Thread by @arctotherium42

Thread with excerpts from the 'Pretorians' section of TR Fehrenbach's "Fire and Blood: A History of Mexico" (1973). In 1821, postcolonial nation-building seemed easy; the only example was the USA. But the US was homogenous, well-led, free, and already had an identity.

Mexico was the reverse, with no history of self-rule, the criollo/casta/indio split, and no great leadership. The two major factions were the 'continuistas' (conservatives) and the 'reformistas' (liberals).

Mexico was the reverse, with no history of self-rule, the criollo/casta/indio split, and no great leadership. The two major factions were the 'continuistas' (conservatives) and the 'reformistas' (liberals).

The conservatives tended to be forward-looking people who wanted maintain social order, embrace Mexico's colonial heritage, and develop economically and industrially; the liberals tended to look back to the long-gone 'Aztecs' as their national ideal.

Iturbide thought himself a Mexican Napoleon and made himself Emperor, but with a huge army and far less revenue than the colonial government (the economy had been destroyed in the civil wars), couldn't pay his troops and was quickly turfed out.

Santa Anna issued a proclamation calling for a Republic, panicked and tried to flee to the US, but the army didn't fight for Iturbide, who left the country. He later returned and was promptly executed.

With a much lower revenue base and much higher expenses (everyone who was anyone wanted a government post) than New Spain, independent Mexico was perpetually bankrupt.

The army was the major villain, a colossal expense (approximately double all government income) with ambitious generals and colonels perpetually threatening, and sometimes actually, overthrowing the state as the only major body of organized men in every Hispanic country.

While coup and counter-coup played out and government after government went bankrupt (Mexican legislature was a joke), Santa Anna made himself a national hero by "repelling" a comic Spanish invasion force in 1829.

Lucas Alaman was one of the few great Mexican political thinkers; he was a conservative who favored centralism and monarchy, and his pet Bustamante administration was temporarily able to stabilize the country but was not accepted by the mestizo periphery, especially the north.

In 1832, General Santa Anna overthrew this administration by proclaiming against it, putting the (federalist, reformista) liberals in power. They proceeded to alienate pious Mexicans by attacking the Church, and Santa Anna then overthrew the liberals in 1834.

The outsanding fact of Mexican national history proved to be proximity to the USA. Mexico was racially diverse and hybridized, backwards technologically and organizationally, stagnant, rigidly stratified. The US was homogenous, dynamic, and egalitarian.

European observers thought it would take the US 1000 years to settle up to the Mississippi in 1783.

Given the actual weakness of the Spanish Empire above the Rio Bravo, the US respected the Spanish and succeeding Mexican flags; in every case American leaders offered to purchase these ~empty territories and couldn't understand why they were rebuffed for matters of pride.

To populate their far-northern provinces, the Mexican government offered colonists land for ~free and tax-free; thousands of North Americans poured in. They did not assimilate, because there were only 3000 Spanish-speakers in Texas (vs 30000 Anglos) and they were far away.

Within 10 years the North American colonists outnumbered the Mexicans 10:1 and had felled more trees, cleared more farms, and built more houses and settlements than the Spanish had in Texas over three centuries.

The Mexican government tried to settle Spanish-speaking colonists in Texas, but failed because all they had to offer was land, and there were no Spanish-speakers who were both willing and able to be frontiersmen.

The Texans were more or less OK with nominal Mexican sovereignty, but when the Ciudad the Mexico tried to enforce its authority with the army, who treated them like they did Mexicans (ie, poorly and arbitrarily), this quickly broke down.

Like the Mexican wars of independence, the Texan war of independence was brutal, with the Mexicans massacring prisoners by the hundreds. Once Santa Anna was captured, the Mexicans gave up.

The US under President Jackson was not involved as a nation in the War of Texan independence, though many private US citizens were on their own initiative.