Jimm Budd's World

Emperor Agustin I

The first years of Independence

            Empire to republic to empire to republic


     As the 19th century began, a black cloud seems to have settled over the Spanish-speaking world. Things went so badly in Mexico that independence must have appeared to be a dreadful mistake. Yet the country would have been no better off under continued Spanish rule. The motherland, too, was gripped by civil wars, rebellions, coups and counter coups until late in the 20^th century when Francisco Franco expired. The former colonies in South America each appeared to be worse off than its neighbor. 

       Mexico could only look back on its past with nostalgia. When Franklin and Jefferson and all the others had been composing declarations and accords, Philadelphia was little more than a muddy backwater. It was Mexico City that had glittered. Indeed, when Agustin Iturbide agreed to accept a crown and become Emperor Agustin I, his capital was very much imperial, a “city of palaces” as Germany’s wandering Baron Alexander von Humboldt is said to have called it.

       Imperial rule endured less than a year. As might be expected, the Peninsulars sneered and perhaps sniggered at the upstart Agustin I with his crown and scepter while other Creoles wondered “¿why him, not me?” The Peninsulars, suspected of plotting to restore Spanish rule, were expelled. This was a mistake, for those Spaniards took their wealth with them when they left, and wealth was scant in newly independent Mexico.

       Not that this inspired frugality in Iturbide. Arbitrary and extravagant, the new emperor dissolved Congress, handed out aristocratic titles to his family and did nothing to win support for himself. Within months he was forced to abdicate and sent into exile. A few years later, when he tried to return, he was seized as a traitor and shot down by a firing squad. So much for the man who finally had won independence for Mexico.

       Mexico next opted to become a federal republic like the United States. Guadalupe Victoria, last of the old freedom fighters, became the first president. His is a name to keep in mind. One way immigration authorities identify Central Americans illegally in Mexico is by asking them the name of the country’s first president. In truth, his name was José Miguel Ramón Adaucto Fernandez y Felix, but his nom de guerre, Guadalupe Victoria, is easier to remember. Even so, Central Americans almost might not need to remember it. The original Mexican Empire included Central America, extending down as far as what today is the Panamanian border. Iturbide, however, was unable to hold on to his domains.

       Along with being the first president, Guadalupe Victoria was the only president for the next half-century to serve his full term and peacefully turn over his office to his successor. Most of the others who sat in his chair held on to the seat for less than a year. The other insurgent general, Guerrero, who, fittingly, became president after Guadalupe Victoria, once elected, was forced to force his way into the job and before long was forced out, ending up before a firing squad. Most of the other deposed presidents settled for exile. 

          Blamed for starting this trend is the first American villain Mexican schoolchildren learn about. Americans for the most part know nothing of him at all. North of the border the only claim the ghost of Joel Poinsett can make to fame is for the bright red Christmas flower he took home after he was expelled from Mexico, the poinsettia.

Poinsettias

       The United States in the 1820s was one of the few democracies anywhere in the world. As such, it was strongly anti-monarchist and doubtlessly disapproved of Iturbide’s imperial form of government. There were no political parties in newly-independent Mexico. Freemasons, elitist Scottish rite freemasons, were attempting to determine the route the government would follow. Poinsett organized a lodge of more liberal York rite masons, which had closer ties to the movement in the United States.

       Poinsett primarily was interested in persuading Mexico to agree to a border treaty and to sell Texas to the United States. He pushed for this even harder when he won official designation as United States Minister to Mexico after Guadalupe Victoria became president.

       The Spaniards had largely ignored the northern reaches of New Spain. The country was inhospitable, populated by savages that civilized Indians called Chichimecas. In the 17^th Century missions had been opened along the Pacific coast and one in Taos, New Mexico. Mostly, they languished. When an American, Moses Austin, proposed colonizing Texas with Americans, the Spaniards agreed. Now the Spaniards were gone, but the colonizers wanted to keep colonizing.

       The sale of Texas in the 1820s would have brought in enough cash to provide then bankrupt Mexico with financial stability, assuming no politicians stole the money. It made more sense than what Mexico actually did, borrowing some six million pounds from the British at usurious rates. Mexico had no use for the Texas territory. But you were talking here about national honor. Maybe Napoleon had been will to divest France of Louisiana for a bag of gold, but Mexico was not France and would not sell a square centimeter its heritage. Had the sale been completed, it also would have made the United States an ally of Mexico should Spain attempt any re-colonization. When Poinsett kept harping on the subject, he was declared persona non grata, told to gather up his flowers and go home.

       Texas went on to split off from Mexico, struggle for a decade with independence and then join the United States, whereupon war broke out and Mexico proceeded to lose all its northern territories. None of that needed to happen. Maybe that black cloud can be blamed.

       To begin with, the famous Battle of the Alamo was not fought for Texas independence. What the Texans wanted was the restoration of the Mexican federal constitution of 1824. The flag over the Alamo was the Mexican flag with “1824” scrawled on it. Something else, although you may not want to mention it in San Antonio, but what the Texans really were fighting for was the right to own slaves.

