The only legitimate authority, the crown, and its colonial representative, the viceroy, disappeared. Intense political conflict ensued as various groups sought to legitimize their political philosophies.
Roderic Ai Camp, 200325
In late March 1823, the Congress that Iturbide had dissolved was reconvened. Initially its members assumed that they would write Mexico’s first constitution. However, some states, including Jalisco and Zacatecas, withdrew support from Congress and declared they would not be bound by its actions. These states demanded that elections be held to select a new Congress that would better represent regional interests. The reconvened Congress ordered a military force to Jalisco to reassert control. In response, Jalisco and Zacatecas mobilized their militias to defend local sovereignty.
When the force sent from Mexico City reached the Jalisco border, its commander agreed to parlay with Jalisco’s leaders. After a face-saving concession by Jalisco, on May 20 Congress agreed to new Congressional elections. Congress hoped this concession would avoid the disintegration of the country—a highly probable event. By mid-1823, ten of Mexico’s nineteen provinces as well as the five provinces of Central America had declared themselves either sovereign or self-governing. The forming of alliances among the states themselves without consulting Mexico City also alarmed Congress.26
Elections then chose representatives to Mexico’s second Congress, which convened in November 1823 specifically to write a constitution. The new Congress found favor in the hinterlands because it represented the provincial elite rather than the Mexico City elite. Lawyers (39.1 percent) formed the largest occupational group among the deputies, followed by clerics (29.8 percent). Military officers (16.9 percent) and hacendados (12.5 percent) comprised the next largest occupational groups. Thirty-five percent of the deputies had also been elected to the first Congress. Most deputies favored federalism and rejected a monarchy.27
This attempt to keep Mexico intact was only partially successful. In 1822, the Central American elite had opted to join Mexico, attracted by Iturbide’s empire. However, after Iturbide abdicated, they opted for independence. For a short period, Central America remained as a single nation and then divided into the present republics of Central America.28
The second Mexican Congress drafted a new constitution, which it promulgated in 1824. Mexico’s first constitution, modeled on the 1812 Spanish constitution, abolished the monarchy and shifted power to the states. The military and the Church retained special privileges such as theirfueros. The constitution prohibited all religions except Roman Catholicism. The framers were so sure they were on firm religious ground that they specifically prohibited amending the article concerning religion. In most cases, the provincial deputations created by the 1812 Spanish constitution became states in the new republic. These states received the exclusive right to administer affairs within their borders. This reflected the consensus that, due to Mexico’s enormous size and geographic diversity, local problems could be best addressed locally.29
The constitution divided government into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Between 1824 and 1835, as a result of the constitution’s enfranchising males without regard to wealth, literacy, or ethnicity, Mexico enjoyed broader suffrage than the United States, France, or Great Britain—the nations usually cited as the maximum achievement of liberal democracy in the early nineteenth century. Indirect elections, as under the 1812 Spanish constitution, chose one member of the lower house of Congress for each 80,000 residents. Each state legislature chose two members of the national senate and elected supreme court justices. The state legislatures also elected the president, with each state casting one vote, regardless of its population. Given the framers’ fear of absolutism, they created a weak presidency and a weak federal government that was dependent on states for troop recruitment and tax collection. For the same reason, a president had to sit out a term before he could be reelected. The person who received the second highest vote in the presidential election became vice-president.30
Awarding the vice-presidency to the candidate receiving the second highest vote total contributed to instability, since it left a president with his chief political opponent serving as vice-president. With only one exception, all the vice-presidents elected under the 1824 constitution revolted against the presidents they served under.
