"We Are Now the True Spaniards": Sovereignty, Revolution, Independence, and the Emergence of the Federal Republic of Mexico, 1808–1824

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

This book has been published with the assistance of the University of California, Irvine and the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Universities.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rodríguez O., Jaime E., 1940- author.

We are now the true Spaniards: sovereignty, revolution, independence, and the emergence of the Federal Republic of Mexico, 1808-1824 /Jaime E. Rodríguez O.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8047-7830-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8047-8463-4

1. Mexico--Politics and government--1810-1821. 2. Mexico-History--Wars of Independence, 1810-1821. 3. Mexico--Politics and government--1821-1861. I. Title.

F1232.R6634 2012

972'.03--dc23

2012000734

Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10.5/12 Bembo

We Are Now the True Spaniards

Sovereignty, Revolution, Independence, and the Emergence of the Federal Republic of Mexico, 1808–1824

JAIME E. RODRÍGUEZ O.

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

FIGURE 1. The Election of 1813 to the Ayuntamiento of Mexico City. Archivo General de la Nación de México.

To Linda my best friend

We are now the true Spaniards, the sworn enemies of Napoleon and his lackeys, the legitimate successors of all the rights of the subjugated [Spaniards] who neither won [the war] nor died for Fernando [VII].

El Despertador Americano.

Correo político económico de Guadalaxara (December 20, 1810)

The idea of the independence of one country with respect to another is easily known and appreciated by even the most ignorant of its inhabitants. However, the concept of civil liberty is not as well understood by all. As a result many are deluded by the brilliant idea of independence without bothering to determine if in attaining the latter they ensure the former, without which independence is meaningless. Iturbide has declared independence; we do not yet know the result of his enterprise. I hope that he will not die before a firing squad as have so many heroes who have preceded him.

José Miguel Ramos Arizpe, Madrid, June 6, 1821

The United States was not constituted until after the war with Great Britain ended. . . . And how did they govern themselves in the meantime? With the rules they inherited from their fathers. Even the Constitution which they later promulgated was no more than a collection of those [laws]. . . . And in the meantime with what do we govern ourselves? With the same laws that we have had until now. With the Spanish Constitution, the laws in our code books that have not been derogated, with the decrees of the Spanish Cortes until the year 1820 and those which the [Mexican] Congress has introduced and will continue to enact in accordance to our present system [of government] and our circumstances.

Servando Teresa de Mier, Mexico City, December 11, 1823

Table of Contents

Copyright

Title Page

Preface

A Note about America and Americans

Terms Used in the Text

Introduction

1 A Shared Political Culture

The Antiguo Régimen

The Nature of Representation in New Spain

The Emergence of an American Identity

The Bourbon Reforms

2 The Collapse of the Spanish Monarchy

The Crisis of the Spanish Monarchy

The Effects of the Crisis in New Spain

The General Juntas of 1808

The First Golpe de Estado

3 The Events of 1809

The Emergence of Representative Government

The Elections to the Junta Central

The Instructions from New Spain

The Valladolid Conspiracy

4 Two Revolutions

The Political Revolution

Convening a Parliament

The Elections of Suplentes

Elections in New Spain

The Armed Revolution

The Bajío

The Great Insurgency

Other Movements

The Nature of the 1810 Revolutions

5 The Cádiz Revolution

The Cortes of Cádiz

The American Question

The Constitution

The New Constitutional Order in America

The First Constitutional Elections

Elections in Mexico City

Elections in Yucatán

Elections in Nueva Galicia

Elections in the Provincias Internas

Ayuntamiento Elections in New Spain

Elections to the Cortes and Provincial Deputation in New Spain

The New Constitutional Regime

The Constitutional Regime in Guadalajara

The Significance of the Constitutional Order

The Collapse of Constitutional Government

6 A Fragmented Insurgency

Counterinsurgency

Toward an Organized Insurgency

The Insurgency in the South

Puebla and Cuautla

The Government of the Nation

The Insurgent Regime in Oaxaca

The Collapse of the Suprema Junta

The Urban Conspirators

The Congress of Chilpancingo

The Continuing Insurgency

7 Separation

The Restoration

The Constitution Restored

The Second Constitutional Period in New Spain

The Cortes

The Plan of Iguala

The Treaty of Córdoba

8 The Mexican Empire

The Rise of Iturbide to Prominence

The Sovereign Provisional Governing Junta

Elections to the Mexican Constituent Cortes

The Convocatoria

The Elections

The Mexican Cortes

The Junta Nacional Instituyente

The End of the Empire

9 The Formation of the Federal Republic

The Junta of Puebla

The Sovereign Cortes

Who Is Sovereign?

The Junta of Celaya

Jalisco, Zacatecas, and Oaxaca

The Second Constituent Congress

Conclusion

Notes

Sources

Index

Preface

This volume has a long history. More than forty years ago, in May 1968, I visited Mexico City for the first time to begin research on a doctoral thesis that eventually became my first book, titled The Emergence of Spanish America: Vicente Rocafuerte and Spanish Americanism, 1808–1832 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975). In that volume, I maintained that a great political revolution began in 1808 within the Hispanic world and that Spanish Americans, who had participated in that transformation, initially favored the creation of a constitutional Hispanic commonwealth. But the subsequent failure of the Hispanic Cortes (parliament) (1810–1814 and 1820–1823) forced them to seek independence.

Since that time I have been intrigued by the process of nation building and the factors that stimulate or retard state consolidation. My work in this area has focused on the Americas and Spain. I was perplexed by the question of why one former colony, the United States, succeeded in establishing a stable government and a flourishing economy, while other former colonies, the Spanish American countries, endured political chaos and economic decline. During the last four decades, I have focused my research on two regions: Ecuador—the former Kingdom of Quito—and Mexico—the former Viceroyalty of New Spain. Since the two lands are radically different in size, resources, location, and so on, their comparison allowed me to gain a broader understanding of the impact of regional conditions on their transition from kingdoms of the Spanish Monarchy to independent nations.