Tha Alamo

       Quite likely Texas eventually would have joined the American Union no matter what happened, but in the 1830s, many Texans did not cotton to the idea. A great many were smugglers and petty – or not so petty – criminals who had fled the United States and would have been happy enough living in Mexico if the Mexican government would only leave them alone. Santa Anna would not. From his days as a Creole officer he dreamed of becoming a conquering hero. He already had defeated a Spanish attempt to take back Mexico, but the royal troops he whipped had been laid low by malaria and other tropical diseases. In Texas he saw an opportunity to cover himself with the glory he craved. At the Alamo, Santa Anna won and underscored the fact by slaughtering his captives. With that, Texas no longer wanted to be part of Mexico.

       Two months later, Sam Houston and his Texans caught Santa Anna with his pants down. Literally, or so the story goes. A seductive mulatto, Emily Morgan, is said to have enticed Santa Anna back into his tent and kept him there while Houston’s troops swept down on his unsuspecting army. A slaughter of Mexicans followed, although Santa Anna survived. Taken prisoner, he signed documents ordering what was left of his command to withdraw and for his government to recognize the independence of Texas.

       The Mexican government, not surprisingly, recognized neither the independence of Texas nor the authority of Santa Anna to grant it. Although Santa Anna eventually recovered enough prestige to take part in a squabble against the French in which he lost a leg, in 1845 he had been exiled to Cuba. By then, independent Texas was ready to convert from being a republic to a state and Mexico prepared to go to war if that happened. According to some accounts, Santa Anna prevailed upon the U.S. government to smuggle him back into Mexico, promising, in return, that he would make certain that Mexico lost that war. Certainly that is what happened. The United States ended up with not only Texas, but New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, Colorado and more.

       In 1848, there were many in Mexico who would have been happy if the United States simply had absorbed the entire country. Yucatan already had attempted to break away and join the American Union, but the Americans in the north did not want any additional territory that might become a slave state. The American Civil War was not far off. Its officers trained for it during the Mexican War. During that war, which lasted two years, four men occupied the Mexican presidency.

       Recalled from exile by a humble nation, Santa Anna became president once again in 1853 and this time decided to serve. He toyed with the idea of restoring the empire and wearing a crown, but grudgingly agreed merely to accept the title of Serene Highness. In 1855 he was deposed and exiled for a final term. Two decades later, he returned home to find he was neither loved nor hated, but forgotten. Legend has it that his wife had to pay idlers to come by and sit in an outer office like the supplicants of old.

       An extravagant life style and higher taxes to pay for it eroded Santa Anna’s popularity, but it may have been the Gadsden Purchase that ended his career. Needing suitable land for a transcontinental railroad, the United States convinced Santa Anna to sell La Mesilla, what is now the southern chunk of Arizona and New Mexico. U.S. Secretary of State James Gadsden agreed to pay ten million dollars for this property. Considering it had paid only 15 million dollars for the purchase of Louisiana and another 15 million for other formerly Mexican domains, the price was exorbitant. Santa Anna, who so fiercely defended Mexico’s territorial integrity earlier in his career, now tried to interest his neighbors in buying more. Baja California was offered. The Americans sent in a commission to study the area, decided it was nothing but a desert wasteland of cactus and rattlesnakes and declined. Yet simply making the offer had damaged Santa Anna’s prestige. And there was some question about where the Gadsden Purchase money went. The time was deemed right for the restoration of the federation, and end to centralism and a new constitution. The liberals who opposed Santa Anna believed laws were needed that would restrain the power of the Catholic Church.

       Governments came and went during the first half-century of Mexican independence. Meanwhile, the Church ruled. As in colonial times, the parish was responsible for almost everything governments are supposed to do, operating schools, hospitals, charities and cemeteries. And, over three hundred years, the church had become incredibly rich. The merchant, the planter, the mine owner, when he died, always left a healthy sum to the church. What better way to secure one’s place in heaven?

       Not surprisingly, bankrupt governments looked longingly at the properties of the religious. Forced loans were becoming routine, although during the American invasion one Mexican regiment mutinied to defend the church from such tactics. Still, there was all that money and, in addition, status. Respect paid to a mayor or governor, general or president might be perfunctory, but let a priest appear on the streets and the faithful would drop to the one knee. Worse, if you were a politician, is the way clerics were law unto themselves. Their transgressions could be censured only by ecclesiastical courts. There was a feeling that the ecclesiastical courts were not very strict.

       There were tales of poor mothers who could not afford to baptize their children, of couples forced to live in sin because they lacked enough pesos to pay for a marriage, of poor widows unable to bury spouses in consecrated ground. Liberals tended to condemn these injustices, conservatives to excuse them. Liberals believed in democracy, Mexican conservatives in authoritarian rule by representatives of decent people. Liberals, if they ever reached positions of power, tended to become conservatives.

