Revolts against the Centralist Republic of Mexico



Revolts against the Centralist Republic of Mexico proliferated after the fall of the First Mexican Republic in 1835, and would continue to agitate the Centralist Republic through its entire existence, until succeeding and having the Constitution of 1824 finally restored in 1846.

Many revolts were crushed by the centralist authorities, but most notably the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Yucatan succeeded in breaking away from Mexico and establishing themselves as independent nations albeit temporarily. It was the independence of the former and its annexation by the United States in 1845, while Texas was still considered a rebellious province by the centralist Mexican government, that led to the Mexican American War.

During the first year of the war, in the wake of a series of uninterrupted Mexican defeats, one final federalist revolt finally brought down the Centralist Republic of Mexico, leading to the restoration of a federalist constitution and establishing of the Second Federal Republic of Mexico.

Rebellion in Zacatecas
Zacatecas, a silver mining center in Mexico's north, was a strong proponent of federalism. The revolt in Zacatecas was the first rebellion to erupt as a reaction to the formation of the Central Republic. The rebellion began as a response to the order of the Central Government dissolving the State militias, which had been a foundation of state power. Zacatecas had previously been a supporter of Santa Anna in the political struggles of 1832 against conservative Anastasio Bustamante. Santa Anna himself led the Mexican army against the Zacatecas rebels, who were led by Governor Francisco García Salinas. Zacatecas had a militia of about four thousand men against the Central Government. In one of his many absences that were to come, Santa Anna left the Presidency to General Miguel Barragán. Likely Santa Anna did not want any state to challenge the power of the new central government and the army, but historian Will Fowler suggests that Santa Anna "expected his allies to be faithful even if he changed sides" when they did not support the Plan of Cuernavaca. Governor García Salinas and his army were defeated in the 1835 Battle of Zacatecas. As punishment for rebellious Zacatecas, the region of Aguascalientes was separated from Zacatecas and declared on 23 May 1835 to be Federation territory. Santa Anna's troops pillaged Zacatecas, and left the region embittered against him, but Zacatecos who surrendered to Santa Anna's forces were allowed to go free. Santa Anna himself profited from the conquest, carting off silver from the Fresnillo mine and distributing some of it to his friends, such as José María Tornel, with the Mexican treasury losing 180,000 pesos.

Texan independence
The Texan Revolution began with the Battle of Gonzales on October 2, 1835. The discontent of the Anglo-American settlers had begun almost as soon as they began settling in Coahuila y Tejas in the 1820s. Many were from the slave-owning southern region of the US, so that the abolition of slavery in Mexico during the presidency of Vicente Guerrero was abhorrent. The rebellion of 1827 of Fredonia (in eastern Texas) led to the government issuing the Law of April 6, 1830 that increased the discontent of the colonists due to its attempts to restrict further US American immigration into Texas, among other things.

In 1831, the Mexican authorities provided the town of González with a small cannon to help protect themselves from frequent Comanche raids. As a consequence of the order of the government to dissolve the state militias, Colonel Domingo Ugartechea, Commander of Mexican troops in Texas, sent a small group of soldiers to González to reclaim the cannon. On October 1, settlers voted to refuse the request, even defending it by force if necessary. The standoff ended the next day without violence with the withdrawal of Colonel Ugartechea's soldiers.

After González residents' victory and later, the unsuccessful Siege of Béxar, the Central government won a series of victories against the region's settlers, most of them commanded by General José de Urrea. On February 23, 1836, the Army of Operations in Texas, headed by President Antonio López de Santa Anna, began the siege of the Alamo. Most of the soldiers involved in the siege had been recruited against their will. Nonetheless, The Alamo fell two weeks later on March 6, resulting in the deaths of all but two of the Texans defending the mission.

