Part 3: The Age of Santa Ana

• Santa Ana switched sides and points of view numerous time during his life.
  
• He would become president of Mexico 11 separate times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heads_of_state_of_Mexico
  
• He was of pure Spanish blood, not a mestizo, born in Mexico. He trained in the Spanish army and initially fought against Mexican rebels.
• Napoleon restored Ferdinand VII to the Spanish throne. Ferdinand establishes a very right-wing, authoritarian government and mounts an army to re-dominate Mexico. The army rebels.
• A Spanish Constitution of 1812 is drafted, patterned after the US Constitution, but with a king and with Catholicism as the official religion.
  
• Santa Ana supports a rebellion from Spain and favors a Mexican king.
• Then Santa Ana changes to wanting a democratic republic for Mexico, but still ignoring the Indians.
• Mexicans leaders debate whether to create a United States of Mexico patterned after the USA. The counter argument is that Mexico has a very different history than the USA.
• The USA started as 13 separate entities which federated for a common cause and each gave up a certain degree of autonomy.
• Mexico started out as a single entity under the King and Viceroy and creating a United States of Mexico would be creating separations where there hadn't been any.

• Joel Roberts Poinsett is the first US representative to Mexico. (The Poinsettia is naned for him. Among other things, he was a botanist.)
• Poinsett comes from a wealthy South Carolina family, speaks Spanish, French, Italian, German and some Russian. As a young man he travels widely in Europe and Russia and the Middle East meeting the Czar and other leaders in the early 1800's, making him well educated for diplomatic posts.
• In making recommendations about Mexico to John Quincy Adams, Poinsett essentially recommends what comes to be the Monroe Doctrine.
• Poinsett was a high level Mason in South Carolina. Mexican leaders were fascinated with Masonry and joined one of the two Masonic lodges in Mexico, the Scottish Rite or the York Rite. Because of his Masoinc rank, Poinsett has a lot of influence over Mexican leadership
  
• The Scottish Rite was very conservative wanted a monarchy.
• The York Rite was very liberal and wanted a government patterned after the USA with a multi-chamber legislature and a president. Poinsett joins the York Rite.
• The 19 Mexican states send representatives to elect a president and the conservatives win 10 to 9. But that president is not seated and with Santa Ana leading another army they appoint the loser, Vicente Guerrero president and establish a constitution patterned after the USA.

• Ferdinand sent an army of 4,000 from Cuba and Puerto Rico to retake Mexico, landing at Tampico. Simultaneously there is a coupe against Guerrero. Santa Ana gathers a small army of a few hundred and marches against Tampico to discover that half of the Spanish army have died from Yellow Fever.
  
• Sana Ana is eventually elected president and a conservative constitution is drafted ~ 1832 giving the resident almost absolute power, recognizing Catholicism as the state religion giving bishops a lot of power. He appoints a liberal vice president.
• Within a month there is a revolt against the constitution. Santa Ana resigns and the liberal vice president takes over and begins changing the constitution.
• Santa Ana fights against the revolt and defeats the rebels everywhere except in Texas.
• On paper Santa Ana is still president and the USA returns him to Mexico where he is now unpopular.
  
• Poinsett is now Secretary of Wat, appointed by Van Buren. Van Buren is the first US president born in the USA after it became the USA, but his first language was not English! He grew up in New York and his first language was Dutch.

• 1838 - The Pastry War.
  
• A lot of foreign properties were damaged, seized or destroyed during all the rebellions and the owners wanted Mexico to pay compensation, but the government had no money. Miners and farmers had been fighting wars.
  
• France sends an army to Veracruz to demand reparations.
  
• Santa Ana leads an army to defend Veracruz. He is shot in the leg and thinks he is dying. He doesn't die, but the leg is amputated.
• He becomes president again and has the amputated leg brought to Mexico City to appear in a parade demonstrating his dedication and sacrifices for Mexico.
  

Book: Many Mexicos

Mexico's Independence and the Monroe Doctrine

My notes from the second lecture in the series about "Mexico and the US, A Contentious Relationship"

• 1810 - Napoleon seizes Spain and the Spanish royalty. With the disappearance of the monarchy the link holding Latin America to Spain is effectively severed. It is noting like the US severance from England.
• 1823 - The Monroe Doctrine. Drafted Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, suggested by the Foreign Minister of England who wanted a joint declaration that would weaken Spain's hold on commerce with Latin America and open it up to the English.
• John Quincy Adams rejects the idea of a joint declaration with England to reassert American independence.
• Europe rebels against Napoleonic governments and wants to restore Ferdinand VII in Spain, and claims to the Spanish colonies including Latin America.
• Russia claims the northwest corner of North America - Alaska and 100 miles of the ocean off the shore.

Monroe Doctrine

• Americas not open to colonization (aimed at Spain and Portugal)
• No European power will be allowed to interfere in internal affairs of American countries
• Any violation will be considered an Act of Aggression

Rationale:

• Latin American countries sent raw materials to Spain and Spain manufactured and sold goods to other countries.
  