In 1986 I began work on a volume on the First Federal Republic of Mexico. But as I examined the secondary literature I became convinced that scholars lacked a genuine understanding of the causes, the process, and the consequences of the movements that led to independence and the formation of the new nation. My opinion was strengthened when the Comité Mexicano de Ciencias Históricas invited me to present a paper on the First Federal Republic for a symposium on Mexican historiography held in Oaxtepec, Morelos, in October of 1988. In the process of preparing that presentation, I realized that because we did not understand the process of independence all of us who work on the early national period are not only confused, but utterly lost in the miasma of the era.¹

Therefore I returned to the archives of Mexico, Spain, and Ecuador to reexamine the independence period. Also, I began a dialogue with colleagues concerned with similar or related inquiries. Between 1987 and 2008 I organized series of symposia dedicated to various aspects of the question. I have benefited greatly from these in-depth multiyear discussions with colleagues from Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, the United States, Canada, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy who took part in those meetings. The papers, which were revised as a result of our discussions, were published in the following volumes: The Independence of Mexico and the Creation of the New Nation (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1989); The Revolutionary Process in Mexico: Essays in Social and Political Change, 1880–1940 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1990); Patterns of Contention in Mexican History (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1992); The Evolution of the Mexican Political System (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1993); Mexico in the Age of Democratic Revolutions, 1750–1850 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994); The Divine Charter: Constitutionalism and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); Revolución, independencia y las nuevas naciones de América (Madrid: Fundación Mapfre-Tavera, 2005); and Las nuevas naciones: España y México (Madrid: Fundación MAPFRE—Instituto de Cultura, 2008). I am currently preparing to publish the papers from the 2008 symposium titled Hispanic Political Theory and Practice, XVI–IX Centuries. The symposia raised more questions than they resolved, but they proved extremely useful in opening new avenues of inquiry. The more I learned, the more I realized that it was crucial to understand the nature of the Spanish Monarchy and its political culture.

The present volume, which examines the complex process of New Spain’s transition from a kingdom of the Spanish Monarchy to the First Federal Republic of Mexico, is based on two decades of research. During the first ten years, I worked in the archives and repositories of Mexico City; the second decade has been spent researching in the states of Puebla, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Yucatán, Jalisco, Michoacán, and Zacatecas in Mexico as well as in the archives of Madrid and Seville.

An earlier Spanish-language version of this study, "Nosotros somos ahora los verdaderos españoles": La transición de la Nueva España de un reino de la Monarquía Española a la República Federal Mexicana, 1808–1824, appeared in two volumes and included much detail, many quotes, and tables pertinent to individuals elected to the representative institutions that emerged during that revolutionary period. For this edition I have eliminated much material that is of interest primarily to a Spanish-language audience. As a result of questions from colleagues, who kindly read the original manuscript, I have provided additional explanations in several parts of the work. Also, I have incorporated further research that I conducted in Mexico and in Spain as well as material from new publications that have appeared since the Spanish-language edition went to press.

The cover’s image, known as the "Alegorías de las autoridades españolas e indígenas" (Allegories of Spanish and Indigenous Authorities), illustrates the sense of unity that characterized the Hispanic world after the French invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1808. Commissioned the following year, in 1809, by the Indian governor of the República de Indios (Republic of Indians; territories of native populations governed by their own legal system) of San Cristobal Ecatepec, José Ramírez, the painting demonstrates his and his people’s patriotism and fidelity to the Spanish Monarchy. The canvas of the painter Patricio Suárez de Peredo, who had learned his art in a master’s shop rather than in the classical Academy of Art of Mexico City, reflects the profound sense among novohispanos (people of New Spain) of belonging to that worldwide entity. The work demonstrates the dignity and prominence of the Indian official, Governor Ramírez, who is clad in richly adorned expensive clothes and displays an elegant staff of office. In contrast, Juan Felipe Mugarrieta, the Spanish corregidor (magistrate of a district or province called a corregimiento) to his left, wears a simple official black suit that seems inferior to the attire of his Indian counterpart. In the center, King Fernando VII’s image and the symbols of Castile appear at the feet of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The coat of arms of the Spanish monarch is displayed on the left between the images of the Virgin and the king while the coat of arms across on the right exhibits the trophies and emblems of Ecatepec. Both coats of arms possess a royal crown. At the bottom appears a dedication to the beloved and desired King Fernando VII. There follows the name of the governor, Don José Ramírez, the name of the corregidor, Don Juan Felipe Mugarrieta, and the date May 23, 1809. The painting illustrates not only the loyalty of the people of Ecatepec but also their claim of equality within the Spanish Monarchy.

I am grateful to Alicia Hernández Chávez for suggesting the "Alegorías de las autoridades españolas e indígenas for the cover, to Manuel Miño Grijalba for obtaining an adequate reproduction for its publication, and to Jorge Juárez Paredes for expediting the process of receiving the permission to reproduce the painting from the Museo Nacional de Historia de México. Also, I appreciate Rocio Hamue Medina’s efforts in obtaining permission from the Archivo General de la Nación de México to use the engraving by Montes de Oca of the election of 1813 in the city of México as the frontispiece. I thank René García Castro for allowing me to consult his unpublished manuscript: La nueva geografía del poder en México: Provincias y ayuntamientos constucionales, 1812–1814 (Mexico, 1994) and for graciously sending me some of his other works on elections and politics in Mexico. I am most grateful to Hira de Gortari Rabiela and Jimena Gortari Ludlow for allowing me to reproduce their map: Pronunciamientos y demostraciones de fidelidad a la monarquía, 1808 (Oaths and Demonstrations of Fidelity to the Monarchy, 1808). I also thank Darin Jenson who prepared the other maps rapidly and with care.

Christon I. Archer, Felipe Castro Gutiérrez, Miriam Galante, Tamar Herzog, Marco Antonio Landavazo, Colin M. MacLachlan, Manuel Miño Grijalva, Mónica Quijada, William Sater, José Antonio Serrano, Alicia Tecuanhuey, John Tutino, Paul Vanderwood, and Eric Van Young read the manuscript in whole or in part. I am grateful to them for their valuable suggestions for improving the work. I did not always take their advice, but I always considered it seriously. Of course these generous academics are not responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation that I may have committed. Indeed, some of them disagree with my interpretations.

As she has for more than four-and-a-half decades, my colleague, friend, and wife—Linda Alexander Rodríguez—encouraged, advised, and supported my work. She read the manuscript in all its versions and offered valuable criticism and insightful suggestions for improvement, which helped clarify and enrich my analysis of the process of independence. I am most grateful to her for intellectual stimulus and the shared academic enterprise that we have enjoyed for many years. For these and many other reasons, I lovingly dedicate this volume to her.