Guadalupe Victoria, a respected insurgent combatant, was elected Mexico’s first president in 1824. As was the case after Iturbide’s triumphant entry into Mexico City two years earlier, optimism ran high. Historian Lucas Alaman commented: “President Victoria found himself in the best of circumstances. The republic was calm; the political parties were under control; and all expected a bright future.”31
Due to Victoria’s non-assertive political style, to this day he remains something of a cipher. Liberal Lorenzo de Zavala commented that he became “an entirely null personage and the instrument of the men who surrounded him.” During Victoria’s term, the real initiative in public affairs did not lie in Mexico City. The 1824 constitution, which created a weak presidency, left initiative to the states. Victoria’s outstanding grace was his willingness to respect state autonomy, just as the constitution mandated.32
In 1829 President Victoria completed his term, an event that would not occur again for decades. The stability that enabled Victoria to finish his term resulted from the acceptance of his cabinet choices and his actions by most members of the elite. The receipt of British loans, which temporarily filled government coffers, also increased stability.33
The 1828 presidential election pitted General Manuel Gomez Pedraza, a former royalist officer who had joined Iturbide, against the former insurgent commander, Vicente Guerrero. During the campaign, Guerrero’s opponents referred to him as “El Negro,” a comment on his dark skin. Centralists supported the more moderate Gomez Pedraza, a rich, cultivated Creole.
Gomez Pedraza won the election, which was decided by each state legislature casting one vote for its preferred candidate. This procedure, while strictly legal, did not reflect popular will, in that Guerrero, a hero of independence, was far more popular than his opponent.34
Rather than accepting defeat, Guerrero decided to take the presidency by force. From his power base in Veracruz, Santa Anna supported Guerrero’s assuming the presidency, charging that “proSpanish” interests had backed Gomez Pedraza. Then the two main military commanders in Mexico City seized the Acordada Armory and called for Guerrero to assume the presidency. Soon crowds took to the streets in support of Guerrero, charging Gomez Pedraza with fraud. A pro-Guerrero mob of 5,000 looted the Parian market in Mexico City. The market, with its many Spanish-owned shops, catered to the wealthy, thus making it a symbol of class privilege.35
In January 1829, Congress, responding to both military and mass support for Guerrero, annulled votes for Gomez Pedraza, confirmed Guerrero as president, and installed Anastasio Bustamante as vice-president. Guerrero served as president from April 1, 1829, to December 28 of that year. His presidency represented the high-water mark for the locally based, non-white, populist forces that Hidalgo had mobilized.36
During the Guerrero administration, decentralization of power reached its high point. Municipalities demanded and received the same rights to participation and autonomy over their affairs and resources that states had demanded in 1823. This municipal autonomy reaffirmed the traditional role played by the village, dating from the colonial period and before.37
The abolition of African slavery remains as Guerrero’s major accomplishment. By 1800, for economic reasons, slavery had fallen into disuse in all but a handful of areas. High slave mortality, their high initial purchase costs, and the uncertainty of future slave purchases led to a reliance on Indian and mestizo wage labor.38
Shortly after independence, a national commission on slavery estimated that only 3,000 slaves remained. In contrast to the United States, the 1829 abolition of slavery produced little controversy, given the small slave population. Again, in contrast to the experience of the United States, the role of blacks in the post-slavery era has not been a significant issue. Miscegenation has so thoroughly blurred the differences between blacks and other mixed-race Mexicans that the number of Mexicans with identifiable African ancestry has become socially insignificant.39
The other major social enactment of the 1820s—the expulsion of Spaniards—was far more controversial. Resentment against Spaniards had its roots in their haughty treatment of Mexicans during the colonial period. Counterinsurgency campaigns during the war for independence exacerbated anti-Spanish sentiment. Spain’s rejection of the Treaty of Cordoba and its continued occupation of San Juan de Ulua, the island fortress offshore from Veracruz, increased resentment. Mexicans regarded the Spanish merchants remaining after independence as usurious and monopolistic and felt their massive imports threatened the livelihood of artisans. They considered the Spanish to be a virtual fifth column, maintaining loyalty to the Spanish empire and exploiting Mexico’s wealth. The discovery of an 1827 plot by the Spanish friar Joaquin Arenas to restore Spanish rule exacerbated such fears. Nationalist Creoles found Spaniards a satisfying scapegoat for Mexico’s postindependence economic decline. The number of choice jobs Spaniards held increased support for their expulsion. As Zavala, a contemporary observer of these events, noted, “It is difficult to determine as to what point one can call an emotion patriotic which can be easily confused with a desire for jobs held by others.”40
Congress passed the first of several Spanish expulsion laws in 1827. Such laws, which required Spaniards to leave Mexico, continued to be in force until 1836, when Spain finally recognized Mexican independence. The expulsion did not proceed smoothly, since some Spaniards had clearly supported Mexican independence, some had Mexican families, and some could not afford passage out of Mexico. Still others were ill or feigned illness and paid physicians to certify their inability to travel.
