Revolts against the Centralist Republic of Mexico proliferated after the fall of the First Mexican Republic in 1835, and would continue to agitate the Centralist Republic through its entire existence, until succeeding and having the Constitution of 1824 finally restored in 1846.
Many revolts were crushed by the centralist authorities, but most notably the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Yucatan succeeded in breaking away from Mexico and establishing themselves as independent nations albeit temporarily. It was the independence of the former and its annexation by the United States in 1845, while Texas was still considered a rebellious province by the centralist Mexican government, that led to the Mexican American War.
During the first year of the war, in the wake of a series of uninterrupted Mexican defeats, one final federalist revolt finally brought down the Centralist Republic of Mexico, leading to the restoration of a federalist constitution and establishing of the Second Federal Republic of Mexico.
Zacatecas, a silver mining center in Mexico's north, was a strong proponent of federalism. The revolt in Zacatecas was the first rebellion to erupt as a reaction to the formation of the Central Republic. The rebellion began as a response to the order of the Central Government dissolving the State militias, which had been a foundation of state power. Zacatecas had previously been a supporter of Santa Anna in the political struggles of 1832 against conservative Anastasio Bustamante. Santa Anna himself led the Mexican army against the Zacatecas rebels, who were led by Governor Francisco García Salinas. Zacatecas had a militia of about four thousand men against the Central Government. In one of his many absences that were to come, Santa Anna left the Presidency to General Miguel Barragán. Likely Santa Anna did not want any state to challenge the power of the new central government and the army, but historian Will Fowler suggests that Santa Anna "expected his allies to be faithful even if he changed sides" when they did not support the Plan of Cuernavaca.[1] Governor García Salinas and his army were defeated in the 1835 Battle of Zacatecas.[2] As punishment for rebellious Zacatecas, the region of Aguascalientes was separated from Zacatecas and declared on 23 May 1835 to be Federation territory. Santa Anna's troops pillaged Zacatecas, and left the region embittered against him, but Zacatecos who surrendered to Santa Anna's forces were allowed to go free. Santa Anna himself profited from the conquest, carting off silver from the Fresnillo mine and distributing some of it to his friends, such as José María Tornel, with the Mexican treasury losing 180,000 pesos.[3]
The Texan Revolution began with the Battle of Gonzales on October 2, 1835. The discontent of the Anglo-American settlers had begun almost as soon as they began settling in Coahuila y Tejas in the 1820s. Many were from the slave-owning southern region of the US, so that the abolition of slavery in Mexico during the presidency of Vicente Guerrero was abhorrent. The rebellion of 1827 of Fredonia (in eastern Texas) led to the government issuing the Law of April 6, 1830 that increased the discontent of the colonists due to its attempts to restrict further US American immigration into Texas, among other things.
In 1831, the Mexican authorities provided the town of González with a small cannon to help protect themselves from frequent Comanche raids. As a consequence of the order of the government to dissolve the state militias, Colonel Domingo Ugartechea, Commander of Mexican troops in Texas, sent a small group of soldiers to González to reclaim the cannon. On October 1, settlers voted to refuse the request, even defending it by force if necessary. The standoff ended the next day without violence with the withdrawal of Colonel Ugartechea's soldiers.
After González residents' victory and later, the unsuccessful Siege of Béxar, the Central government won a series of victories against the region's settlers, most of them commanded by General José de Urrea. On February 23, 1836, the Army of Operations in Texas, headed by President Antonio López de Santa Anna, began the siege of the Alamo. Most of the soldiers involved in the siege had been recruited against their will. Nonetheless, The Alamo fell two weeks later on March 6, resulting in the deaths of all but two of the Texans defending the mission.
On April 21, the Battle of San Jacinto (also known as "La Siesta del San Jacinto") took place, where the Mexican army was attacked while sleeping and was totally defeated. Santa Anna was captured days after the battle and signed under duress the Treaties of Velasco, which recognized the independence of Texas on May 14. The Mexican government headed by José Justo Corro did not recognize the treaty, maintaining that Santa Anna had no authority to grant independence to the territory. Despite that, Texas remained de facto independent until 1845, when it was annexed to United States.