The present book is part of my effort to understand the process by which the American kingdoms of the Spanish Monarchy transformed themselves into independent nation-states. During the years that I have worked on the subject, I have been fortunate in receiving financial aid from the Academic Senate Committee on Research of the University of California, Irvine; the Research and Travel Committee of the School of Humanities at UCI; the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS); the Social Science Research Council; the Fulbright Foundation; and the University of California in the form of a President’s Humanities Fellowship. I am grateful to the Rockefeller Foundation for its invitation to reside five weeks in its Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, which afforded me the opportunity to read, think, and discuss my ideas and theirs with Linda Alexander Rodríguez, Christon I. Archer, and Virginia Guedea as well as other scholars then resident in the Center. I am also thankful to Vice Chancellor for Research John C. Hemminger for a subvention to defray some of the publication costs of this book.

I am particularly grateful for the cordiality, assistance, support and friendship I have received over the years from Laura Gutiérrez-Witt, Adán Benavides, Donald Gibbs, Michael Hyronimous, and Carmen Sacomani at the magnificent Nettie Lee Benson Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. I am most thankful to Leonor Ortiz Monasterio, director of the Archivo General de la Nación de México from 1983 to 1994, and to her staff for many courtesies during those years. I also express my gratitude to the directors and staff of the Biblioteca Nacional de México, the Centro de Estudios de Historia de México of the Fundación Cultural de Condumex (México, D.F.), the Archivo General de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores de México, the Archivo Histórico del Ayuntamiento de Jalapa, the Archivo Histórico Municipal de la Ciudad de Veracruz, the Archivo del Ayuntamiento de Oaxaca, the Archivo del Congreso de Jalisco (Guadalajara), the Archivo Municipal de Guadalajara, the Archivo Histórico del Ayuntamiento de Puebla, the Archivo Histórico de Zacatecas, the Centro de Apoyo a la Investigación Histórica de Yucatán (Mérida), the Archivo del Congreso de Michoacán (Morelia), the Archivo del Congreso de Diputados de las Cortes (Madrid), the Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid), the Archivo General de Indias (Seville), the British Library (London), the New York Public Library, the Bancroft Library (Berkeley), the UCLA Research Library, and the UCI Langson Library.

I thank the superlative staff of Stanford University Press. Norris Pope, director of Scholarly Publishing and acquiring editor for this book, found my work interesting and guided it judiciously during the evaluation and production process. I am grateful to Sarah Crane Newman and Emily Smith for their care and skill in navigating my volume through the dangers of the production process. I also thank Mary Barbosa for copyediting the manuscript.

Los Angeles, California

November 24, 2011

A Note about America and Americans

Cristobal Colón (Christopher Columbus) had been en route to India when he tripped over the islands of the Caribbean; therefore, the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere came to be called indios (Indians) and their lands las indias (the Indies). In the eighteenth century, however, the continent was renamed América and its inhabitants americanos. Since America is the name applied to the Western Hemisphere, all peoples from Canada to Argentina may be correctly called Americans. This is a paradox that vexed Spanish Americans even before independence.

The Mexican political theorist Servando Teresa de Mier identified the problem during a visit to the United States in 1820. He explained:

Since the Europeans believe there is no other America than the one their nation possesses, an erroneous nomenclature has formed in each nation. . . . In France, generally, when one speaks of America one means Santo Domingo [Haiti]; in Portugal, Brazil. The English call their islands in the Caribbean Archipelago, our Indies or the West Indies; and for the English there is no other North America than the United States. All Spanish North America is to them South America, even though the largest part of the region is in the north. The people of the United States follow that usage and they are offended when we, in order to distinguish them, call them Anglo-Americans. They wish to be the only Americans or North Americans even though neither name is totally appropriate. Americans of the United States is too long. In the end, they will have to be content with the name guasintones, from their capital, Washington (the w is pronounced gu [in English]), just as they call us Mexicans, from the name of our capital.¹

In this book, I refer to Spanish America as America and to Mexico as América Septentional or North America. The people of Spanish America, particularly those from Mexico, the subject of this work, are called Americans. This seems to me entirely appropriate because those terms were used formally and informally in the Hispanic world during the period examined in this work and because they continue to be used today.

Terms Used in the Text

Alcalde: a magistrate, holder of one of the chief offices of a city, villa, or town council. In pueblos sujetos (subject towns), the alcalde was the chief officer.

Alcalde mayor, or corregidor: the chief magistrate and governor of a district

Alférez real: royal standard bearer who was second in authority in the ayuntamiento

Asesor: legal advisor named to act in judicial matters for an official, such as the viceroy or intendant

Audiencia: a high court of appeals for civil and criminal cases that also functioned as the real acuerdo (advisory council) to the chief executive officer. Audiencia was also the name of the territory of that high court. New Spain had two audiencias, the Audiencia of Mexico and the Audiencia of Guadalajara

Ayuntamiento: the principal self-governing body of a city and its hinterland

Cabildo: there were two types, the cabildo eclesiástico (cathedral chapter) and the cabildo civil (town council)

Capitular: a member of an ayuntamiento

Casta: a Castilian word to designate groups of people or animals. By the eighteenth century, the poorer elements of society, usually mulatos, came to be known collectively as castas.

Ciudad: a city that possessed autonomous government and had jurisdiction over the urban areas as well as its hinterlands

Compromisarios: electors chosen at the parish level

Corregidor: a magistrate and governing official of a district or province called a corregimiento

Criollo: literally meaning native of, a term that was applied to persons, animals, and products of an area. In the eighteenth century the term was used to mean a person of Spanish ancestry born in America.

Cura: the pastor of a parish often called in English the parish priest

Derecho indiano: the laws of the Indies

Fiel ejecutor: city inspector of weights and measures in charge of the supply of foodstuffs and of establishing appropriate market prices

Fueros: special judicial privileges granted to regions in Spain that possessed their own code of laws or, in America, the special legal status of members of groups or corporations, such as the Indians, the Church, and the military

Gachupín: pejorative term for Spaniards who went to New Spain to get rich

Golpe de estado: overthrow of the government

Lugarteniente: a person with the power to replace another in a governmental office or position

Natural: a native of a city or region

Oidor: an audiencia or appellate judge who served in the Real Acuerdo with other oidores to form a Real Acuerdo or royal council to the chief executive of the region

Pardo: a person with some African ancestry; the term is often interchangeable with mulato

Patronato real: royal patronage of the Catholic Church, which granted the Spanish Crown the right of presentation and supervision of the Church’s administration as well as the responsibility to support and protect that institution

Peninsular: a person born in Spain

Procurador: advocate/petitioner/attorney charged with promoting the interests of cities and towns, corporations, and individuals. They acted as representatives to a governing body or official, such as the king. Procuradores were restricted to specific matters.