On April 21, the Battle of San Jacinto (also known as "La Siesta del San Jacinto") took place, where the Mexican army was attacked while sleeping and was totally defeated. Santa Anna was captured days after the battle and signed under duress the Treaties of Velasco, which recognized the independence of Texas on May 14. The Mexican government headed by José Justo Corro did not recognize the treaty, maintaining that Santa Anna had no authority to grant independence to the territory. Despite that, Texas remained de facto independent until 1845, when it was annexed to United States.

Rebellion in northeastern Mexico
The Republic of the Rio Grande was a proposed republic composed of the Mexican states of Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas and parts of the current U.S. state of Texas. On 17 January 1840, a group of notables of the three states met close to Laredo. They planned a secession from Mexico and the formation of their own federal republic composed of the three states, with Laredo as the capital. However, the legislatures of the states (then departments) did not take any constitutional action to support the creation of the new republic and instead asked the central government for help to quell the rebellion. The insurgents, in turn, asked for help from the president of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar, who gave them no support because Texas was looking for the recognition of its own independence from Mexico.

Finally, after a series of defeats, on 6 November 1840, Antonio Canales, Commander in Chief of the insurgent army, met with Mexican General Mariano Arista, who offered him the post of Brigadier General of the Mexican army to entice Canales to abandon his loyalty to the secessionists. Canales accepted the offer, and the bid for independence was ended.

Rebellion in California
In 1836, supporters of federalism in Alta California, under the leadership of Monterey-born Juan Bautista Alvarado, revolted against the Centralist Republic and succeeded in removing the Centralist Republic interim Governor of California, Nicolás Gutiérrez, from office. With the support of other Californio politicians such as José Castro and Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, Alvarado named himself the new governor of California and called a territorial congress which adopted a program known as the Monterey Plan that declared Alta California as an independent nation until the reinstatement of the Mexican constitution of 1824. In 1837 the Mexican government named Carlos Antonio Carrillo as the new governor of California, and the citizens of Los Angeles rose in opposition to the rebels taking oaths of loyalty to the Centralist government. However, when Carrillo attempted to assert his rule as governor by marching northwards in 1838 he was defeated by Alvarado's forces in minor skirmishes at Las Flores and San Buenaventura and then captured. The citizens of Los Angeles were then called into a public assembly and the ayuntamiento voted to recognize Alvaroda as the legitimate governor of California. The Mexican government responded by recognizing Alvarado's governorship in 1839 after which the Californian population, now satisfied that it had a strong governor that would represent its interests, ended its bid for independence.

Rebellion in New Mexico
On 1 August 1837 in Santa Cruz, New Mexico, a popular revolution against the Mexican Centralist Republic Governor Albino Pérez took place due in large part to widespread opposition to the governor's ineffective policies towards custom officials, who according to the revolutionaries were using corrupt taxation practices to take advantage of the lucrative Santa Fe Trail trade. Pérez attempted to raise a militia in response but on 8 August he was decapitated in a raid by a group of Indians and his head was taken to be displayed in public in Santa Fe. Along with Pérez at least 20 other government officials were killed and a new "popular junta" government was proclaimed. This government proved unpopular and a counterrevolutionary movement led by previous New Mexican governor and Albuquerque native Manuel Armijo rose in response with Armijo winning consecutive military victories and writing to the Mexican Central government requesting support and additional troops to quell the uprising. The rebellion would last until January 1838 with Armijo defeating the rebel leader José Gonzales in battle and proceeding to have the rebel leader publicly executed in Santa Cruz.

Rebellion in northwestern Mexico
In December 1837 former Mexican General José de Urrea, a veteran of the Texas Rebellion on the Mexican side, turned against the Centralist government and began a pro-federalist revolt in Sonora with the intention of reestablishing the 1824 Constitution of Mexico as the law of the land. With the support of federalist politicians in Sonora, Urrea gathered followers and traveled to Sinaloa in hopes of appealing to the federalist politicians there as well. However, he was instead intercepted and defeated in Sinaloa by Centralist government forces and was taken prisoner effectively ending the rebellion in Sonora and Sinaloa.

