Historical Perspective

9 Pages 2320 Words

Guadalupe Victoria, a Federalist and a leader in the independence movement, was elected president and was in office until 1828 when Centralists replaced Federalists 1828. A Federalist revolt in 1829 put Vicente Guerrero in the presidential chair; he was soon over thrown by Centralists and they held power until 1832. In 1833 another change placed Federalists in power until 1836, when Centralists again regained control and held that power for almost 10 years. And, while all this was taking place Masonic groups developed plans to remove the Church from Mexican life. These plans did not succeed, which led to the establishment of the Liberal party, and the continued work toward elimination of the Catholic Church from society (Meyer and Beezley).
General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was a member of this Liberal party. He came into power in 1833 but made Valentine Gomez Farias head of the government. In 1834 Farias began to attack the privileges of the clergy and Santa Anna immediately assumed his presidential post and nullified anticlerical legislation. Civil war and unrest continued throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. Foreign powers became involved in the struggle and religious persecution existed in one form or another (Meyer and Beezley 159).
The next period saw Santa Anna forced out of the presidency by Juan Alvarez. He planned the reform of Mexico to abolish colonialism by removing special ecclesiastical and military privileges and planned to separate church and state by secularizing education, marriages, and burials; and to reduce the economic power of the church by forcing it to sell properties to foster economic development that showed Mexico as a country of yeoman farmers and small industrialists. He decreed that church lands not used for religious purposes must be sold and lands held in common by Indian communities be distributed to individual villagers
(Prescott 110-115).
Later, reformers drafted a n...