Procurador general: official elected to represent the city before formal authorities

Pueblo: a town; the people

Real acuerdo: the oidores of the audiencias meeting as a royal council to advise the chief executive of the region

Regidores: aldermen of a city or town

República de españoles: a legal system for Spaniards, mestizos, mulatos, and blacks

República de indios: a legal system for the natives that permitted them to retain their lands, language, laws, and customs as long as these did not conflict with royal laws and as long as they were Catholics. Also a term used to refer to an Indian region governed by an Indian government.

Síndico procurador del común: attorney general for the public of a city or town

Vecino/a: This entry, which appears as shown in the Diccionario de Autoridades of 1737, is the only one that identifies sex to indicate that both men and women could be vecinos and vecinas. Vecinos were not always naturales but were people who identified with and satisfied their responsibilities to the cities or towns in which they lived. They generally owned property, paid taxes, fulfilled their cargos, and served in the town’s militia.

Villa: a smaller city with self-government, but subject to the king’s authority

Introduction

THE PHRASE that gave the title to this volume, We are now the true Spaniards, appeared on December 20, 1810, in the first issue of the first insurgent newspaper, El Despertador Americano, published in Guadalajara when the insurgent leader Father Miguel Hidalgo occupied that city. Many will no doubt wonder why insurgents, ostensibly seeking independence, would issue such a declaration. The answer is that they did not seek independence. They remained loyal to King Fernando VII and were determined to maintain independence from the French who had invaded Spain. They sought self-government—autonomy—not separation from the Spanish Monarchy. The first issue of El Despertador Americano was devoted to criticizing the failure of peninsulares (Spaniards from the Iberian Peninsula) to defend the nation from the French, accusing them of cowardice and treason. The insurgents declared that they were now the true Spaniards, the sworn enemies of Napoleon and his lackeys, the legitimate successors of all the rights of the subjugated [Spaniards] who neither won [the war] nor died for Fernando [VII].¹

Mexico’s experience was unique among the nations of the Hispanic world. Not because of its great insurgencies, but because, alone among all the kingdoms of the Spanish Monarchy, including Spain itself, it remained true to Hispanic juridical and political culture.² Indeed, the charter of the Mexican Federal Republic, the Constitution of 1824, constitutes the culmination of the great Hispanic Revolution that erupted in 1808.

This book examines the complex process that led to Mexican independence and the formation of the Estados Unidos Mexicanos (United States of Mexico). It departs from the existing scholarly literature that considers the Hidalgo Revolt, which erupted in 1810, and the subsequent insurgencies as the revolution that achieved independence in 1821. This work challenges that view. It demonstrates that the political transformation within the composite (composed of many lands) Spanish Monarchy—which accelerated after the French invasion of Spain in 1808 and culminated in the Hispanic Constitution of 1812 enacted by the Cortes of Cádiz and the institutions of self-government it established—was the fundamental revolution. This book shows that the insurgencies were a series of disconnected movements that were ancillary to the political process that shaped the modern Mexican state.

The outcome of the multifaceted process that culminated in the creation of a federal republic in Mexico in 1824 was not inevitable. Rather it was the result of decisions made by individuals and groups in Spain and in the Viceroyalty of New Spain during the period 1808–1824. Most of the scholarly literature on the epoch, however, is deterministic, portraying emancipation as reasonable and predictable. These assumptions about independence have led scholars to underestimate the complexity of the decisions facing Spaniards and novohispanos during the years 1808 to 1824 and to dismiss the vibrant political processes that characterized and shaped the period. Politically active novohispanos from all classes and ethnic groups embraced a wide range of views. Few, however, favored independence. Most believed that the composite Spanish Monarchy provided them with important benefits. Prominent novohispano political leaders frequently discussed and favored establishing a system of federated Hispanic monarchies along the lines of the later British Commonwealth. The novohispano deputies to the Hispanic Cortes proposed it as a solution to the conflict as late as 1821, thirteen years after the collapse of the Spanish Monarchy as a result of the French occupation of the Iberian Peninsula in 1808. If the majority of novohispanos were determined to liberate themselves, they could have achieved that goal easily. New Spain was a vast territory with a population of about six million, including approximately 15,000 European Spaniards, defended by a small royal army comprised primarily of novohispanos. The fact that novohispanos did not separate from the Spanish Monarchy at that time indicates that the overwhelming majority believed that, despite their opposition to some of the royal government’s policies and decisions, their religious, social, economic, and political ties to the composite monarchy made union preferable to separation.

The independence of the Viceroyalty of New Spain and the formation of the United States of Mexico occurred within the broader context of the changes sweeping the Western world. The seven years’ war (1756–1763), a world war fought in Europe, America—both north and south—and Asia, changed the balance of power in the New World. France withdrew from North America in 1763, leaving the Spanish and British monarchies as the principal contenders for control of the region. Both monarchies introduced new regulations and structures designed to enable them to exercise greater control over their vast and distant territories. As was to be expected, both the British and Spanish Americans objected to the new imperialism. Although the two societies were different, the processes that culminated in the independence of the United States and Mexico began in response to metropolitan threats to their self-interests and to their sense of being an integral and important component of their monarchies. The leaders of these movements considered themselves loyal Britons and Spaniards defending their British and Spanish rights. The British American revolution resulted from the inability of the disputants to agree upon the nature of the British Empire. ³ The British Americans opted for independence because the British Monarchy, like the Spanish Monarchy subsequently, proved unwilling to accept a settlement comparable to the later British Commonwealth. The Spanish American kingdoms did not imitate their northern brethren in rebelling against the Crown. Although they opposed aspects of the late eighteenth-century reforms, known as the Bourbon reforms, sometimes violently, they did not seek separation from the Spanish Monarchy. Only when the monarchy collapsed in 1808, as a result of the French invasion of the Iberian Peninsula—thirty-two years after the British Americans rebelled—did the Spanish Americans insist on home rule.

It is this work’s contention that the independence of Mexico was not the result of an anticolonial struggle; rather, it was the consequence of a great political revolution that culminated in the dissolution of a worldwide political system. The rupture was an integral part of the broader process that was transforming antiguo régimen (old regime) societies into modern liberal nation-states. To understand the process that led to the independence of Mexico and the creation of a new nation, we must reexamine the nature of the Spanish Monarchy and evaluate New Spain’s separation from the monarchy in the broader context of the Atlantic World.

