Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 An introduction: change and continuity in the Age of Santa Anna
- 2 The end of federalism
- 3 The transition to centralism: stage I
- 4 The transition to centralism: stage II
- 5 Las Siete Leyes
- 6 Anastasio Bustamante and the centralist republic, 1837–1839
- 7 Santa Anna versus Bustamante: the end of the Siete Leyes, 1839–1841
- 8 ‘La dictadura disfrazada con el hermoso nombre de regeneración política’
- 9 Santa Anna and the Bases Orgánicas
- 10 ‘La revolución de tres horas’
- 11 Herrera and the rise of Paredes y Arrillaga
- 12 Hombres de bien and the restoration of federalism
- 13 Conclusion
- Sources and works cited
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
9 - Santa Anna and the Bases Orgánicas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 An introduction: change and continuity in the Age of Santa Anna
- 2 The end of federalism
- 3 The transition to centralism: stage I
- 4 The transition to centralism: stage II
- 5 Las Siete Leyes
- 6 Anastasio Bustamante and the centralist republic, 1837–1839
- 7 Santa Anna versus Bustamante: the end of the Siete Leyes, 1839–1841
- 8 ‘La dictadura disfrazada con el hermoso nombre de regeneración política’
- 9 Santa Anna and the Bases Orgánicas
- 10 ‘La revolución de tres horas’
- 11 Herrera and the rise of Paredes y Arrillaga
- 12 Hombres de bien and the restoration of federalism
- 13 Conclusion
- Sources and works cited
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
Summary
In his long and spectacular career in Mexican politics, Santa Anna experienced many peaks and many troughs. Probably the most humiliating of the latter occurred in the first week of December 1844, when his carefully and long constructed personality cult came literally crashing to the ground. The remains of his amputated leg were disinterred from the tomb in which he had had them reverently buried. An angry and hostile mob dragged them through the streets of Mexico City for the amusement and ridicule of the populace. A recently built theatre bearing his name was forcibly entered and his statue smashed to pieces. Pictures and portraits were torn down. He was stripped of the office of president, the Congress voted to arraign him and his ministers and a sequence of events began which led to his ignominious defeat and exile.
Santa Anna's dramatic fall from grace was partly the result of his conduct in power during the two years following his closure of the 1842 Congress. In Bancroft's words, his government had been characterized by ‘despotic, dishonest and extravagant measures …, seizure and illegal sale of national or corporation property …, outrageous contracts, suspended salaries and payments …, embezzlement of funds’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Central Republic in Mexico, 1835–1846'Hombres de Bien' in the Age of Santa Anna, pp. 213 - 238Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993