AND
In my previous delivery I stated that from 1834 to 1855 Santa Anna was the champion of the politics of privilege and anti-democracy, and I hoped that someone would find the trap. Nobody did it like this: it was except in the exceptional situation of 1846-1847, when even many politicians of privilege and the Church thought that the return of the pure federalists was needed to galvanize the people in defense of the threatened homeland. And the fact is that generals Arista and Ampudia had been defeated on the battlefields; and the generals who accompanied Paredes had discredited themselves to the point of ignominy, who used the army that was supposed to fight the invader to create a barracks with which “the anti-independence party, that of the classes, that of the throne and the party, was resolutely enthroned in power.” the altar, and enthroned himself to propose the monarchical system… Paredes, like almost all the generals, was extremely ignorant; his admiration for the Spanish system, profound, and his hatred of the scoundrel (the people), invincible.”
Even the oligarchs abandoned Paredes and let Santa Anna-Gómez Farías enter and reestablish the popular and federal Republic: Santa Anna to command the army and, as it turned out, as a guarantee to stop the liberals in case of need; and Gómez Farías, head of the popular-federalist party, to govern. Many Mexicans continue to believe, because that is how they taught us, that Santa Anna arrived after committing to the gringos to betray the country. I don’t think that was the case, for reasons that I have already explained (https://www.jornada.com.mx/2015/07/28/opinion/014a2pol).
I believe that he did not betray the country in 1847, but he did show his true spirit by ousting, once again!, Vice President Gómez Farías. In the middle of the war, when thousands of volunteers and patriots were marching north in the middle of winter and there was an enormous need for resources to gather and arm another army to respond to the threat that loomed over Veracruz, Gómez Farías, supported by the majority liberal Congress , issued a series of laws so that some assets of the clergy were expropriated and auctioned, until obtaining 20 million pesos.
“Then, and with a speed that could make lightning appear lazy, the anger and alarm over the presence of Gómez Farías in power spread, spread, filtered…. Nuns, friars, sacristans, devotees… with prayers and prayers, with triduums and tears, they unleashed hatred and anathemas… presenting the same betrayal of the country as proof of love for God and merits to achieve glory. Farías, inflexible, struggled to carry out the occupation of the clergy’s property.”
And as a result of this, the battalions of the National Guard of Mexico City, which had the order to march to Veracruz to repel the invader (battalions made up of young people from the middle and wealthy classes), took up arms on February 27, 1847 against those laws and against Gómez Farías. There was fighting for a few days in Mexico City until Santa Anna returned from the battle of Angostura (February 22 and 23, near Saltillo), supposedly the winner, and defenestrated Gómez Farías, repealed the laws that barely touched power. of the Church and marched to Veracruz, besieged by the Yankees since March 9, when those who were supposed to defend the port were fighting against the government. Gómez Farías went into exile and in his place were the good men
or conservatives, with Pedro María Anaya as provisional president. Santa Anna did not reach Veracruz: in Cerro Gordo, near Xalapa, he was humiliatingly defeated by the foreign invader and six months later the war was lost.
It may be that Santa Anna was not a traitor in 1847, but in 1853, fully supported by the Conservative party and its leader, Lucas Alamán, he handed over La Mesilla to the Yankees (almost 77 thousand square kilometers of territory, including the towns of Tucson, La Mesilla and others) segregated from Sonora and Chihuahua for the benefit of Arizona and New Mexico and seriously compromised the sovereignty of the isthmus of Tehuantepec… and the conservatives continued to support it.
In 1847 and 1853 the conservatives put the defense of their interests and privileges before the defense of the country. The leperos
the scoundrel
of the indigenous neighborhoods that surrounded the supposedly aristocratic Mexico City to the north, east and south, the popular and electoral base of the radical federalists, he wisely named the rebels of 1847 as polkos because objectively, they served the aggressor Yankee president, James K. Polk. Should those who celebrate Donald Trump’s brutal statements and threats today be called topsin memory of those polkos?
(Ps. Without a doubt, we must qualify about Santa Anna, Alamán and the conservatives, but not about polkos neither tops. The verbatim quotes from the brilliant Guillermo Prieto, Memories of my times.)
