed from a colonial area to a newly created federalist democracy, Hernandez reported. He illustrates that the peasants of the Huasteca region were a diverse group with the ability and the will to "manipulate and adapt both colonial and republican political ideologies and institutions" in pursuit of their own goals and needs, Deans-Smith stated. He describes how the Spanish government's attempts to manage the numerous individual town governments, the "nation of villages" of the title, resulted in great resentment and rebellion. Within this atmosphere, many small-town politicians rose to positions of influence that would have effects on local village governments for many years afterward.

The reasons behind the various rebellions and riots that occurred in the hundred-year period from 1750 to 1850 remained relatively consistent, Ducey notes. "Uprisings generally involved inhabitants from dependent villages (sujetos) who rose against head towns (cabeceras) over the issues of taxes, fees, and the distribution of power," reported Angela T. Thompson, writing in History: Review of New Books. They complained that their tax payments brought them few benefits. They were also dissatisfied with other elements of their political lives: they hated the government's monopoly on tobacco; they resisted the imposition of ecclesiastical fees; and they resented the loss of political autonomy they experienced. Conflicts over power, taxes, and resources continued throughout the period Ducey examines in his book.

With this work, "Ducey adds to the growing corpus of scholarship on popular political culture, peasants and state formation in the nineteenth century," commented Deans-Smith. Thompson concluded that the book "reveals the complexities of political unrest in nineteenth-century Mexico."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Agricultural History, fall, 2006, David Frye, review of A Nation of Villages: Riot and Rebellion in the Mexican Huasteca, 1750-1850, p. 491.

Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History, October, 2005, Eric Van Young, review of A Nation of Villages, p. 271.

Bulletin of Latin American Research, January, 2007, Susan Deans-Smith, review of A Nation of Villages, p. 138.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 1, 2005, M.L. Van de Logt, review of A Nation of Villages, p. 2045.

History: Review of New Books, winter, 2005, Angela T. Thompson, review of A Nation of Villages, p. 65.

Military Review, January-February, 2006, Prisco R. Hernandez, review of A Nation of Villages, p. 123.

ONLINE

University of Colorado Denver Department of History Web site,http://thunder1.cudenver.edu/clas/history/ (May 22, 2008), author biography.