Independent Mexico: A Nation Wrought with Uncertainty (Mar 3, 2024)
by Scott Sosebee
Since March 2 is Texas Independence Day and April 21 is San Jacinto Day, this space will take the next several weeks focusing on the Texas Revolution, mostly its roots, how independence developed, and what brought the war. It is a topic that contains more complexity than is often thought about and is comprised of a cross-current of events and ideologies present in both American and Mexican society and politics. We will begin with a quick examination of Mexican politics and how that led to the instability that caused Texas to revolt.
While the Texas Revolution is an event and topic that almost all Texans seem to be able to recite chapter and verse, that knowledge often comes within a vacuum. The Alamo is certainly on center stage, while San Jacinto and Goliad occupy a close second, but the machinations and cross-currents that led to the Texas fight for independence contained not only social and political ideas from the Americans who came to Texas in the 1820s and 1830s, but also the internal maneuvers and ideology in Mexico. It is a tale of instability, intrigue, and competing social ideas on both sides of the spectrum. First, let’s take a brief look at how Mexican politics of the era played a role.
The Texas Revolution is often not interpreted or understood as part of a larger conflict within the whole of Mexico. Certainly, the ultimate campaign by largely Anglo Texas to separate from the Mexican regime of dictator Santa Anna is most important to and gets the most commemoration among the descendants of those Anglo Texas during the period. However, long before Texians revolted against Santa Anna’s rule, Mexico was rocked by a number of coups, revolts, and political clashes among the two predominant political and social partisans in the nation, the Centralists and the Federalists.
When Mexico gained its independence from Spain after the long duration of its internal squabble over the issue from 1810 to 1821, there emerged two different ideologies about how Mexico should be governed, a period characterized by political instability and a government that was almost constantly in motion between competing ideologies. One faction, best referred to as the “Centralists,” but also known as the Conservative Party, emerged chiefly among the landed elites, the high office clergy, many officers in the armed forces, and the wealthiest merchants in the nation. They favored a nation and national government that had no state divisions, with governmental power concentrated in the hands of executive officers, and a small legislative body of some composition. While nowhere near all “Centralists” favored anti-democratic means of choosing the nation’s leaders, it certainly contained a number of authoritarian impulses, an instinct that became apparent when the first “ruler” of an independent Mexico, former Royalist Army leader Agustin Iturbide, only a few months after independence, declared himself emperor and dissolved all republican forms in the nation.
The “Federalists,” also known as the Liberal Party, occupied the other side of the partisan divide in Mexico. They took their name from its adherent’s desire to establish Mexico as a representative republic in the image of the United States. The Federalists envisioned a limited-power federal government that shared authority on an equal basis with state governments. Their plans allowed for states to elect the executive and for a federal legislature to serve as a check on the power of the president. Federalists tended to come from the Mexican middle class and their strongest support came from northern Mexico, including the vast majority of the residents—most of them Anglos—in the province of Texas.
Political power in Mexico constantly shifted between the two groups from 1822 to 1833. When the Mexican War for Independence came to a close, with an agreement between the Royalists and the Rebels in 1821, former Royalist general Agustin Iturbide took over as a regent leader of the nation while the various factions debated about what kind of government Mexico would form. While the two sides dithered, and no member of a European member of a royal house would agree to take a throne, Iturbide, in 1822, simply declared himself Agustin I, Emperor of Mexico. He organized a rump coronation, then dissolved the Mexican Congress and declared himself the single ruler of the nation. Iturbide may have been bold in seizing power, but he was not an effective leader and a group of army officers deposed him just a few months into his imperial reign in 1823.
The rule of the nation then shifted to the Federalists, who wrote and approved the Constitution of 1824 which instituted Mexico’s First Republic. Former rebel general Guadalupe Victoria ascended to the presidency through the support of the newly formed Mexican states. Victoria would be the first of a succession of generals who would head the Mexican government. He would also be the most stable of a long line of the nation’s presidents as he would become the only president to serve his full term in the first thirty years of the nation. Victoria accomplished that feat by taking a somewhat independent stance, keeping himself largely above the political fray between the Centralists and Federalists that dominated all the other levers of political power.
When his term ended, another former rebel general and ardent Federalist, Vincente Gurrero, won a bitterly divisive election as the nation’s president. Guerrero would only serve a short term—from April to December 1829—before he was deposed. Guerrero was passionate about his political position, perhaps because he understood the slings and arrows of the racial caste system present in the remnants of a Spanish colony. He was of mixed race, born in a family of modest means. While he was able to rise through the army during the war, he had to endure suspicion from white political elites, who often viewed him as an outsider intruding on their domain. Perhaps that was one reason his signature accomplishment was the abolishment of slavery in Mexico—although (which we will look at next week), the Anglos in Texas received a carved-out exemption from that action. Guerrero’s term came to a close when his Vice-President, Conservative Anastacio Bustamante, led a coup against him and also had him murdered. Bustamante would preside over a key development in the national government’s relationship with its province in Texas when he enacted the Law of April 6, 1830, an action that would signal the first real schism between the national government and the Anglo residents who had come to dominate the population in Texas.
Next week: Anglo immigration in Texas and the beginning of conflict between those residents and the national government.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.