• England and USA wanted to change that economic model, or not restore it.

• Latin American countries liked the protective cover provided by the Monroe Doctrine
  
• Lucas Alaman, the Mexican Foreign Minister, was the only one who objected and warned Bolivar and the Mexican President of the risks of being dominated by their neighbor to the north. Alaman lived to see the Mexican American War and the American annexation of 2/3 of Mexico.

1904 Theodore Roosevelt

• Changes the role of the Monroe Doctrine
• Asserts: America has the right to interfere in affairs of any Latin American county, an intrinsic duty, any time they are not living up to their responsibilities.
• This is right after the Spanish-American War and the Treaty of Paris in 1899 where the US took away the last remnants of the Spanish empire: Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
• Roosevelt carves Panama out of Colombia and succeeds in building the Panama Canal.

• In Mexico there is a rebellion and surprisingly, they offer the crown back to Ferdinand.
  
• Roman Catholicism is to be the official religion of Mexico (contrasted to American separation of church and state and no official religion)
• Equality between Spaniards and Mexican-born Spaniards (Creoles), but not mestizos or Indians.
• Following a lot of changing of sides, complex alliances, execution of the original leaders of the rebellion, Augustin de Iturbide is named Emperor of the independent Mexico.
  

Before there was Mexico and the USA

I'm attending a free lecture series offered by a history professor from the University of Texas at Dallas. The subject is how Mexico and the US came into being and how each developed from before they were countries up to more modern times. There are a lot of surprises and a lot of things most of us have never thought about.

The professor is Luis Martin and he is an outstanding lecturer with a knack for endearing himself to the class. I've been taking notes at the three lectures I've attended so far. I want to transcribe them someplace and if I do it here then I can access them and so can anyone else that might be interested. So here are my notes from those three talks, if I can read my notes. These are my notes from the first week.

Luis was born in 1927 in Seville, Spain. His expertise is in Latin America, especially the government of Peru. He has been an American citizen for decades and was on the faculty at SMU before joining UTD.

"History is not a science., no matter what your teachers told you. It is a memory that takes imagination to understand."

In 1932 the president of the American Historical Association, Herbert Bolton, gave a speech at the annual meeting, the only one held in Canada, titled "The Epic of the Greater America." He suggested that to really understand the development of the United States of America you also needed to understand the interactions of the various explorers and indigenous peoples before modern borders were established. He was met with skepticism but the course he developed at University of California -Berkley proved to be, year after year, the most popular course on campus. http://www.historians.org/info/aha_history/hebolton.htm Luis seems to be giving us a subset of that course.

Shakespeare, Cervantes and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega died the same day in 1616. "El Inca" was among the first "mestizo" (mixed race) people in what is now Mexico and almost certainly the best know at the time. His father had rank among the Spanish. He was raised by his mother among the Inca and as an adult, moved to Spain and documented the Spanish developments in Florida and the southern part of what is now the USA. is most notable book was La Florida del Inca, http://www.amazon.com/Florida-Struggle-Equality-Colonial-Spanish/dp/0817352570

• We are used to thinking about the development of the USA spreading out from the northeast, but at the same time that discoveries were being made bu the English, French and Dutch in the northeast, Spain was exploring and expanding in the southern part of North America.
• The Anglo explorers in America, in the northeast, did not encounter an urban civilization and an associated approach to government.
• The Spanish explorers in America, in what is now Mexico, Florida and the southwestern US, did encounter an urban civilization. The Inca city in Mexico has a population of about 100,000 and had three times the population of Seville.
• The English, French and Dutch explorers in the northeast, influenced by The Reformation, had some sense of religious tolerance and of democratic local control. The Spanish explorers in the south were dominated by Roman Catholicism and by a Viceroy-based, divine-right approach to government.
• Intermarriage with local people as a means to occupying and controlling New Spain was encouraged by Spain and the Spanish church. Intermarriage was not encouraged in New England.
  
• As the English, Dutch and French moved west and south, the Spanish moved west and north, giving names to California, Los Angeles, Nevada, Arizona (arid zone), El Paso, San Antonio, St. Augustine, etc.
• The Spanish model of government in North America was different than that in the English colonies where there was a degree of democracy and autonomy, The Spanish approach duplicated the approach in their other colonies (including Naples) with a Viceroy who was an extension of the King who ruled by divine right.
  
• What would the US be like if the Russians n Alaska had spread southward to Washington, Oregon, California as rapidly as the Spanish spread northward?
• The Professor Martin also discussed of the importance of language and the need to be fluent and adopt the language of your chosen country; and of the second and last phrases of the Declaration of Independence as key to the success of the United States:
• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. . .
• . . .And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
• It is difficult (impossible) to ever be completely accepted by the native born as an immigrant Frenchman, Spaniard, etc. America is the exception (and Luis is an example).
• He referenced a book, The Closing of the American Mind.