Rebellion in Tabasco
The Tabasco rebellion started in 1839. Like the other rebellions, it was led by Federalist rebels who opposed the Centralist government being implemented in Mexico. The rebels took several major cities and also asked for aid from the Government of Texas, who supported them with two boats. This rebellion culminated in January 1841, with the triumph of the Federalists and the fall of the Centralist Governor José Ignacio Gutiérrez.

The then-Mexican President Anastasio Bustamante, in retaliation for this rebellion, closed the port of San Juan Bautista, which affected the economic life of the territory. This caused further agitation among the Federalist Tabasco authorities, who then on February 13, 1841, declared Tabasco's independence from Mexico.

Months later, Antonio López de Santa Anna, in response to the declaration of independence, threatened to send in the troops if it was not reversed while also assuring the Tabasco authorities that Federalism would soon be reinstated. This combined threat and promise culminated in the reinstatement of Tabasco into the Mexican Republic on December 2, 1842. But four years later, Tabasco again declared its independence in November 1846 as a protest to the lack of Central government assistance in resisting the American occupation of its coast earlier that same year.

Independence of Yucatán
Yucatán joined the Federation in 1823 under a special status, the Federated Republic, as stipulated by the Constitution of Yucatán of 1825.

When the Federal system was changed to a Centralist system, Yucatán considered their pact with Mexico dissolved. After several demands by Yucatán to the Central government to restore the Federalist Constitution of 1824, revolution broke out in Yucatán on 29 May 1839. After a series of victories by the Yucatán militia against Mexican Army installations and troops, the Central Government declared war on Yucatán. On 4 March 1840, the Congress of Yucatan decreed that as long as the Mexican nation is not governed according to federal law, the State of Yucatán would remain separated from it, retaining the power to establish its own legislature.

On March 31, 1841, a new constitution of Yucatán was enacted, which established innovations such as freedom of worship, freedom of the press and the constitutional and legal bases of the Writ of Amparo. On October 1, 1841, the Chamber of Deputies of Yucatán issued the Act of Independence of the Yucatán Peninsula.

Santa Anna sent retired Mexican Supreme Court Justice and revolutionary hero Andrés Quintana Roo to dialogue with the Yucatecan authorities to negotiate their return to Mexico. The meeting resulted in signed treaties that were beneficial for Yucatán, and which were later rejected by Santa Anna. Santa Anna then sent Mexican troops to Yucatán to quell the rebellion, but his troops were defeated. Having failed to subdue the peninsula, Santa Anna then imposed a trade blockade. The blockade forced the Yucatecan authorities to negotiate with Santa Anna. On 5 December 1843, new treaties were signed that restored Yucatán relations with Mexico, but Yucatán continued to govern itself under its own laws and leaders. In 1845, Mexican President José Joaquín de Herrera set aside those treaties and again raised tensions between Yucatán and Mexico.

After Federalism was restored in 1846, Yucatán decided to rejoin Mexico, but a considerable minority opposed the reinstatement due to the U.S. invasion of Mexico in the Mexican–American War (1846–48). On 30 July 1847, Yucatán's Maya population rebelled in a conflict now known as the Caste War. The war forced Yucatán to seek help from Mexico, which negotiated their return to the Republic, which took place on 17 August 1848. The conflict in Yucatan was largely contained, with the Yucatecan government declaring victory. However, pockets of resistance continued to exist for another 50 years, when Mexican army troops destroyed the last Maya stronghold.

The flag of the Republic of Yucatán, created as part of its declaration of independence from Mexico, is still widely used as a civil emblem in the state and there are proposals even today to adopt it as the official state flag.

Engraved stone tells a few episodes of the Caste War between 1854 and 1855. Although the Centralist regime had already formally disappeared by that time, the stone still mentions the "Department of YUCATÁN".