Responses of the Agrarian
The responses of rural Mexicans to the War with the United States in the 1840s and the French invasion and occupation of the 1860s differed sharply. When the United States invaded in 1846, the agrarian majority showed little inclination to defend the nation, and substantial numbers took the opportunity to challenge the state, further weakening the war effort. When the French invaded two decades later, few took the conflict as an opportunity for insurrection, and at least in the Puebla highlands, strategic groups of indigenous villagers joined the Liberals in fighting for the national state.

The differing responses of the agrarian majority to the two midcentury invasions of Mexico by external powers are little understood. Why did the U.S. invasion become an opportunity for mass regional insurrections, while the French invasion did not? Why did few rural Mexicans join the fight against the Yankees, while more were ready to resist the French? Had a new nationalism begun to permeate the rural majority? Were U.S. aims—focused on the acquisition of distant and little-populated northern territories—seen as irrelevant to the agrarian majority? Were French designs on internal dominance viewed as a more direct threat to rural villagers? National resistance led by Liberals and supported by strategic agrarian allies defeated the French in 1867. The national victory, however, did not lead to agrarian peace. Once the Liberals, led by President Benito Juárez, consolidated national power, they returned to their agenda for agrarian Mexico. They pressed for the privatization of community lands and for the secularization of public culture. The privatization program consolidated Liberal support among many rancheros, who could establish ownership of properties leased from traditional communities.