As a result of expulsion legislation, roughly three-fourths of the 6,600 Spanish men in Mexico departed between 1827 and 1834. While the granting of many exemptions permitted some Spaniards to remain in Mexico, the expulsion virtually eliminated Spaniards from the military, government service, the mining industry, and the Church. Spaniards managed to survive, to a degree, in commerce and as property owners. Forcing Spaniards out of Mexico impoverished the economy since those expelled took substantial specie with them, as well as their productive energy. Expelled Spaniards, though a small percentage of the workforce, were among the most experienced and highly trained of the professional, commercial, and artisan classes. Ironically, the Americans, the French, and the British, but not the Mexicans, filled the gap left by departing Spanish merchants.41
Spain’s launching of a 3,000-man Bay of Pigs-style invasion in July 1829 further increased antiSpanish feelings. Just as with the Bay of Pigs, invasion planners felt the mere presence of the invading force would produce a popular uprising to restore the status quo ante. The Spanish press referred to the force’s commander, Isidro Barradas, as the “second Cortes.” After sailing from Spanish-held Cuba, the invaders landed on the Gulf Coast and marched north to occupy Tampico. Barradas was so confident that he ordered his troop transport ships back to Cuba, thus cutting off his retreat. He then waited in vain for spontaneous pro-Spanish uprisings to occur.42
The invasion allowed Santa Anna to demonstrate his ability to rapidly muster improvised armies. In less than a week, he assembled 1,644 men and commandeered some merchant ships to take his men north. Santa Anna then landed and encircled the Spanish force. Additional Mexican forces later arrived to reinforce Santa Anna. In September, the Spanish force surrendered, battered not only by Mexican attacks but by a lack of supplies and by yellow fever, which spread rapidly in the unhealthy coastal climate. Due to poor conditions, fifteen to twenty invaders died each day even after they had surrendered. Surviving members, roughly half of the original force, were allowed to return to Cuba.43
Militarily, the Spanish invasion was not of great consequence. However, Santa Anna’s organization of the force that countered the invasion elevated him to national prominence above the other figures of the independence war. Santa Anna realized that the Spanish invasion furthered his own interests. In his autobiography, he commented, “When fortune smiles on Santa Anna, she smiles fully!”44
In response to the invasion, Congress granted emergency war powers to President Guerrero. Once he assumed these extraordinary powers, which he used to abolish slavery, he refused to relinquish them even after the invaders had surrendered. This provided the military, leading clerics, and business interests with a rationale for ousting him.45
However, conservatives did not oust Guerrero due to his retention of emergency powers. His Finance Minister, Lorenzo de Zavala, had announced a progressive income tax, which left the poor untaxed and imposed a 10 percent tax on rent for property worth more than $500. Proponents of this tax justified it as a means of paying the cost of defeating the Spanish invasion. However, the elite considered the measure dangerous populism. The elite was also concerned that Indian peasants in the present-day state of Guerrero interpreted anti-Spanish legislation as authorization to expel non-Indians from their lands, continuing their long struggle over land rights. Guerrero’s ties to the masses, his dark skin, country mannerisms, and lack of polish added to resentment against him. Guerrero’s support for village autonomy also threatened elite interests. The military turned against Guerrero, not on ideological grounds, but because its pay was in arrears due to the lack of government funds.46
In late 1829, Vice-President Anastasio Bustamante rebelled with the backing of the military, the high clergy, and major landowners. Guerrero, unable to quell the uprising, abandoned the presidency. Those who ousted Guerrero portrayed themselves as fighting the war of “civilization against barbarism, of property against thieves, of order against anarchy.”47
After Guerrero left the presidency, his followers waged guerrilla war against the central government from southern Mexico. From that vantage point, the central government in Mexico City served as an aristocratic cabal undermining Mexican independence and handing the nation back to Spain. Guerrero’s supporters fought for a vaguely defined people’s democracy and the overthrow of the usurper Bustamante. The Bustamante administration, in turn, claimed it was fighting for its self-proclaimed objectives—civilization and order. This would become the classic dichotomy of nineteenth-century Mexico.48