The Republic of the Rio Grande was a proposed republic composed of the Mexican states of Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas and parts of the current U.S. state of Texas. On 17 January 1840, a group of notables of the three states met close to Laredo. They planned a secession from Mexico and the formation of their own federal republic composed of the three states, with Laredo as the capital. However, the legislatures of the states (then departments) did not take any constitutional action to support the creation of the new republic and instead asked the central government for help to quell the rebellion. The insurgents, in turn, asked for help from the president of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar, who gave them no support because Texas was looking for the recognition of its own independence from Mexico.
Finally, after a series of defeats, on 6 November 1840, Antonio Canales, Commander in Chief of the insurgent army, met with Mexican General Mariano Arista, who offered him the post of Brigadier General of the Mexican army to entice Canales to abandon his loyalty to the secessionists. Canales accepted the offer, and the bid for independence was ended.
In 1836, supporters of federalism in Alta California, under the leadership of Monterey-born Juan Bautista Alvarado, revolted against the Centralist Republic and succeeded in removing the Centralist Republic interim Governor of California, Nicolás Gutiérrez, from office. With the support of other Californio politicians such as José Castro and Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, Alvarado named himself the new governor of California and called a territorial congress which adopted a program known as the Monterey Plan that declared Alta California as an independent nation until the reinstatement of the Mexican constitution of 1824.[4] In 1837 the Mexican government named Carlos Antonio Carrillo as the new governor of California, and the citizens of Los Angeles rose in opposition to the rebels taking oaths of loyalty to the Centralist government.[4]:105 However, when Carrillo attempted to assert his rule as governor by marching northwards in 1838 he was defeated by Alvarado's forces in minor skirmishes at Las Flores and San Buenaventura and then captured.[4]:106 The citizens of Los Angeles were then called into a public assembly and the ayuntamiento voted to recognize Alvaroda as the legitimate governor of California.[4]:107 The Mexican government responded by recognizing Alvarado's governorship in 1839 after which the Californian population, now satisfied that it had a strong governor that would represent its interests, ended its bid for independence.[4]:107
On 1 August 1837 in Santa Cruz, New Mexico, a popular revolution against the Mexican Centralist Republic Governor Albino Pérez took place due in large part to widespread opposition to the governor's ineffective policies towards custom officials, who according to the revolutionaries were using corrupt taxation practices to take advantage of the lucrative Santa Fe Trail trade. Pérez attempted to raise a militia in response but on 8 August he was decapitated in a raid by a group of Indians and his head was taken to be displayed in public in Santa Fe. Along with Pérez at least 20 other government officials were killed and a new "popular junta" government was proclaimed. This government proved unpopular and a counterrevolutionary movement led by previous New Mexican governor and Albuquerque native Manuel Armijo rose in response with Armijo winning consecutive military victories and writing to the Mexican Central government requesting support and additional troops to quell the uprising. The rebellion would last until January 1838 with Armijo defeating the rebel leader José Gonzales in battle and proceeding to have the rebel leader publicly executed in Santa Cruz.
Rebellion in northwestern Mexico
In December 1837 former Mexican General José de Urrea, a veteran of the Texas Rebellion on the Mexican side, turned against the Centralist government and began a pro-federalist revolt in Sonora with the intention of reestablishing the 1824 Constitution of Mexico as the law of the land. With the support of federalist politicians in Sonora, Urrea gathered followers and traveled to Sinaloa in hopes of appealing to the federalist politicians there as well. However, he was instead intercepted and defeated in Sinaloa by Centralist government forces and was taken prisoner effectively ending the rebellion in Sonora and Sinaloa.
Rebellion in Tabasco
The Tabasco rebellion started in 1839. Like the other rebellions, it was led by Federalist rebels who opposed the Centralist government being implemented in Mexico. The rebels took several major cities and also asked for aid from the Government of Texas, who supported them with two boats. This rebellion culminated in January 1841, with the triumph of the Federalists and the fall of the Centralist Governor José Ignacio Gutiérrez.
The then-Mexican President Anastasio Bustamante, in retaliation for this rebellion, closed the port of San Juan Bautista, which affected the economic life of the territory. This caused further agitation among the Federalist Tabasco authorities, who then on February 13, 1841, declared Tabasco's independence from Mexico.
