Mexico

F

4

Iturbide

The Spanish revolution of 1820 altered the rebellion in Mexico. This revolution restored the liberal Spanish constitution of 1812 and emphasized representative government and individual liberty. These liberal political tendencies in Spain dismayed some Mexican leaders, but of more concern to Mexico’s elite was the instability in Spain. Reflecting elite consensus, Iturbide met Guerrero in 1821 and signed a compromise agreement in which the two agreed to combine their forces to bring about independence. Their plan, known as the Plan of Iguala, set forth three mutual guarantees: Mexico would become an independent country, ruled as a limited monarchy; the Roman Catholic Church would be the state church; and criollos would be given the same rights and privileges as peninsulares. The viceroy took no active measures against Iturbide and was forced to resign. The last viceroy of New Spain arrived in Mexico in July 1821 and was forced to accept the Treaty of Córdoba, marking the formal beginning of Mexican independence. See also Latin American Independence.

The hero of the moment, Iturbide, proclaimed himself emperor of Mexico in May 1822. He held the position with some difficulty until March 1823, when the military forced him to abdicate. A republic was proclaimed, and Guadalupe Victoria became the first president. With the end of the Mexican Empire, Central America broke away from Mexico to become the United Provinces of Central America.

G

The Early Republic

Mexico was unprepared for the task of creating a new republic. Civil war had destroyed both social stability and the economy. Tax revenue fell to disastrously low levels as the economy struggled to revive. Moreover, few had the political experience to bind the nation together. Regional elites viewed with suspicion any attempt by Mexico City to establish a degree of central control. Deciding the actual role of the federal government required time and debate. The first constitution, promulgated in 1824, gave state legislators the power to elect both the president and the vice president. As a result, a series of weak presidents struggled to form an effective government.

During this time, Mexico’s political elite began to divide into two opposing factions: conservatives and liberals. The conservatives favored a highly centralized government, even a dictatorship if necessary, and wanted to maintain the Catholic Church’s power and control of educational facilities. The conservative faction was composed primarily of church leaders, rich landowners, criollos, and army officials. The liberals wanted a federation of states that was not strictly controlled by a central government. They also sought to limit the power of the Catholic Church, foster public education rather than church-controlled education, and institute social reforms.

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Vicente Guerrero, who had become a leader in the liberal faction, became president in 1829, but was shot and killed in 1831 by forces led by conservative political and military leader Anastasio Bustamante. Revolt followed revolt until 1833, when Antonio López de Santa Anna, a military commander, was elected president. Santa Anna—who had led the military revolt that brought down Iturbide and the short-lived Mexican Empire—was a man of considerable egotism, energy, and intelligence. Shortly after he came to power, his policies involved the new republic in war over the future of Texas.

H

The Texas Revolution

In the early 1800s Texas was a sparsely populated and weakly governed region that functioned as part of the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas. In 1820 Moses Austin, a U.S. citizen, received permission from the Mexican government to bring American settlers to the region. He died shortly thereafter, but his son, Stephen F. Austin, was allowed to continue with the project in 1821. By the 1830s most of the residents of Texas were immigrants from the southern United States. These new residents of Texas soon had differences with the Mexican government, which had abolished slavery in 1829 and in 1830 had passed a law that prohibited further immigration from the United States.

In 1834 a political crisis resulted in the overthrow of the constitution of 1824, which had created the federal republic of Mexico. A new centralist constitution, which stripped the Mexican states of their autonomy, was enacted in 1836. Protests and revolts rocked the country, but the conservatives prevailed. However, the protests against centralization encouraged the Texans to rebel against Mexican authority in 1835, in what came to be known as the Texas Revolution. President Santa Anna, alarmed and anxious to avoid the unraveling of the nation, arrived in San Antonio, Texas, in early 1836, where his troops defeated a small group of Texans at The Alamo, a Franciscan mission that had been converted into a fort.

The subsequent execution of more than 280 Texan prisoners at Goliad, by order of Santa Anna, ended any hope of political compromise. At the Battle of San Jacinto Santa Anna’s forces were defeated by troops under the command of Texan leader Sam Houston. In May 1836 Santa Anna signed the Treaty of Velasco, in which he agreed to order Mexican troops in Texas to retreat south of the Rio Grande, a major river known as the Río Bravo in Mexico, and to persuade the Mexican government to accept the independence of Texas. Mexico refused to acknowledge the independent republic but made no serious effort to regain control of the territory.

Meanwhile, Texans elected Houston to be the first president of the Republic of Texas. The short-lived republic was annexed by the United States less than a decade later. The Texas Revolution and the annexation of Texas by the United States were among the factors that led to the outbreak of war between the United States and Mexico in 1846.

I

The Mexican War

In 1845 U.S. president James K. Polk sent diplomat John Slidell to Mexico to seek border adjustments in Texas in return for the U.S. government’s settlement of the claims of U.S. citizens against Mexico, and also to make an offer to purchase California and New Mexico. The Mexican authorities refused to negotiate with Slidell. After the failure of this mission, a U.S. army under General Zachary Taylor advanced to the mouth of the Rio Grande, the river that the state of Texas claimed as its southern boundary. Mexico, claiming that the boundary was the Nueces River, to the northeast of the Rio Grande, considered the advance of Taylor’s army an act of aggression and sent troops across the Rio Grande in 1846. Polk, in turn, declared the Mexican advance to be an invasion of U.S. soil, and the U.S. Congress declared war on Mexico. See also Mexican War.