That transformation occurred after several decades of institutional, economic, political, and ideological change. Although political ideas, structures, and practices changed with vertiginous rapidity within the Spanish Monarchy after 1808, much remained from the Antiguo Régimen. The nature of social, economic, and institutional relations changed slowly; the new liberal processes and institutions required time to take hold. During that transitional period, the new liberal institutions and processes frequently intermingled with traditional patterns and practices. Concepts such as authority, sovereignty, legitimacy, citizenship, the people, representation, and independence changed but were not clearly defined and retained elements of the Antiguo Régimen.⁴

This work concentrates on politics and political processes or the political, as the nouvelle histoire politique (new political history) calls it.⁵ It seeks to understand the process that led to the creation of the new Mexican nation within the context of the broader political revolution for representative government within the Hispanic world. Although it focuses on what is called high politics, it does not assume that low politics did not exist. The urban and rural lower classes possessed their own interests and concerns. Some of these, primarily those of the rural groups, have been studied. But scholars generally assume that the campesinos (country people or villagers), as well as the urban poor, either did not know, understand, or care about the pressing political issues of the day. That is incorrect. Urban and rural popular groups not only knew and understood the advantages and disadvantages of what has been called the social compact of the monarchy but were also keenly aware of the political revolution carried out by the Hispanic Cortes. The evidence indicates that poor people, whether urban or rural, were not only affected by high politics but also understood their interests and took action to defend them; that is, they engaged in politics. Some participated in autonomist and insurgent movements. Others took advantage of the upheavals to pursue their own concerns. Many others joined members of the urban upper and middle classes who remained loyal to the Crown.⁶ Their staunch defense of the Spanish Monarchy continued until independence, thirteen years after the crisis unleashed by the collapse of the monarchy in 1808.

Novohispano efforts to obtain home rule within the Spanish Monarchy comprise a crucial part of the politics of the period. Their discourse was based on the belief that the American realms were not colonies, but equal and integral parts of the Spanish Crown. Hispanic law, theory, and practice all confirmed the novohispanos’ belief that their kingdom was the coequal of those in the Iberian Peninsula. It was a principle the leaders of New Spain insisted upon during the period following the 1808 crisis of the Spanish Monarchy. Indeed, the majority of these leaders demanded equality rather than independence. They sought home rule, not separation from the Spanish Crown. This distinction is crucial because when the documents of the epoch use the word independence, they generally mean autonomy. Only when the government of Spain refused their demand for autonomy did most novohispanos opt for separation.

Mexicans did not reject Hispanic law and political practices and did not base their government on foreign models. The liberal tradition established in the Cádiz revolution was crucial to postindependence transformations. Since novohispanos played a central role in developing the Hispanic constitutional system and since it was introduced more fully in New Spain than in any other part of the Spanish Monarchy, including Spain itself, it is understandable that Mexican politicians based their Constitution of 1824 on the Cádiz Constitution of 1812.

This volume focuses on two complex aspects of the process that led to the formation of the first federal republic: the political revolution and the insurgency. Chapter 1 sets the stage by demonstrating that the Spanish Monarchy was part of evolving Western culture, not a backward authoritarian state. It is divided into four sections that examine the characteristics of the Antiguo Régimen, the nature of representation within the composite Spanish Monarchy, the formation of American identity, and the eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms designed to centralize and improve the administration of the worldwide Spanish Monarchy. Chapter 2 places the 1808 French invasion of Spain within the broader context of the eighteenth-century international conflicts among European powers and the major transformation of the Atlantic World in the second half of the century. It examines the impact of the political crisis caused by the French invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1808 and the destruction of the Spanish Monarchy. It also analyzes the similar responses of Spain and New Spain to the crisis, the attempts of novohispanos to establish an autonomous government in the name of the king, and the golpe de estado (overthrow of the government) by a few European Spaniards to prevent the formation of a congress of cities in that kingdom. Chapter 3 explores the events of 1809, which included the emergence of representative government in the Spanish Monarchy, the election of the novohispano deputy to the Junta Central Suprema y Gubernativa (Supreme Central Governing Junta), the instructions provided that representative by the cities of New Spain, and the Valladolid conspiracy, which sought once again to convene a congress of the cities in the North American kingdom.

The two revolutions, the political and the insurgency, are examined in Chapter 4. These radical transformations that engulfed New Spain in 1810 occurred almost simultaneously. The political revolution sought to change the worldwide Hispanic Monarchy into a modern nation-state with a representative government for all parts of the Spanish Nation, as the monarchy was now called. Elections for deputies to the Cortes were held by ayuntamientos (city governments) throughout New Spain. Nevertheless, before the novohispano deputies could depart for the Cortes that met in Cádiz, a great insurgency erupted in the Bajío that, while advocating the creation of a congress of cities to govern New Spain in the name of the king, relied on force to secure local autonomy or home rule. These two overlapping processes—that once unleashed could not be stopped—influenced and altered one another in a variety of ways for more than a decade. Neither can be understood in isolation.

Chapters 5 and 6 continue the examination of the two revolutions. Chapter 5, which considers the great political revolution, concentrates on the writing of the Constitution of 1812; the role of American, particularly novohispano, deputies in the Cortes Generales y Extraordinarias de la Monarquía Española (General and Extraordinary Cortes of the Spanish Monarchy) in shaping the Charter of Cádiz and in forcing that body to address issues important to Spanish Americans; and on the first constitutional elections in New Spain. It demonstrates that, contrary to general belief, elections were held throughout the kingdom and that hundreds of thousands, perhaps more than a million, novohispanos participated in electing forty-one deputies to the Ordinary Cortes of 1813–14 and establishing five provincial deputations and more than a thousand constitutional ayuntamientos in New Spain. It ends with the collapse of the constitutional system in 1814. Chapter 6 examines the fragmented insurgency that engulfed New Spain from 1811 until 1821. Although some insurgent leaders attempted to form an alternative government and wrote the Constitution of Apatzingán, they were unable to sustain a governing authority and provide central direction for the insurgency. The decade-long conflict had staggering human, social, and economic costs. The ferocity that characterized the initial movement and the equally ferocious royalist response became the norm in the ensuing years. Local conditions frequently determined the types of individuals who supported the rebellion and for how long. Most insurgent groups were regionally based and were most successful in their own areas. While the royalists proved unable to stamp out the insurgency, the rebels proved equally unable to defeat the royalist forces.