Months later, Antonio López de Santa Anna, in response to the declaration of independence, threatened to send in the troops if it was not reversed while also assuring the Tabasco authorities that Federalism would soon be reinstated. This combined threat and promise culminated in the reinstatement of Tabasco into the Mexican Republic on December 2, 1842. But four years later, Tabasco again declared its independence in November 1846 as a protest to the lack of Central government assistance in resisting the American occupation of its coast earlier that same year.
When the Federal system was changed to a Centralist system, Yucatán considered their pact with Mexico dissolved. After several demands by Yucatán to the Central government to restore the Federalist Constitution of 1824, revolution broke out in Yucatán on 29 May 1839. After a series of victories by the Yucatán militia against Mexican Army installations and troops, the Central Government declared war on Yucatán. On 4 March 1840, the Congress of Yucatan decreed that as long as the Mexican nation is not governed according to federal law, the State of Yucatán would remain separated from it, retaining the power to establish its own legislature.
On March 31, 1841, a new constitution of Yucatán was enacted, which established innovations such as freedom of worship, freedom of the press and the constitutional and legal bases of the Writ of Amparo. On October 1, 1841, the Chamber of Deputies of Yucatán issued the Act of Independence of the Yucatán Peninsula.
Santa Anna sent retired Mexican Supreme Court Justice and revolutionary hero Andrés Quintana Roo to dialogue with the Yucatecan authorities to negotiate their return to Mexico. The meeting resulted in signed treaties that were beneficial for Yucatán, and which were later rejected by Santa Anna. Santa Anna then sent Mexican troops to Yucatán to quell the rebellion, but his troops were defeated. Having failed to subdue the peninsula, Santa Anna then imposed a trade blockade. The blockade forced the Yucatecan authorities to negotiate with Santa Anna. On 5 December 1843, new treaties were signed that restored Yucatán relations with Mexico, but Yucatán continued to govern itself under its own laws and leaders. In 1845, Mexican President José Joaquín de Herrera set aside those treaties and again raised tensions between Yucatán and Mexico.
After Federalism was restored in 1846, Yucatán decided to rejoin Mexico, but a considerable minority opposed the reinstatement due to the U.S. invasion of Mexico in the Mexican–American War (1846–48). On 30 July 1847, Yucatán's Maya population rebelled in a conflict now known as the Caste War. The war forced Yucatán to seek help from Mexico, which negotiated their return to the Republic, which took place on 17 August 1848. The conflict in Yucatan was largely contained, with the Yucatecan government declaring victory. However, pockets of resistance continued to exist for another 50 years, when Mexican army troops destroyed the last Maya stronghold.
The flag of the Republic of Yucatán, created as part of its declaration of independence from Mexico, is still widely used as a civil emblem in the state and there are proposals even today to adopt it as the official state flag.[citation needed]
Engraved stone tells a few episodes of the Caste War between 1854 and 1855. Although the Centralist regime had already formally disappeared by that time, the stone still mentions the "Department of YUCATÁN".[citation needed]
The Texas Revolution was a rebellion of colonists from the United States and Tejanos against the centralist government of Mexico in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. Although the uprising was part of a larger one, the Mexican Federalist War, that included other provinces opposed to the regime of President Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican government believed the United States had instigated the Texas insurrection with the goal of annexation. The Mexican Congress passed the Tornel Decree, declaring that any foreigners fighting against Mexican troops "will be deemed pirates and dealt with as such, being citizens of no nation presently at war with the Republic and fighting under no recognized flag". Only the province of Texas succeeded in breaking with Mexico, establishing the Republic of Texas. It was eventually annexed by the United States.
The Caste War of Yucatán or ba'atabil kichkelem Yúum (1847–1901) began with the revolt of native Maya people of the Yucatán Peninsula against Hispanic populations, called Yucatecos. The latter had long held political and economic control of the region. A lengthy war ensued between the Yucateco forces based in the northwest of the Yucatán and the independent Maya in the southeast.
The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1824 was the first constitution of Mexico, enacted on October 4 of 1824, inaugurating the First Mexican Republic.