Since Guerrero symbolized the rebellion, the government paid a Genoese ship captain who brought supplies to the rebels 50,000 pesos to capture Guerrero. The captain invited Guerrero aboard his ship for dinner in Acapulco, imprisoned him, and delivered him to the Bustamante government, which promptly executed him.49
Without Guerrero, the rebellion quickly faltered. Had other areas of Mexico supported the rebels, they might have succeeded. However, the government’s ability to concentrate all its forces on rebels in the area that later became the state of Guerrero doomed the rebellion.50
Many consider the execution of Guerrero and other captured leaders to have been an effort by the Creole elite to ensure that those of mixed race who enjoyed mass backing did not aspire to the presidency. Previously, failed rebels of European ancestry were not executed. Mexicans still honor their second president for his prominent role in the independence struggle. Historian Justo Sierra wrote this epitaph for Guerrero, who came from a humble background and had virtually no formal
Figure 7.1
Antonio Ldpez de Santa Anna
Source: Reproduced courtesy of the Benson Latin American Collection, the University of Texas at Austin education: “Ambitious partisans had tried to make a politician out of a man who was only a great Mexican.”51
While he made a major contribution to the cause of independence, Guerrero did initiate the seizure of power by force in the fledgling republic. Upon hearing how Guerrero had seized the presidency, South American liberator Simon Bolivar lamented, “The casual right of usurpation and pillage has been enthroned in the Mexican capital and countryside as if it were king.”52
Bustamante’s assumption of the presidency gave conservatives their first opportunity to curtail the political role of the common man and peasant communities. Lucas Alaman, who served as Bustamante’s minister of interior and foreign affairs, emerged as the driving force behind the administration. Since the constitution vested so much power in state legislatures, Alaman concentrated on deposing legislatures hostile to the conservative agenda. He would induce elements of the state militia to revolt against state governments. Since the states were not organized to defend their interests, they could be picked off one by one.53
Bustamante established an authoritarian, elitist, pro-clerical, highly centralized government that alienated many by arresting and imprisoning critics. To allay the rising fear of the upper classes, Bustamante curtailed peasant movements and used the colonial administration as a model for his own. He promised to cut government deficits through efficient management rather than new taxes. However, he spent more on the army than his predecessors—spending that he financed by secretly borrowing from domestic moneylenders (agiotistas). The Bustamante administration closed the lively newspapers of the republic’s early days if they opposed the president. To render ineffective criticism by writers too distant from Mexico City to intimidate, it banned the sale in Mexico City of periodicals from outside the city.54
In November 1831, the federal military commandant general of Jalisco ordered the arrest and execution of the printer responsible for anti-government pamphlets. In response, the Jalisco state government issued a call for other states to rebel in defense of states’ rights. Santa Anna was asked to lead the rebellion, which was financed by Veracruz and Tampico customs receipts and backed by state militias. The rebellion, under Santa Anna’s leadership, quickly gathered support since Bustamante was held responsible for executing Guerrero and was viewed as arbitrary and despotic. Bustamante soon saw that his position was untenable and abandoned the presidency.55
Santa Anna, rather than assuming power, ensured that Gomez Pedraza served the last months —December 1832 to April 1833—of the 1829—1833 term to which he had been elected. This created the fafade of legality and left Santa Anna’s reputation unsullied. Santa Anna received almost all the credit for overthrowing the Bustamante regime, and as a result, enjoyed overwhelming popularity.56
The 1832 war to oust Bustamante left Mexicans exhausted in spirit and pessimistic about the future. It also made it abundantly clear that continued state autonomy required state-controlled militias and that those controlling the instruments of force would determine Mexico’s future.57
World History