       With Santa Anna gone, work went ahead on what became the Constitution of 1857. With it, the famous Reform Laws (for which Reforma Boulevard in Mexico City and countless other Avenida Reformas throughout Mexico are named) took effect, establishing civil offices for registering births, secularizing cemeteries and establishing marriage as a civil contract valid only if officiated by judicial authority. Church property became federal property. The federal government could then sell it and raise much needed funds.

       Two years passed from the fall of Santa Anna to the proclamation of the new constitution. Four presidents held office during those two years. The last of these, the never wed Ignacio Comonfort, quit and left the country rather than be excommunicated for enforcing those Reform Laws of which his mother disapproved.

       With the elected president gone, the new constitution provided that the chief judge of the Supreme Court take over. Benito Juárez accepted the job and held on to it for 14 years, more than three times longer than any other chief executive up to that point. The conservatives named their own presidents, each serving only a few months. Juárez nonetheless fled Mexico City and eventually Mexico, taking ship on the Pacific coast, reappearing several weeks later in Veracruz. There he established what he called the national capital. By 1861 he was back in Mexico City, from which he would be driven out once again, only to eventually return. It was only in 1861 that he actually was elected to office. He was re-elected again in 1867 and again in 1871, each time by a more slender margin. That he died in office in 1871 was a good career move. Juárez has come to be regarded as the greatest of all Mexicans presidents. It is difficult to say just why.

       Admittedly, the man’s personal accomplishments were enormous. A Zapotec Indian who began life as a shepherd, Juárez was 12 before he learned Spanish. He studied law, entered politics, became governor of his native state, Oaxaca, and, eventually, President of the Republic. His chief achievement was holding on to the office as long as he did. Juárez was a survivor and he survived because he had the United States on his side.

       The white Anglo-Saxon Protestant leaders of the United States no doubt supported the Indian Benito Juárez because he had challenged and defeated the Catholic Church. He also agreed to the McClain-Ocampo Treaty which would have made Mexico a virtual protectorate of the United States. The agreement allowed free transit of American commerce across Mexico from the Gulf to the Pacific, a much shorter path back in the era before transcontinental railroads. U.S. troops would have been permitted to protect these otherwise bandit-infested routes, compromising Mexican sovereignty. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify the agreement.

       Juárez might have been castigated for even considering such a measure, but his conservative enemies went even farther, seeking help from the Pope, France’s Napoleon III and eventually persuading the Austrian Archduke Maximilian von Hapsburg to come and rule over Mexico as emperor.

Emperor Max

       The Second Empire endured a scant three years, and yet it transformed the country. Unlike his brother back in Vienna – Franz Josef once proudly proclaimed he was the “first bureaucrat of the empire” – Maximilian gloried in being a party animal. Chapultepec Castle, built as a colonial-era vice-regal country home, became an imperial palace with what is now Reforma Boulevard laid out along the lines of Paris’ Champs d’ Èlysées. Max found himself fascinated by customs Mexico’s “sensible people” scorned. He delighted in charro rodeos, so much so that young men of breeding took up the sport. He brought in trumpet and guitar and violin bands to play at marriage festivities, fomenting mariachi bands. In Cuernavaca, he even took a native girl as a mistress. The Empress Charlotte – Carlota – preferred cavorting with her guards.

       Long before he arrived in Mexico, Max apparently became syphilitic. Recognizing that we would have no children of his own, he supposedly adopted a grandchild of Agustin Iturbide to insure the imperial line would continue. It might have, but the new Emperor was no conservative. Rather than repeal the Reform Laws, he endorsed them and went so far as to ask Benito Juárez to serve as his prime minister. The offer was declined. The conservatives who had brought Maximilian to Mexico realized that they had made a mistake. The angry papal nuncio packed his bags and sailed for home.

       It was, however, Napoleon III who had convinced the Hapsburg prince to accept the crown. French troops had seized Veracruz, intending to collect import duties until debts to France had been paid. Veracruz being hot, topical and unhealthy, they moved inland, attempting in 1862 to seize Puebla. On May 5 – Cinco de Mayo – Mexican troops beat them back, the only battle Mexicans ever won against a foreign army. Not that it mattered. The French besieged Puebla, which surrendered in 1863. French troops controlled most of the country when Maximilian arrived.

       Normally, the United States would have objected. In 1823 President James Monroe had declared that any attempt by a European power to control any independent country in the Americas would be viewed by the United States as a hostile act. American school children learn this was a means of extending a hand of friendship to the newly independent former Spanish colonies. Mexican school children are taught that this was the birth of American imperialism.

       In 1862, caught up in its own civil war, the United States could do nothing about the French in Mexico. In 1865, with the civil war over, American troops massed along the Rio Grande and the French were told to go home. They did. Without the French, Maximilian found that he had no support. He never had troubled to organize his own imperial army. Now the conservatives who brought him to Mexico had turned against him for being too liberal while the liberals regarded him as an imported tool of the conservatives. In 1867, the emperor surrendered in Queretaro. On Juárez orders, he was executed by a firing squad.