Santa Anna, who had been deposed and exiled to Cuba in 1844, was called back to the presidency to attempt to save the republic. Mexican forces were defeated in battle after battle, however, and U.S. troops occupied much of northern Mexico by the end of the year. Mexico City fell in 1847, and Mexican forces surrendered soon thereafter. Under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848, the Rio Grande was fixed as the southern boundary of Texas. Territory now forming the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming became part of the United States.

During the Mexican War, the Maya people of the Yucatán Peninsula had launched a major revolt against the white and mestizo population of the region. This struggle, known as the Caste War of the Yucatán, began in 1847 and was an effort to end the exploitation of the Maya and stop nonnatives from taking over communal Maya lands. The rebellion was largely defeated by 1853, and the war drove many Maya across the Yucatán Peninsula into remote regions of what is now the state of Quintana Roo. These eastern Maya maintained an independent state in the region until Mexico’s federal army occupied their land and subdued them in 1901.

Famine, disease, and battlefield casualties combined to kill at least 30 percent of the prewar population of the Yucatán Peninsula during the Maya revolt. The conflict also decimated the sugar industry of southeastern Yucatán, and induced much of the region’s remaining population to move to the northwest. In addition, the rebellion strained relations between the Maya and nonnatives throughout southern Mexico, resulting in more racially motivated conflicts later in the century.

After the Mexican War, Mexico was confronted with a grave reconstruction problem. Finances were devastated, and the prestige of the government, already weak, had diminished considerably. Santa Anna, who had been compelled to resign after the war, returned from exile in 1853 and, with the support of conservatives, declared himself dictator. Later that year, Santa Anna sold the Mesilla Valley in northwestern Mexico to the United States for $10 million. Known as the Gadsden Purchase, the deal clarified the New Mexico boundary and gave an additional strip of territory (now southern Arizona and a slice of southwestern New Mexico) to the United States. This was the last territorial transfer made by Mexico.

Early in 1854 a group of young liberals launched a revolt against Santa Anna; after more than a year of intense fighting, the liberal forces prevailed and took over the government. Santa Anna fled into exile, and liberal rebel leader Juan Álvarez became the provisional president of Mexico. The rebellion was the first event in a long, fierce struggle between the powerful conservative elites that had traditionally dominated Mexico and the liberals.

J

Juárez and the French Occupation

The 1855 takeover of the government by the liberals began a period known as La Reforma, in which liberal leaders sought to reduce the power of the church and the military in Mexican politics and society. Later that year President Álvarez was replaced by Ignacio Comonfort, a liberal who sought a more gradual pace of reform. In 1857 the liberals enacted a new constitution, which reestablished a federal form of government. It provided for individual rights, universal male suffrage, freedom of speech, and other civil liberties. The constitution also abolished special courts for members of the military or clergy, and ordered the church and other institutions to auction off any land or buildings not absolutely necessary for their operation.

Conservative groups bitterly opposed the new constitution. With Spain supporting the conservatives and the United States supporting the liberals, a bitterly divided Mexico sank into a period of civil strife known as the War of the Reform (1858-1860). This violent struggle between conservative and liberal groups devastated Mexico.

The great leader to emerge from the liberal faction during this period was Benito Pablo Juárez, a Native American who became famous for his integrity. Juárez served as the minister of justice in President Álvarez’s cabinet, and for the next 15 years he would be the principal influence in Mexican politics.

In 1858 a political revolt overthrew President Comonfort and Juárez became provisional president. Soon afterward conservatives who had participated in the revolt forced Juárez to flee Mexico City; he established a new seat of government in Veracruz. Mexico now had two competing governments: one led by conservatives based in Mexico City, and one led by liberals based in Veracruz. Conservative forces controlled much of central Mexico, but they were unable to drive the Juárez forces from Veracruz. As provisional president, Juárez issued a decree nationalizing church property, separating church and state, and suppressing religious orders. The Juárez government gradually gained the upper hand, and by 1861 the liberal armies had decisively defeated the conservative forces.

Juárez moved his government to Mexico City, was elected president in 1861, and set about trying to establish order in the troubled country. He attempted to ease the financial chaos caused by the civil war by suspending interest payments on foreign loans incurred by preceding governments. Angered by his decree, France, Britain, and Spain decided to intervene jointly to protect their investments in Mexico.

The prime mover in this decision was Napoleon III of France, who believed that Mexico would welcome the creation of a monarchy. He hoped that a Mexican monarchy would protect Latin America from the Anglo-Saxon republicanism of the United States. A joint expedition occupied Veracruz in 1861, but when Napoleon’s colonial ambitions became evident, the British and Spanish withdrew in 1862.

The French encountered unexpected resistance at Puebla, as General Ignacio Zaragoza repulsed the invaders on May 5, 1862. That date, known as Cinco de Mayo in Spanish, henceforth became a popular national holiday. A shocked and angered Napoleon III dispatched another 30,000 troops, who spent two months capturing Puebla before sweeping into Mexico City in June 1863. A provisional conservative government proclaimed a Mexican empire and offered the monarchy, at Napoleon’s request, to Austrian archduke Maximilian.

Meanwhile, Juárez and his cabinet had fled northward with a small force. By early 1865 only the states of Chiapas, Guerrero, and part of Michoacán—in southern Mexico—and Chihuahua and Sonora—in northern Mexico—remained under liberal control. While the United States continued to recognize the Juárez regime, it could offer little help because of its own civil war. Just as Maximilian hovered on the verge of establishing control over the entire country, events in Europe prompted the French to withdraw their troops in 1867. The Juárez forces reconquered the country, and troops under General Porfirio Díaz occupied Mexico City. Maximilian was besieged at Querétaro and forced to surrender. He was executed by a Mexican firing squad in 1867.

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