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 are concerned with the separation of Mexico from the Spanish Monarchy and its establishment as an independent nation state. Chapter 7 analyzes the efforts of novohispano autonomists to achieve home rule either through the creation of autonomous kingdoms in America ruled by the king or Spanish princes under the Constitution of 1812, or through the Plan of Iguala that declared independence, recognized the Constitution of Cádiz as the law of the land, and invited the king or a Spanish prince to rule. These propositions for a commonwealth similar to the later British Commonwealth were acceptable to novohispanos because under the Constitution of 1812 the legislature became the dominant branch of government. In the end, the supporters of the Plan of Iguala, which proposed to create an autonomous kingdom in New Spain, established the independent Mexican Empire because the government in Spain rejected the first proposal. Chapter 8 examines the conflict between Agustín de Iturbide, who believed that he and his army had achieved independence, and the legislators, who were convinced that they represented national sovereignty. Although Iturbide forced the Mexican Cortes to appoint him emperor, he abdicated within a few months when the provinces rebelled against his authoritarian government. Finally, Chapter 9 explains how Mexico, utilizing the institutions established by the Constitution of Cádiz, formed a federal republic in 1824. The Mexican Constitution of 1824 was based on the Hispanic Constitution of 1812 because distinguished novohispanos, who had participated in writing the Charter of Cádiz, wrote the Mexican federal constitution. Mexico implemented the institutions created by the Constitution of 1812 more fully than any other nation in the Hispanic world, including Spain itself. Indeed, most Mexicans considered the Charter of Cádiz their first constitution.

Events in Mexico, particularly the assertion of states’ rights by the former provinces, forced Congress to frame a constitution to meet the unique circumstances of the nation. The principal innovations—republicanism, federalism, and a presidency—were adopted to address Mexico’s new reality. The monarchy was abolished because both the Spanish and Mexican monarchs had failed as political leaders, not, as is often alleged, because Mexicans imitated the U.S. Charter. Federalism arose naturally from Mexico’s earlier experience. The provincial deputations created by the Constitution of Cádiz simply converted themselves into state governments. The distinguished novohispanos, who had assumed leading roles during the Hispanic constitutional era, continued to promote their views in the new Mexican nation they were forming.

CHAPTER 1

A Shared Political Culture

TO UNDERSTAND the formation of the new nations of America, among them México, it is necessary to examine the nature of the Antiguo Régimen. Many erroneously believe that the Spanish Monarchy was highly centralized, confuse absolute with autocratic rule, and equate the modern concept of colony with pre-nineteenth-century governing practices. As a result of these misconceptions many have assumed wrongly that the representative political structures established in the postindependence period were alien systems imported from Great Britain, the United States, and France.¹ That is not correct. To comprehend the nature of political culture in late eighteenth-century New Spain, it is necessary to dispel misperceptions about the political system of the Spanish Monarchy and the political theory and practice that supported it. The following sections, therefore, will examine the characteristics of the Antiguo Régimen, the nature of representation, the formation of American identity, and the eighteenth-century reforms.

The Antiguo Régimen

Throughout their history, the Spanish possessions in America constituted part of the worldwide Spanish Monarchy—a confederation of disparate kingdoms and lands that extended throughout portions of Europe, Africa, Asia, and America.² The great Jesuit scholar and writer, Baltazar Gracián acknowledged that reality in 1640 when he compared the French with the Spanish Monarchy:

There is a great difference between founding a unique and homogeneous kingdom within a province to constituting a universal empire with different provinces and nations. There [in France] the uniformity of laws, the similarity of customs, one language and a uniform climate, which unite it, also separate it from foreigners. The same seas, mountains, and rivers are for France a natural boundary and a rampart for its preservation. But in the Spanish Monarchy where the provinces are many, the nations different, the languages varied, the interests in conflict, [and] the climates divergent, great ability is required to conserve and even more to unite.³

The Catholic faith played a fundamental role in uniting the Spanish Monarchy. Although the people of its various realms retained their languages, laws, and customs, they were all required to be Catholics. The one true faith defined Hispanic society. After the defeat of the last Muslim kingdom of Granada and the expulsion of Jews in 1492, non-Catholics could not reside in the lands governed by the Spanish rulers⁴ who, starting with Isabel and Fernando, began calling themselves "los reyes católicos (the Catholic kings). The great political theorist Juan de Mariana recognized that reality when he declared: religion is the bond of human society and by it [religion] alliances, contracts and even society itself is sanctioned and sanctified.⁵ Moreover, as Tamar Herzog indicates, the fact that the Hispanic world was by definition a Catholic community was rarely discussed. It was so obvious to contemporaries and so consensual in nature that there was no need to spell it out."⁶ However, it is important to remember that in the Spanish Monarchy the Catholic Church was not autonomous; it was subordinated to the kings who had obtained administrative control over the Church, patronato real (royal patronage), as a result of the papal donation of 1493 and the papal bulls of 1501 and 1508.

As was true in other Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim lands, religion permeated all aspects of life. Although religious ceremonies and the ringing of church bells punctuated the daily life of Hispanics, few lived in a world dominated by prayer. Individuals within the Church, like their secular counterparts, had multiple social, economic, and political roles and interests. Therefore, it is not surprising that members of the clergy frequently participated in secular activities, including politics, and at times held views that conflicted with official Church policy. Moreover, the Catholic Church in the Spanish Monarchy was not a monolithic institution controlled by the pope. Rather, it was highly fragmented and decentralized. At the broadest level, the Church was divided between the secular clergy and the regular orders. The secular clergy, as the name suggests, served the needs of the laity. They were organized geographically into areas administered by archbishops and bishops selected by the king and appointed by the pope. The territories administered by the prelates were divided into parishes administered by curas (pastors of parishes). They were the magistrates of the sacred who ministered to their parishioners and had the most contact with society at large. The regular orders were organized vertically and responded not to the archbishop or to the bishop, but to their own authorities and ultimately to the pope. Nevertheless, within the Spanish Monarchy, the regular orders were also administered by the king. Orders, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits, played a major role in the acculturation and conversion of non-Catholic peoples in Iberia and later in the Indies. However, it was the policy of the Spanish Monarchy to assert authority quickly over new regions by placing these areas under the jurisdiction of the secular clergy.⁷

In essence the Hispanic Church responded to the king and became one of the monarchy’s mainstays. Churchmen held numerous government posts, including the position of viceroy. The practice of appointing clergymen to government office was so common that in 1665 the quiteño (native of Quito), Fray Gaspar de Villarroel, referred to the Hispanic Church as one of the king’s two swords.⁸ When acting as government officials, churchmen represented the king, not the pope. The clergy, particularly the members of the regular orders, also dominated higher education and provided most social services. Moreover, many clerics were lawyers who practiced in civil as well as in clerical courts. Ecclesiastics in their nonclerical capacity are generally indistinguishable from their secular counterparts since both often studied the same subjects at the same institutions. They were not ignorant, fanatical priests as John Adams and other prominent Protestants believed.⁹ On the contrary, many were distinguished scholars and scientists who addressed topics that today are considered secular. The great constitutional scholar Francisco Martínez Marina, for example, was a man of the Church.¹⁰ Moreover, the Jesuit Juan de Mariana advanced radical political ideas that included the principle of tyrannicide.

