A Fear of the People: The Civic Militia of Mexico in 1845

Abstract

FOR almost 250 years after the conquest of Mexico, New Spain's colonial military establishment was minimal. Except for occasional civil disorders aimed more at righting local inequities than at achieving major changes in sovereignty, no tradition of unrest justified maintenance of a large standing army. Even the potential threat of expeditionary forces sent across the Atlantic by Spain's European enemies posed no immediate danger to the major population centers, since impassable mountain ranges, deserts, great distances, and a complete lack of developed roads prevented movement inland from the coasts. In 1762, however, England wrested the fortified city of Havana from Spanish control, and the Spanish Bourbons, fearful of further British encroachments on their possessions, ordered a rapid expansion of their overseas colonial militia. By i8oo, the army in New Spain was firmly established as a corporate body enjoying the full filero militar of the peninsula and numbering 6,150 regular army troops and 11,330 provincial militiamen, a significant increase from the estimated 3,000 regulars and unknown number of provincial militiamen who had borne the burden of defense in 1758. Rather than being defeated by the insurgents during Mexico's struggle for independence, the royalist army led the ultimate break with Spain, and its Spanish-recruited creole professional military hierarchy remained intact and powerful. As a result, the army retained a strong sense of its corporate interests, and filled part of the vacuum left by the Spanish regime after independence.'