Repeated changes in Spanish shipping policy, a result of Spain’s nearly constant wars, added to resentment in the New World. From 1793 to 1795, Spain fought France in a futile attempt to reverse the French Revolution. In addition, Spain and England were at war for most of the years from 1796 to 1807.12
When Spain and Britain were at war, the British fleet blockaded Spain’s ports, cutting off trade with Spanish America. Its ships would attack Spanish ships after they left Veracruz. In 1797, to allow its colonies to export and receive supplies, the Spanish Crown allowed trade with neutral countries. Two years later, it prohibited trade with neutrals, claiming such trade only benefited Britain. In 1804, war again interrupted shipping, and Spain again permitted trade with neutrals.13
The high cost of war between 1793 and 1808 and the loss of trade and bullion shipped from the colonies contributed to Spanish decline. By 1808, the Spanish fleet had been largely destroyed in battle, and colonial trade increasingly benefited neutral shippers, rather than Spanish merchants and manufacturers. The interruptions in shipping devastated the Mexican mining industry. As the stocks of mercury imported from Spain were exhausted, many silver mines suspended operations. Allowing neutral nations to trade with its colonies put Spain in a no-win situation. Consumers benefited from obtaining inexpensive imports. Producers could get exports to market. However, both groups were then reluctant to accept the reimposition of trade restrictions after the restoration of peace.14
In 1804, to ease its war-induced financial woes, the Crown ordered that all debts owed to the Mexican Church should be repaid immediately and that the funds collected should be sent to Spain. Abad y Queipo estimated that credit extended by the Church totaled 44 million pesos, two-thirds of Mexican capital in active circulation—money used to pay salaries and grow crops. He predicted the withdrawal of this capital would severely damage agriculture, mining, and commerce. Less than a week after the publication of the decree, the Mexico City government declared the measure “totally impractical,” since “it would inevitably bring ruin to these dominions and cause enormous damage to the state.” The Crown’s desperate need for funds caused it to ignore such warnings.15
Spanish officials had assumed that the decree, known as the Consolidation Decree, would have an effect comparable to that of a similar 1798 decree issued in Spain, where the Church owned large tracts of property. However, unlike in Spain, where 90 percent of church wealth was invested in real estate and only 10 percent was liquid, in New Spain only 12 percent was invested in real estate, and the rest was liquid. Church loans financed the operations of New Spain’s 200,000 entrepreneurs, only 5 percent of whom operated entirely with their own capital.16
The Consolidation Decree damaged the interests of miners, hacendados, merchants, and artisans who operated on borrowed capital. Many businesses were closed as buildings were seized and sold at auction. Medium-sized and small landowners who could not obtain cash to liquidate debts suffered the most. They were forced to sell their houses, ranchos, and haciendas to repay loans just when others’ sales had caused the value of real estate to decline by half. The decree devastated schools, hospitals, and social welfare institutions, such as orphanages, which income from Church investment had sustained. It also embittered the lower clergy, since many of its members lived on interest from chaplaincies and loaned capital. Commenting on the European conflict that motivated the Consolidation Decree, Mexican priest Fray Servando Teresa de Mier lamented: “The war is more cruel for us than for Spain, and is ultimately waged with our money. We simply need to stay neutral to be happy.”17
In 1808, Napoleon sent French troops into Spain to further his imperial ambitions. He forced King Fernando VII off the throne and imprisoned him in France. He then installed his own brother Joseph to replace the Spanish monarch. In Spain, various groups, or “juntas,” sprang up to fight Napoleon’s forces. They claimed that in the absence of the king, they were the true representatives of the Spanish nation. For a brief period the invasion of Spain united New Spain, as its residents, regardless of which side of the Atlantic they had been born on, rallied around the deposed Fernando and declared their opposition to the French occupation of the Mother Country.18
Soon representatives of different juntas began arriving in Mexico seeking funds to finance the struggle of their respective juntas, each of which was fighting for the restoration of Fernando.
Figure 6.1
Father Miguel Hidalgo
Source: Reproduced courtesy of the Benson Latin American Collection, the University of Texas at Austin
Two commissioners from the Seville junta appeared in Mexico City and declared that the Seville junta represented all of Spain and demanded that authorities in Mexico should recognize it as the legitimate government.19
To fill the power vacuum in Mexico, a junta central, composed of Viceroy Jose de Iturrigaray, the archbishop, members of the Mexico City government, various other administrators and distinguished persons including representatives from Puebla and Jalapa, began meeting in Mexico City. The junta confirmed its support for Iturrigaray and announced that it would only subordinate itself to a junta in Spain that was appointed by Fernando. Since he was a prisoner in France, that was tantamount to saying the junta in Mexico City would manage New Spain’s affairs until such time as the Spanish monarch returned to the throne.20
Creoles who convened the Mexico City junta operated on the premise that Mexico was not a colony of Spain, but a kingdom co-equal to Spain under the monarchy. They reasoned that with the monarch absent, the link uniting Spain and New Spain ceased to exist.21
Spaniards in Mexico did their best to quash notions that Mexicans might assume sovereignty. On August 27, 1808, the Inquisition declared any theory that sovereignty resided in the corporations or the people at large to be heretical. The audiencia claimed that the declarations by members of the Mexico City municipal government that sovereignty was based on a pact between the governed and the monarch only served as a smokescreen for their desired independence.22
Many Spanish-born people believed that Iturrigaray’s cooperation with the junta indicated that he sought to separate Mexico from Spain. No evidence has been found to support that assumption, but that did not prevent Spaniards from acting on it. The two commissioners who had come to demand loyalty to the Seville junta encouraged their fellow countrymen in Mexico City to take action.23
Shortly after midnight on September 16, 1808, wealthy Spanish hacendado Gabriel de Yermo assembled a force numbering roughly 300. It was largely composed of immigrant Spanish merchants who swept into the viceregal palace and arrested Iturrigaray. The coup enjoyed the support of the archbishop of Mexico, consulado members, representatives of the Inquisition, and justices of the audiencia, almost all of whom were Spaniards. The plotters also imprisoned the leading figures in the municipal government. The audiencia then appointed seventy-seven-year old Field Marshal Pedro Garibay as viceroy and sent Iturrigaray back to Spain to face trial for treason.24
Garibay immediately recognized the junta in Seville as the legitimate ruler of Mexico. In doing this, he made a giant intellectual leap. Creoles had asserted that if the monarch was absent, Mexicans were Mexico’s sovereign. Garibay’s recognition of the Seville junta, however, asserted that the absence of the monarch justified a self-proclaimed ruling junta of Spaniards becoming Mexico’s sovereign.25
The coup against Iturrigaray reminded Creoles of their secondary status. They chaffed under successive viceroys, whom, after 1808, they viewed as illegal, even according to Spanish norms. The coup closed the possibility of obtaining independence as the elite wanted it—a change only in relations between elite groups, without popular participation or violence. In the short run, the coup was a success, since it halted the slide toward Creole autonomy. However, in the long run, the coup destroyed what survived of the mystique surrounding Spanish power. It became even clearer that naked force, not the divine right of kings, formed the basis of Spanish rule.26
World History