A major segment of Occidental civilization, the Hispanic world drew upon a shared Western European culture that based its political concepts on ancient classical thought and on late medieval Catholic theories. This heritage and three events in the sixteenth century contributed to a major transformation in the nature of Hispanic political thought.

A great political revolution, the Rebelión de las Comunidades de Castilla (Rebellion of the Cities of Castile) erupted in the Spanish Peninsula during the years 1518–1521. Taking advantage of the coronation of King Carlos I, who had been raised in Flanders and had few direct ties with Castile, the representatives of the cities and towns with self-government, or comunidades, of Castile attempted to assume power and establish a new constitutional order. They formed a Junta General de las Comunidades de Castilla (General Junta of the Cities of Castile), which insisted that the cities represented the patria (homeland), that the king was their servant, that they possessed the right to elect Cortes on a regular basis, and to defend their liberties with force if necessary. They also maintained that the will of the people and the consent of the governed had to be recognized and insisted not only on liberty but also on democracy. The movement, which has been called the first modern revolution, was ultimately defeated by the forces of the Crown in the battle of Villalar on April 23, 1521. Thereafter, the Cortes continued to function in a traditional form. Nevertheless, the rebellion became the foundational myth for the revolutionaries in the Cortes of Cádiz three centuries later.¹¹

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation also contributed to the expansion of the concept of popular sovereignty among Hispanic political theorists. When Martin Luther advanced the principle of the divine right of princes in order to reject similar papal claims, the Catholic theorists of the School of Salamanca responded to Luther’s arguments with the principle of potestas populi (sovereignty of the people). Francisco Suárez directly refuted Luther’s claims of the divine right of princes. He and others, such as Francisco de Vitoria, Diego de Covarrubias, Domingo de Soto, Luis de Molina, Juan de Mariana, and, most important, Fernando Vázquez de Menchaca, helped to lay the foundations for the so-called ‘social contract’ theories of the seventeenth century. . . . [Moreover], Mariana . . . [advanced] a theory of popular sovereignty which, while scholastic in origins and Calvinist in its later developments, was in essence independent of either religious creed, and was thus available to be used by both parties.¹² As the English historian Quentin Skinner has shown, the Hispanic neoscholastic theorists provided a large arsenal of ideological weapons available to be exploited by the revolutionaries of later periods.¹³

Subsequently, the provinces, or states, of the Netherlands relied on these and other political theories to challenge the authority of the king of the Spanish Monarchy, Felipe II. In 1579, they signed the Union of Utrecht, by which they became united states and agreed to cooperate with each other in their opposition to higher taxes, the persecution of Protestants, and the elimination of their medieval representative governing structures. Later, in 1581, they issued their Act of Abjuration, their declaration of independence, from Felipe II. Then in 1588, they established the Dutch Republic. Naturally, those insurgents justified their revolt against the king, to whom they owed allegiance in numerous treatises defending their right to self-determination, religious freedom, and representative government. ¹⁴

Among the concepts advanced by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hispanic legal commentators, such as Fernando Vázquez de Menchaca and Francisco Suárez, two would become significant in the early nineteenth century—the principle of popular sovereignty and the notion of a compact (pactum translationis) between the people and the king.¹⁵ Some of the Hispanic theorists’ ideas, particularly those of Vitoria, Covarrubias, and Vázquez de Menchaca, entered English and French political thought through the works of Johannes Althusius and Hugo Grotius.¹⁶

Many Hispanic intellectuals, like some of their counterparts in other parts of Europe, believed in the ideal of a mixed government. Based upon the political culture of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Italian Renaissance states, mixed government was a regime in which the one, the ruler, the few, the prelates and the nobles, and the many, the people, shared sovereignty. Mixed governments were considered the best and most lasting because they established severe limitations upon arbitrary or tyrannical power of the king, the nobles, and the people.¹⁷ Moreover, as John Pocock has demonstrated, Niccolò Machiavelli’s thought influenced significantly the concept of mixed government in England and elsewhere in the Atlantic World.¹⁸ Educated Hispanics on both sides of the Atlantic turned to Aristotle, Polybius, and Machiavelli to understand the nature of classical republicanism.

Natural law theories of government also were widely accepted in the Hispanic world. Joaquín Marín y Mendoza, appointed by King Carlos III to the chair of law at San Isidro, for example, published Historia del derecho natural y de gentes in 1776. He and other professors of law introduced their students to a number of European authors who developed natural law and contract theories of government, among them Gaetano Filangieri, Christian Wolf, Emmerich de Vattel, and Samuel Pufendorf. These lesser-known authors, rather than the more famous Jean Jacques Rousseau, prepared several generations of Hispanic students to reinterpret the relationship between the people and the government. ¹⁹

During the late eighteenth century, nationalists in the Peninsula reinterpreted history to create a new national myth. Enlightened Spaniards argued that the early Visigoths had enjoyed a form of tribal democracy. Supposedly, these Germanic ancestors forged the first Hispanic constitution. Later, in the twelfth century, Spain developed the first parliament in Europe, the Cortes.²⁰ According to this interpretation of history, medieval Spain had enjoyed democracy only to have it destroyed by the despotic Habsburg kings. Although earlier Cortes represented individual kingdoms, such as Aragon and Castile, not the entire nation, eighteenth-century reformers had a unified body in mind when they spoke of reconvening a Cortes. Their ideas culminated in the works of Spain’s foremost legal historian, Francisco Martínez Marina, whose massive Teoría de las cortes implied that the restoration of a national representative body was necessary to revitalize the country.²¹

