The Mexican Empire, 1821–23

The first Mexican Empire spanned only a short transitional period during which Mexico became an independent republic. Independence from the former mother country had been the only glue which bound republicans and monarchists together, but, once that elusive goal had been achieved, the intrinsic animosity between the two came to dominate the body politic.

Iturbide first became president of a council of regents, which convoked a congress to draw up a new constitution. Deputies to the congress represented the intendancies. When representatives from the Central American intendancies, part of the old viceroyalty of New Spain, declared that they did not wish to remain part of the Mexican Empire, they were allowed to withdraw and to organize their own governments.

On the evening of May 18, 1822, military groups in Mexico City proclaimed Iturbide Emperor Agustín I, and on the next day a majority in congress ratified the “people’s choice” and recommended that the monarchy be hereditary, not elective. Agustín I was crowned in a pompous ceremony on July 21. The empire was recognized by the United States on December 12, 1822, when the Mexican minister was officially received in Washington, D.C. But even then Agustín’s power and prestige were ebbing, and conflict soon developed between the military hero-emperor and the primarily civilian congress. On October 31, 1822, the emperor dismissed congress and ruled through an appointed 45-man junta. The act, condemned by many as arbitrary, provided a pretext to revolt. Among the rebel leaders was General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who would dominate Mexico’s political life for the next third of a century. In Veracruz, on December 2, 1822, Santa Anna proclaimed that Mexico should become a republic, a position supported by many rebels and liberal leaders. Agustín was forced to reconvene congress and to abdicate. In 1824 he returned from European exile but was arrested and shot. This first epoch of independent Mexican national life foreshadowed many problems of the developing republic.

The early republic

Until they adopted a republican constitution in 1824, the Mexican people had little or no previous experience in self-government. Their economy was precarious; mining, a mainstay in colonial times, had declined during the many years of fighting, and widespread anti-Spanish feelings had caused an exodus of Spaniards, depleting both the country’s capital reserves and its pool of trained people. Political instability made borrowing abroad expensive, and nearly all public revenues had to come from customs receipts, which were pledged well in advance. As Mexico’s national debt mounted, so did its problems, and it became trapped in a vicious, seemingly unbreakable cycle. Whenever public monies were insufficient to pay the army, its officers revolted, captured the government, and negotiated international loans. The high interest payments on such loans reduced available funds for education and other social and cultural improvements, which many Mexican leaders thought were urgent requirements.

The constitution of 1824 set a number of democratic goals and provided for a federal republic, consisting of 19 states, four territories, and the Mexico City federal district. Indigenous peoples lost their special colonial status, and accompanying protections, as wards of the government. In many ways they were worse off during the 19th century than they had been under the paternalism of the Spanish crown. In addition, restrictive state legislation excluded the great mass of peasantry from the political process. Because chattel slavery had greatly declined in Mexico and was less widespread than elsewhere in the Americas, a decree abolishing it in 1829 was largely symbolic.

Under various labels, two factions contended for control. The Centralists, who were generally conservative, favoured a strong central government in the viceregal tradition, a paid national army, and Roman Catholicism as the exclusive religion. Opposed to them were the Federalists, who favoured limited central government, local militia, and nearly autonomous states; they tended to be anticlerical and opposed the continuance of colonial fueros, which gave special status to ecclesiastics and the military and exempted them from various civil obligations.

The pendulum of power swung back and forth between the two groups. In 1824 Guadalupe Victoria, a Federalist and a leader in the independence movement, was elected Mexico’s first president. Centralists replaced Federalists in 1828. A Federalist revolt in 1829 put Vicente Guerrero in the presidential chair, but he was soon overthrown by the Centralists, who held power until 1832. In 1833 another change placed Federalists in power until 1836, when Centralists again regained control and held it for nearly a decade.

The age of Santa Anna: Texas and the Mexican-American War

After the downfall of Iturbide, Mexican politics revolved for some time about the enigmatic personality of the charismatic Antonio López de Santa Anna, who seemingly had few fixed ideological or political beliefs. Allied with the Federalists, Santa Anna was first chosen president in 1833, but, rather than serve, he placed the liberal vice president, Valentín Gómez Farías, at the head of the government until Farías and his group in 1834 attacked the privileges of the clergy. Then Santa Anna assumed his presidential post and nullified the anticlerical legislation. Before his political career ended he would be in and out of the presidency 10 more times.