Nicolás Bravo Rueda was a Mexican soldier and politician who served as interim President of Mexico three times, in 1839, 1842, and 1846. Previously, he fought in the Mexican War of Independence, and served as Mexico's first Vice President under President Guadalupe Victoria from 1824 until 1827, when he attempted to overthrow Victoria. He was also the fourth vice president under President Mariano Paredes in 1846, and served in the Mexican–American War.
Valentín Gómez Farías was a Mexican physician and liberal politician who became president of Mexico twice, first from 1833 to 1834, during the period of the First Mexican Republic, and again from 1846 to 1847, during the Mexican–American War.
The Republic of the Rio Grande was one of a series of political movements in Mexico which sought to become independent from the unitary government dominated by Antonio López de Santa Anna; the Republic of Texas and the second Republic of Yucatán were created by political movements that pursued the same goal. Insurgents fighting against the Centralist Republic of Mexico sought to establish the Republic of the Rio Grande as an independent nation in Northern Mexico. The rebellion lasted from 17 January to 6 November 1840.
The Battle of San Patricio was fought on February 27, 1836, between Texian rebels and the Mexican army, during the Texas Revolution. The battle occurred as a result of the outgrowth of the Texian Matamoros Expedition. The battle marked the start of the Goliad Campaign, the Mexican offensive to retake the Texas Gulf Coast. It took place in and around San Patricio.
José Cosme de Urrea y Elías González or simply José de Urrea was a Mexican general. He fought under General Antonio López de Santa Anna during the Texas Revolution. Urrea's forces were never defeated in battle during the Texas Revolution. His most notable success was that of the Goliad Campaign, in which James Fannin's 400 soldiers were surrounded and induced to capitulate under terms, but were massacred in Urrea's absence on the orders of Santa Anna. Urrea also fought in the Mexican–American War.
The military history of Mexico encompasses armed conflicts within that nation's territory, dating from before the arrival of Europeans in 1519 to the present era. Mexican military history is replete with small-scale revolts, foreign invasions, civil wars, indigenous uprisings, and coups d'état by disgruntled military leaders. Mexico's colonial-era military was not established until the eighteenth century. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the early sixteenth century, the Spanish crown did not establish on a standing military, but the crown responded to the external threat of a British invasion by creating a standing military for the first time following the Seven Years' War (1756–63). The regular army units and militias had a short history when in the early 19th century, the unstable situation in Spain with the Napoleonic invasion gave rise to an insurgency for independence, propelled by militarily untrained men fighting for the independence of Mexico. The Mexican War of Independence (1810–21) saw royalist and insurgent armies battling to a stalemate in 1820. That stalemate ended with the royalist military officer turned insurgent, Agustín de Iturbide persuading the guerrilla leader of the insurgency, Vicente Guerrero, to join in a unified movement for independence, forming the Army of the Three Guarantees. The royalist military had to decide whether to support newly independent Mexico. With the collapse of the Spanish state and the establishment of first a monarchy under Iturbide and then a republic, the state was a weak institution. The Roman Catholic Church and the military weathered independence better. Military men dominated Mexico's nineteenth-century history, most particularly General Antonio López de Santa Anna, under whom the Mexican military were defeated by Texas insurgents for independence in 1836 and then the U.S. invasion of Mexico (1846–48). With the overthrow of Santa Anna in 1855 and the installation of a government of political liberals, Mexico briefly had civilian heads of state. The Liberal Reforms that were instituted by Benito Juárez sought to curtail the power of the military and the church and wrote a new constitution in 1857 enshrining these principles. Conservatives comprised large landowners, the Catholic Church, and most of the regular army revolted against the Liberals, fighting a civil war. The Conservative military lost on the battlefield. But Conservatives sought another solution, supporting the French intervention in Mexico (1862–65). The Mexican army loyal to the liberal republic were unable to stop the French army's invasion, briefly halting it with a victory at Puebla on 5 May 1862. Mexican Conservatives supported the installation of Maximilian Hapsburg as Emperor of Mexico, propped up by the French and Mexican armies. With the military aid of the U.S. flowing to the republican government in exile of Juárez, the French withdrew its military supporting the monarchy and Maximilian was caught and executed. The Mexican army that emerged in the wake of the French Intervention was young and battle tested, not part of the military tradition dating to the colonial and early independence eras.
