Special Collections Online Exhibits

Páginas de la historia de México - Excerpts from the Morales de Escárcega Collection

Independence and Early National Politics

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Mapa del Cerro de Barrabás donde se fortificó Don Vicente Guerrero después de retirarse de Zacatula, Mayo 1819.

After Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and the fall of the Spanish monarchy, Mexican conservatives and liberals saw the opportunity to achieve independence. The conservadores (conservatives) sought to restore the monarchy, while the liberals (liberales) desired a democratic Mexico. Both political groups agreed that Mexico should fight for its independence.

Miguel Hidalgo, a progressive Catholic priest, was sympathetic to the plight of the native population and to the social conditions of the lower classes. Along with other white, educated criollos (white Mexicans of Spanish descent), he planned a large-scale mestizo and native peasant uprising, and the weakening of Spain’s hold on its colony gave him an opportunity to take action. In 1810, Hidalgo began the uprising in the town of Dolores, and his rebel army of some 20,000 soldiers attacked Spanish strongholds on the way to Mexico City. It was at the capital where Hidalgo’s forces were defeated and eventually where José María Morelos and other priests were captured and executed. Hidalgo’s rebellion lived on through the efforts of politicians and professional soldiers such as Vicente Guerrero, and General Agustín de Iturbide. The war lasted for more than a decade until Mexico City was liberated in 1821 and the Treaty of Córdoba was signed.

Iturbide was a former Spanish general who switched sides to fight for independence and was supported by conservadores. The conservadores favored a return to a monarchy, but when no European royals accepted Mexico’s offer of an emperorship, it was Iturbide’s intention to name himself Emperor. Iturbide ran Mexico as if it were his army, giving orders and imprisoning those who disagreed with his policies. He dissolved the Mexican Congress, which enraged many of his former allies. They revolted against him and ousted him from the throne less than a year into his rule. In 1824, Guadalupe Victoria, a former rebel soldier, became the first president of Mexico.

After Victoria’s term, conservadores and liberales fought to install their preferred presidential candidate. Former rebel general Vicente Guerrero became president in 1829 and he immediately abolished slavery. However, later that year, Guerrero was overthrown in a coup d’état by vice president Anastasio Bustamante. He fought back with soldiers loyal to him, but was captured and executed by Bustamante’s forces. After Guerrero’s death, more revolts broke out, and, with the help of General Antonio López de Santa Anna, Bustamante was forced into exile.

Eventually, Santa Anna was elected president in 1832. He had little interest in running the country and gave his vice president Valentín Gómez Farías, a liberal reformer, free reign over Mexico. Farías enacted several reforms against the church and reduced the size of the army, which angered many conservadores. Santa Anna dismissed Farías from office and abolished the Constitution of 1824, overturned the liberal reforms, forced many liberals out of their political positions and centralized the government by changing the states into military departments. This incited rebellions across Mexico, especially in regions already interested in independence, such as Yucatán, Zacatecas, and the northern part of Coahuila and Tejas. The state of Yucatán and others eventually returned under Mexico’s control, and Santa Anna focused his military on the breakaway state of Tejas, whose inhabitants called themselves Texans or Tejano depending on whether they considered themselves Anglo or Mexican.

A decade earlier, after Mexico gained its independence from Spain, the Mexican government sought to populate some of its sparsely-settled northern territories. It offered land grants to the state of Coahuila and Tejas, which were in remote areas in the northern part of the country, to thousands of immigrant families from the United States, under the condition that the immigrants convert to Catholicism and become Mexican citizens. The government also abolished slavery, but this and the other conditions were largely ignored. After a number of incidents, both political and violent, between the settlers and the Mexican government, Texas declared its independence from Mexico. After a series of battles, including the Battle of the Alamo which the Texans lost, Sam Houston’s Texan soldiers defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 and even captured the famed general. Eventually, Texans would vote to be annexed by the U.S., leading to the Mexican-American War.