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This article is a contribution to the historiography on political processes in the hispanic world after the independences in Spanish America, based on the case of Mexican Alta California in the 1820s. A microhistorical study of two revolts, in 1829 and 1831, allows me to show the mechanisms by which local political stakes entered in a dialog with partisan political categories designed in Mexico. Consequently, those two revolts can’t be interpreted as a straight forward rejection of Mexico and nation-building by the Californians, even if they had been reluctant at first to recognize the independence. On the contrary, they should be viewed as a step in integration because of their form (the pronunciamiento) and of their content (defense of the Mexican Constitution of 1824). The adoption of the vocabulary of political factions and parties should not only be described as a diffusion from the top, from the head city to the provinces but shows an appropriation and a creative adaptation to local issues, here the fate of the missions in an Alta California that was no more a part of the spanish catholic monarchy but part of a federal republic. The relations between the Mexican government and the Alta-Californians shows the negotiated dimension of the building of Mexico after independence.