Mexico was organized as a federal republic and in 1824; the constitution of the United States of Mexico was created. Mexico was divided into 19 states and 4 territories. There was also a separation of power clause that divided government authority among the executive, legislative and judicial. The president and vice president were to be elected by the state legislature for a term of 4 years.
While the federalists had won some victories, so too had centralists. The Catholic Church would be the religion for Mexico. The president was also given extraordinary power during times of crisis. In times of emergency the president could assume the power of a dictator under law and the term emergency was very vaguely defined which would later invite abuse.
Finally the constitution guaranteed the continuance of fueros, such that if the clergy or soldiers committed a crime they could not be tried in civilian courts but only in either ecclesiastical or military courts respectively.
Although the independence wars were over, the army had still not been demobilised. Both the army and the church had one thing in common, there were both privileged under the fueros and enjoyed legal immunities and exemptions from civil courts. This was because the 1824 charter did not provide for equality under the law. During the colonial period, the army and the church would have been made to answer to the royal authority, but with such an authority gone and with the lack of a strong nobility, the vacuum was filled with esteemed heroes of the victorious army. As a result the army and clergy became mostly a law unto themselves becoming extremely influential in politics.
Instability resulted from economic fluctuations and fiscal constraints. The leadership of this period was considered under the Caudillo theory. Whereas, it was believed that the politicians at this time were unethical opportunists, who used the then fashionable political discourse of liberalism and conservatism to win political posts, simply to achieve prestige and promote their own personal power. In terms of economic fluctuations, there would seem to be a correlation between, the amount of funds in the treasury and the length of time the particular government would be in power. Financial rewards maintained the loyalty of the caudillos followers and as a result the more limited the supply of ready wealth, the more rapidly the caudillos changed.
Economic constraints were facilitated by the enormous amount of government expenses. A great part of it was spent on defence and Victoria kept a costly, large, standing army of 50,000 men intact. This army drained government revenues, was a menace to civil liberties and to civilian government. Another economic problem was that the new government also assumed all national debts from the colonial era this was no small sum amounting to over 76 million pesos. To make up government revenue import taxes were levied, sales taxes and new government monopolies were created. But large scale tax fraud occurred in order not to pay the new taxes.
Lack of Revenue was not the only problem facing the early Mexican economy. The entire financial structure of the economy was unsound. To make up for the shortfall in government income Mexico sought out loans from England in order to pay the day-to-day expenses of government. The loans were too small to invigorate the economy, but they did lead to a growing dependency of Mexico on European loans.
Throughout the period, there were three differing political factions vying for the leadership role, with a different view on at least five major areas. Therefore it should have been expected that political unrest would reach intolerable heights. The five major areas in which these three groups varied pertained to the organisation of the state, methods of social control, state power and economic intervention, Church to state relations and lastly the value of the colonial experience.
The conservatives wanted a monarchical structure with a centralised bureaucracy to enforce a hierarchical social structure. They wanted deliberate state regulation and economic intervention to promote wealth and preserve privileges while resisting social mobility. They wanted the church to share in state power and believed that the foreign, liberal Bourbon monarchs had disrupted colonial peace. They opposed the Bourbon attempts at weakening the church and other privileges, to decentralise the bureaucracy and instituting free trade policies, which would only serve to weaken their control of wealth and power.
Moderates were liberal, constitutional monarchist, who identified republic with mob rule. They supported juridical equality, freedom of the press and constitutions. They opposed monopoly and state intervention in the economy and merely tolerated foreign capital. They wanted a weak state, which could not restrain the free exercise of their economic power, and they agreed to some limitation of the power of the Catholic Church. They believed however, that all reforms ought to be gradual and should never erode the right to property. They recognised their ties to the reforms of the Spanish enlightenment.
Radicals believed that a republic was necessary for social progress. They wanted a strong state to limit privileges and to support concessions to urban lower class by protecting them form foreign competition and expelling foreign merchants. They believed that economic development should take place in an area of controlled competition. They believed a strong state was necessary to destroy the political and social power of the Church and to reform rural society, which they thought was a product of ignorance and racism inherited from the colonial administration and wanted to be rid of all conservative institutions of the colonial period. They regarded the communal Indian villages and special status of the Indians as oppressive institutions and decreed the legal end of communal land tenure and the legal beginning of equality for all citizens.
The conflicts among these three groups were as of a result of the transition from monarchy to republic. One must note here that the colonial state just before independence had also been quite unstable and left in complete shambles, which the newly independent nation was forced to deal with. However, against such an unstable background, as well as the ideologies of the monarchical style of leadership, each different political faction was not interested in representative government; therefore transition to republican institutions became impossible. Instability increased as a result of the ever-changing hands of government under each different political faction. Each new leader brought their different opinions, which resulted in the lack of continuity and the inability to implement any serious social, economic or political reforms.
Throughout the 1840s, competitions among the elites increased and rebellions broke out to take advantage of the weak state. Rural rebellions weakened the repressive apparatus used by the state by drawing off some of their troops, which indirectly led to the revolutions in 1844. These widespread rural rebellions coincided with the Mexico – U.S war, and Mexico’s loss was inevitable. With the dispersal of Mexican forces, General Scott’s victory over Mexico was easy.
The war went very badly for Mexico and very well for the U.S. In the attack on Vera Cruz hundreds of innocent civilians were killed by the merciless bombardment of the city. Vera Cruz surrendered on March 27. Meanwhile Santa Anna after a series of disastrous battles had retreated to Mexico City to block Scott's expected assault on the Capital. The battle for Mexico City was epic, but the city was finally taken by the U.S.
The last battle was for Chapultepec palace guarded by cadets. It fell to U.S. troops on September 13 and the U.S. government prepared to negotiate a tough peace treaty.
On Feb. 2, 1848, Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The U.S. would get Texas as well as California and Texas. Mexico would keep everything south of the Rio Grande.
The U.S. would pay $15 million and claims against the government. The grand total the U.S. would pay for all of this territory was $18,250,000 and Mexico's territory was reduced by half. The Treaty stunned Mexico and the humiliation of the treaty did create unity and local revolts constantly plagued Mexico. President Santa Anna thought that the treasury could be saved by selling some more of Mexican territory to the US. This time it would be southern New Mexico and Arizona. The Gadsden Purchase cost the US $10 million. This final humiliation prompted the liberals to finally get rid of Santa Anna for good. The Liberals proclaimed the Revolution of Ayutla in 1854. The revolution was the first of its kind where ideology and responsible national action would be more important than the personality of the leader.
This crucial turning point marked the ending of the age of failed liberal leadership. After approximately three decades of great instability and power hungry governments unwilling to implement positive societal reforms, changes in the attitudes of new radical liberals could be seen. In 1855, Juarez, the minister of justice, produced a law, ‘Juarez Law’, which abolished clerical immunities by restricting the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts to ecclesiastical cases and divesting the army of some of its privileges.
The period of 1821 – 1855, is one that is not particularly loaded with a number of clear-cut reasons as to the instability of Mexico throughout this time. Allowing for the variety of literature contributing to this period in Mexico, certain common assumptions and conclusions have been made. In this way, certain core factors, which bear directly on the instability of the period, exist. One must now recognise the degeneration of the economy, the unprecedented power of the army and the church and the rival political factions, as being those core factors that completely destabilized the Mexican society in this phase of their development.
Bibliography
Bethell, L. Mexico Since Independence. London: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Cumberland, C. Mexico: The Struggle For Modernity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
Stevens, D. Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico. London: Duke University Press, 1991.