Santa Anna was president when difficulties over Texas first began to mount. Under favourable terms, some 30,000 U.S. immigrants had populated that previously desolate area. Fearful that their growing numbers posed a threat, the Mexican government in 1830 closed the border to further immigration and imposed on the Texans oppressive restrictions that contravened the Mexican constitution. When Santa Anna adopted a new constitution in 1836, and in the process eliminated all vestiges of states’ rights, Texas declared itself an independent republic. Santa Anna quickly gathered an army to crush the revolt. He met with initial success when he trapped a small Texas garrison at the Alamo and totally eliminated it, but he was defeated and captured by Texas forces in April 1836. Though Mexico made no further efforts to reconquer Texas, it refused to recognize its independence.

At that time a doctrine now known as Manifest Destiny was a driving sociopolitical force in the United States. It envisioned a United States that would extend from sea to shining sea and perhaps would ultimately encompass all of Mexico. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, a move that Mexico saw as the first aggressive step and one which prompted a rupture in diplomatic relations. Santa Anna was overthrown for his apparent willingness to negotiate with the United States.

Although the United States claimed that the southern boundary of Texas was the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte), the boundary had always been the Nueces River. Shortly after his election in March 1845, U.S. President James K. Polk tried to secure an agreement on the Rio Grande boundary and to purchase California, but the Mexican government refused to discuss either matter. Polk ordered U.S. troops to occupy the disputed territory between the rivers. When Mexican and U.S. patrols clashed in April 1846, Polk asserted that American blood had been shed on American soil—an outrage that he claimed required action. Less-warlike politicians, such as the Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln, to no avail submitted resolutions asking Polk to point out the precise location of this outrage. Polk’s congressional majority formally declared war on Mexico in April.

Without major difficulty, U.S. troops captured New Mexico and Upper California. General Zachary Taylor led the main U.S. force to quick victories in northeastern Mexico. At that juncture the government of Mexican president Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga was overthrown, and Santa Anna reemerged as president in September 1846. Almost immediately, Santa Anna mobilized Mexican forces and marched northward, boasting that the superior numbers and courage of his men meant that he would sign a peace treaty in Washington. Although Taylor and Santa Anna fought a close battle at Buena Vista, Santa Anna was beaten and forced to retreat on Feb. 23, 1847. Both sides sustained heavy losses.

A change in U.S. strategy left Taylor holding ground in northern Mexico; it was decided that Mexico could be beaten only by capturing Mexico City, via Veracruz. General Winfield Scott was given command of the expedition. On April 18, 1847, he defeated Santa Anna in the critical battle at Cerro Gordo. Though Mexican resistance continued to be formidable, Scott captured Mexico City on September 14, 1847. Santa Anna went into voluntary exile while a new Mexican government negotiated peace.

Dated February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formally ended hostility between the two countries. By its terms Mexico gave up its claims to Texas and ceded all of the territory now occupied by the U.S. states of Utah, Nevada, and California; most of New Mexico and Arizona; and parts of Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming. It was a humiliating dismemberment of almost half of Mexico’s national territory (albeit a loss of only about 1 percent of the country’s population). The United States paid Mexico $15,000,000 and assumed $3,250,000 in claims held by U.S. citizens against Mexico. Mexican citizens who suddenly found themselves residing in an expanded United States were given the option of returning to Mexico or becoming U.S. citizens and were guaranteed that their property rights would be inviolably respected. Many would learn that the promises looked better on paper than in reality, and they often found themselves being treated as second-class citizens.

After the war Santa Anna figured in one more major episode before the political scene changed. In 1853 conservatives seized power and invited him to become dictator. Among other things, on December 16, 1853, Santa Anna decreed that the dictatorship should be prolonged indefinitely and that he should be addressed as “His Most Serene Highness.” To raise funds for an expanded army, he sold territory south of the Gila River to the United States for $10,000,000; this Gadsden Purchase, as it is now called, was the last significant boundary change of the Mexican Republic and included the southern portions of what are now the U.S. states of New Mexico and Arizona.