In the 1780s, the University of Salamanca became a center of liberalism and its graduates would later become revolutionary leaders in the Cortes of Cádiz. They were influenced by the Synod of Pistoia and two prominent theologians Pietro Tamburini and Giuseppe Zola who favored a less centralized Church and greater Episcopal authority. Politically, these concepts translated into representative government with a weak executive branch.²² The ideas of Anglophone intellectuals from England, Scotland, and the United States—among them John Locke, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and Benjamin Franklin—were also widely discussed. This intellectual interchange was a continuation of an ongoing dialogue that began in the sixteenth century. British ideas, particularly the principle of mixed government, exemplified by the unwritten English Constitution, merged well with Hispanic thought because Hispanic theorists, such as Vázquez de Menchaca, had influenced earlier British thinkers, like Thomas Hobbes.²³

The scientific thought of the Enlightenment did not suddenly transform the neoscholastic intellectual climate of Habsburg Spain and America. Change began in the 1670s and 1680s when some Hispanic scholars started questioning aspects of scholasticism. These individuals, who are known as eclectics, introduced modern philosophy, as it came to be called, to the Hispanic world at the end of the seventeenth and early decades of the eighteenth century.²⁴ The new critical approach was widely disseminated through the writings of Benito Gerónimo Feijóo who sought to introduce and popularize the scholarly and scientific achievements of the age. He insisted that the Spanish Monarchy required modern science, arguing that it did not clash with religion. Starting in 1739 with the nine-volume Teatro crítico universal, Feijóo discussed art, literature, philosophy, theology, mathematics, natural science, geography, economics, and history. Subsequently, he published five additional volumes of essays titled ­Cartas eruditas. His approach was critical, exposing the fallibility of physicians, false saints, and miracles, and consistently advanced the cause of modern analytical thought. Feijóo, as Richard Herr has observed, never questioned the greatness of Spain’s former intellectual figures or expressed a view that he believed was the least opposed to the Catholic religion.²⁵ However, he upheld the experimental method of Protestant English science and rejected the highly theoretical systems and materialist philosophy of some of the French authors.²⁶ Although Feijóo’s publications aroused great controversy, his works became extremely popular, appearing in countless editions in subsequent decades. Indeed, they were the best sellers of the age second only to Cervantes’s Don Quijote. Feijóo’s works have been found in most colonial libraries in Spanish America, particularly those in New Spain. In 1750 King Fernando VI issued a royal decree prohibiting criticism of Feijóo because his writings merited the royal pleasure.²⁷

Spanish intellectuals were also abreast of evolving economic thought. The late seventeenth-century British proponents of free-market economics²⁸ influenced Hispanic theorists. During the second half of the eighteenth century, societies for the promotion of useful knowledge became vehicles for disseminating economic ideas. The Sociedad Vazcongada de Amigos del País (Basque Society of Friends of the Country), an organization inspired by the Royal Society of London, the Society of Dublin, and the royal academies of Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, was founded in the provincial city of Vergara in 1764 to support education in the region. The Sociedad Vazcongada became a major center for the dissemination of all sorts of useful knowledge, including science and technology. It attracted the most important men from the Basque provinces as its members. Soon it admitted other prominent Spaniards and distinguished foreigners. As it gained influence, the Sociedad expanded its membership to include Americans. By 1773 it had admitted numerous overseas members, the vast majority in New Spain: 120 in Mexico City, five each in Querétero and San Luis Potosí, four in Oaxaca, three in Valladolid, two in Zacatecas, and one each in Guadalajara and Veracruz. Subsequently, other sociedades de amigos del país were established in Spain and in America. Inevitably, the societies discussed economic questions and the latest economic theories. In their discussions and publications, these bodies disseminated the works of exponents of laissez-faire economics.²⁹

During the reign of Carlos III (1759–1788) a number of distinguished reformers applied the new philosophy and economic theory to the Spanish Monarchy. Their work culminated in the activities of the great Spanish economist and statesman, Gaspar Melchor Jovellanos, who like Feijóo was an admirer of British thought. In 1774, even before Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations, Jovellanos issued a legal opinion that supported the free market: We would like to restore liberty completely, which is the soul of commerce, the one which grants merchandise its value, based on its abundance or scarcity, and the one that establishes prices with natural justice. Both in his political actions and in his subsequent published work, Jovellanos sought to eliminate privilege and to foster commercial and political liberty. He declared: The first political principle . . . is to provide men the greatest freedom possible. Protected by liberty, industry, commerce, population, and wealth will increase.³⁰ During his long and distinguished career, Jovellanos advocated free trade and attacked privilege. He opposed government interference in the economy and defended individual property rights and self-interest. In his view, the role of government was to foster economic liberty by protecting private property and interests and to promote economic development by providing social and economic infrastructure, such as education, roads, canals, irrigation, ports, and other facilities. To provide the resources to achieve these goals he advocated the imposition of a comprehensive progressive tax system, which everyone—without exception—should pay according to their ability.³¹

Educated groups in America were familiar with European economic, legal, and political concepts. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, New World legal scholars—especially professors in the law faculties of the continent’s universities—reinterpreted Fernando Vázquez de Menchaca’s and Francisco Suárez’s compact theory to further their interests.³² Americans, like Spaniards, based their national myths on a historic constitution. According to this interpretation, Americans derived their rights from two sources: their Indian progenitors, who originally possessed the land, and their Spanish ancestors, who in conquering the New World obtained privileges from the Crown, including the right to convene their own Cortes. That early compact, however, was not between America and Spain, but between each New World kingdom and the king. The derecho indiano (laws of the Indies) affirmed the special status of the Americas within the Spanish Monarchy. Since the sixteenth century, European as well as New World legal scholars had commented on the unique nature of derecho indiano. The publication of the great Recopilación de leyes de los Reynos de las Indias in 1680 provided the impetus for extensive new interpretations of the nature of American rights. In the second half of the eighteenth century, a number of jurists published new collections of laws issued in America.³³ Those works contributed to the notion that the New World possessed its own unwritten constitution. Such ideas, of course, are derived directly from Soto, Suárez, and Vázquez de Menchaca.³⁴

The great enlightened monarch Carlos III presided over a major transformation in the Hispanic world. During his reign, the Enlightenment spread throughout his realms. The Hispanic variant was neither radical nor anti-Christian, as in France. But like the Enlightenment everywhere, the Hispanic movement admired classical antiquity, preferring science and reason to authority and useful knowledge to theory. As José Miranda indicated, The Enlightenment was neither a theory nor a doctrine, but a new way of looking at things and interpreting life. . . . The Enlightenment possessed, however, a principle common to the multitude of ideas that sprouted in its bosom: the liberty or autonomy of reason.³⁵ Although the Hispanic Enlightenment did not challenge the authority either of the Church or the Crown, its emphasis