The Río Arriba Rebellion, also known as the Chimayó Rebellion, was an 1837 Pueblo-Hispano popular revolt in New Mexico which succeeded in briefly placing José María González and Pablo Montoya as governor of Mexico's Santa Fe de Nuevo México territory. González and Montoya were both Taos Pueblo Indians and led the independent Junta Popular or Cantón, which was the most ethnically inclusive government in the history of New Mexico. They remain the only Pueblo governors of New Mexico to this day.
Trinidad Anastasio de Sales Ruiz Bustamante y Oseguera was a Mexican physician, general, and politician who served as the 4th President of Mexico three times from 1830 to 1832, 1837 to 1839, and 1839 to 1841. He also served as the 2nd Vice President of Mexico from 1829 to 1832 under Presidents Vicente Guerrero, José María Bocanegra, himself, and Melchor Múzquiz. He participated in the Mexican War of Independence initially as a royalist before siding with Agustín de Iturbide and supporting the Plan of Iguala.
Mexico has experienced many changes in territorial organization during its history as an independent state. The territorial boundaries of Mexico were affected by presidential and imperial decrees. One such decree was the Law of Bases for the Convocation of the Constituent Congress to the Constitutive Act of the Mexican Federation, which determined the national land area as the result of integration of the jurisdictions that corresponded to New Spain, the Captaincy General of Yucatán, the Captaincy General of Guatemala and the autonomous Kingdoms of East and West. The decree resulted in the independence from Spain.
The Republic of Yucatán was a sovereign state during two periods of the nineteenth century. The first Republic of Yucatán, founded May 29, 1823, willingly joined the Mexican federation as the Federated Republic of Yucatán on December 23, 1823, less than seven months later. The second Republic of Yucatán began in 1841, with its declaration of independence from the Centralist Republic of Mexico. It remained independent for seven years, after which it rejoined the United Mexican States. The area of the former republic includes the modern Mexican states of Yucatán, Campeche and Quintana Roo. The Republic of Yucatán usually refers to the second republic (1841–1848).
The Naval Battle of Campeche took place on April 30, 1843, and May 16, 1843. The battle featured the most advanced warships of its day, including the Mexican steamer Guadalupe and the equally formidable Montezuma which engaged a squadron of vessels from the Second Republic of Yucatán and the Republic of Texas. The latter force consisted of the Texas Navy flagship sloop-of-war Austin, commanded by Commodore Edwin Ward Moore, the brig Wharton, and several schooners and five gunboats from the Republic of Yucatán, commanded by former Texas Navy Captain James D. Boylan.
Events in the year 1835 in Mexico.
Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, usually known as Antonio López de Santa Anna, or just Santa Anna, was a Mexican soldier, politician, and caudillo who served as the 8th president of Mexico multiple times between 1833 and 1855. He also served as Vice President of Mexico from 1837 to 1839. He was a controversial and pivotal figure in Mexican politics during the 19th century, to the point that he has been called an "uncrowned monarch", and historians often refer to the three decades after Mexican independence as the "Age of Santa Anna".
The Liberal Party was a loosely organised political party in Mexico from 1822 to 1911. Strongly influenced by French Revolutionary thought, and the republican institutions of the United States, it championed the principles of 19th-century liberalism, and promoted republicanism, federalism, and anti-clericalism. They were opposed by, and fought several civil wars against, the Conservative Party.
The Centralist Republic of Mexico, or in the anglophone scholarship, the Central Republic, officially the Mexican Republic, was a unitary political regime established in Mexico on 23 October 1835, under a new constitution known as the Siete Leyes after conservatives repealed the federalist Constitution of 1824 and ended the First Mexican Republic. It would ultimately last until 1846, when the Constitution of 1824 was restored at the beginning of the Mexican–American War.
The Rebellion in Zacatecas of 1835 was part of the Mexican Federalist War between Mexican centralists and federalists during the first half of the nineteenth century during the administration of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.
In the history of Mexico, the Plan of Veracruz was a proclamation released on January 2, 1832, by the military garrison of Veracruz. The initial goal was simply to remove unpopular ministers from the cabinet of President Anastasio Bustamante, but later expanded into a year-long civil war within the First Mexican Republic that ended with the ousting of Bustamente and the recognition of Manuel Gómez Pedraza as president.
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