5 - Mexico: From Civil War to the War of Independence, 1808–1825

Summary

Mexican independence was the result of a complex process initiated in 1808 due to a problem of dynastic legitimacy and ended in 1825 with the surrender of the last Spanish fortress in Veracruz. In 1810, armed uprisings began, led by hundreds of clergymen who rejected the authorities that were supposedly foisted on the colonies by orders of Napoleon Bonaparte. In the absence of an army capable of subduing the rebels, the government had to form it with armed civilians. Without a political and government program to define the course to be followed by the rebels, little by little the territories they controlled fell into the hands of the king’s defenders. In the territories affected by the war, governability was guaranteed through civic-military self-governments. Everything changed after 1820, with the reestablishment of the Constitution of Cadiz, when the militarized self-governments gave way to liberal governments. The military reacted against them a year later with the military pronunciamiento led by Agustín de Iturbide. He proposed an independence subordinated to the House of Bourbon. In the end, a republic was imposed as the form of government in Mexico.