At this point Lorenzo de Zavala, one of those human meteors that rarely illuminate Anglo-Saxon skies, came forward. His political relations were extremely intense; and now, believing the Centralists intended to place him before a firing-squad, he organized at Mexico, in the hope of saving himself and Santa Anna, the woeful insurrection of the Acordada, which fixed the example of party revolution. Victoria had an understanding with him, though after betraying the government and letting the handful of rioters get a safe start, he lost his nerve and betrayed them also; and in the end, at the cost of some bloodshed and extensive robberies, the insurrection triumphed; “the vile and unnatural Pedraza”—as his foes called him—fled to the United States, and Congress, after having declared Pedraza elected, pronounced Guerrero President on the express ground that revolts had occurred in his favor. In reality this was a revolution of numbers and popular ideas against privilege and oligarchy, and before long the country accepted the situation.[6]
A NEW REVOLUTION
Santa Anna was now a popular hero, the saviour of the nation; and he proceeded to confirm his title. In 1829 came the long expected blow from Spain, and having calmly assumed the military authority at Vera Cruz, he advanced to meet it. Near Tampico the invading army, stricken with fever, desired to lay down its arms; but Santa Anna, eager for laurels, attacked it. Spanish valor accepted the challenge; the Mexicans were repulsed; and their ambitious leader left the field before the battle ended. The invaders were then permitted to surrender, and soon a new cry was echoing through the streets of Mexico, “Viva Santa Anna, the Victor of Tampico!” Clothing himself with modesty and grace he now posed as a sort of benevolent divinity. Rather tall, thin, apparently feeble but capable of great exertions on occasion, with a head that bulged at the top, a swarthy complexion, brilliant and restless eyes, a very clear-cut voice and a voluble tongue, he moved about his estate at Manga de Clavo and the near-by city of Vera Cruz in an easy, affable way, accumulating popularity. “Can read somewhat,” reported our consul in that city; but his thoughts were above literature. “Were I made God,” it was said that he once remarked, “I should wish to be something more.”[6]
Meantime, April 1, 1829, Guerrero assumed the Presidency. In his green jacket edged with fur, red waistcoat bound with a blue sash, brown mantle and heavy sabre, with his thick hair bristling toward all points of the compass, he was a picturesque figure, and as candidate had answered very well. For the role of chief magistrate, however, the British minister justly described him as “totally unfit.” Being mostly of Indian and partly—it was stated—of negro blood, he instinctively distrusted the whites, while the latter utterly despised the class to which he belonged. Though his intuitive judgment was quick and within the range of his experience remarkably correct, he knew nothing whatever of letters and politics, necessarily depended upon the self-seeking flatterers of his party, and veered about like the wind. In military emergencies he could burst his bonds like a Samson, but the things he really cared for were a wench, a bottle, a game of monte and a nap under some spreading tree. Without ideas, knowledge, experience or high character, he faced a terrible inheritance: the laws ignored, the authorities despised, the administration disorganized, the treasury worse than empty, the country in distress and turmoil.[6]
Professions of loyalty to the “sacred” constitution and the laws could not blot out the fact that his authority was based upon a riot; and others would not feel satisfied merely because he was content. The extraordinary powers of the Executive, granted in view of the Spanish invasion, were used oppressively. A multitude of persons clamored for money and he could give them none; a multitude clamored for reforms, and he scarcely knew what they were talking about. As far as possible the rest of the Gachupines were driven out, but this merely added to the confusion. President and nation simply drifted, and the rocks were near. Before long the general government was practically ignored except at the capital, and the heads of the secret societies wielded the real power. Guerrero even allowed the oligarchy, his deadliest foe, to alienate him from the common people, the source of his strength. He became almost as isolated as Mahomet’s coffin; and then—as soon as ambition could disguise itself with a programme—he fell.[6]
Mainly owing to the good-will of Guerrero, the Vice-President was General Anastasio Bustamante, a heavy, dull, rather kindly and fairly honest aristocrat, though nominally a moderate Federalist. When appointed by Guerrero to command the army of reserve at Jalapa, the principal military force in the country, he exclaimed on taking leave of the President, “Never will I unsheathe my sword against General Guerrero,” but within a year (December, 1829) he did it; and, though a beneficiary of the Acordada riot, he revolted against the government in the name of the constitution. As a matter of fact his rebellion was merely another effort of the privileged classes, a revised edition of Montaño’s, and the army received its pay from the money chests of the oligarchs. Little opposition was encountered, for Guerrero had let Delilah shear him, the Acordada episode and much other misconduct had completely discredited the radical Federalists, and the Federalists in general—who had raised Bustamante from a political prison to the second place in the nation—could not believe, after his fresh protestations of loyalty to the constitution, that he would betray them. The President, finding nobody to lean upon, fled to his old haunts in the south, was treacherously captured and was shot; and meanwhile, on the first of January, 1830, Bustamante took up the reins. Greed, corruption, imprudence, evil passions and lawlessness had ruined the cause of democracy, and Victoria’s experiment of letting aristocrats administer a professedly popular system had to be tried again.[6]
Bustamante opened Congress with a bit of the fashionable hypocrisy, asserting that a “sacred Constitution” had placed him in power; but he showed that what interested him was “the wishes of the army,” and the army reciprocated this affection. Alamán, who had been Victoria’s chief adviser at first, now became the real head of the government. More than any other man in Mexico he could claim to be called a statesman, for he knew some history, had observed politics in Europe, and in a superficial yet impressive way could reason; but he was a statesman of the Metternich school, wily and insincere, wholly unable to sympathize with democracy, and profoundly in love with force. Whatever did not suit the government he demolished without regard to law; whoever opposed it was crushed. In administration the government did well, but—attempting to represent democracy and privilege, progress and reaction, the past and the future, a self-governing state and an all-controlling church at one and the same time—it undertook to perform an impossible task by impossible means. Consequently it satisfied neither of the parties and offended both. King Stork proved worse than King Log.[7]
Santa Anna, incensed because Guerrero would not appoint him minister of war, had at first coquetted with Bustamante’s movement; but soon, overshadowed at Jalapa by the Vice-President and by Bravo, whom Guerrero had pardoned, he retired to his estate. On the outbreak of the revolution he took up arms for Guerrero; but when his chief gave up, he followed that example, and patiently awaited, crouching, the time to spring. Now he saw the tide of passion rising, and saw also the best citizens agreeing that Mier y Terán,[F] an able and honorable man, should be the next chief magistrate. Accordingly, to prevent an election if nothing more, he “pronounced” in the name of Federalism at the beginning of 1832, and called for a change of Cabinet, though four years earlier he had battled for the principle that nobody should interfere with a President’s choice of ministers; and then he required that Bustamante should give up his place to Pedraza as the rightful head of the state, though Santa Anna himself had been the cause of Pedraza’s exclusion on the ground of illegal election. Supported by the Vera Cruz customhouse and defended by the pestilence of the coast, he occupied a most advantageous position; and consistency did not signify.[7]
Near the close of the year the two chiefs, brought together by Pedraza, adjusted the affairs of the nation—that is to say, the offices—as private business, and the troops on both sides were liberally rewarded. Congress protested, but was utterly powerless. Bustamante soon found it wise to give up the Presidency; and as the elections were not general enough, at the proper time, to create a Congress, constitutional government vanished. However, though Pedraza had resigned and even left the country, which no President could legally do, Santa Anna and Bustamante now hoisted him into power to complete the term interrupted by Guerrero, while the “best citizens” fell out over offices and personal issues, and so dissipated the brightest prospect seen as yet in Mexican public life.[7]
SANTA ANNA PRESIDENT