A Mexican Dilemma: The Mexico City Ayuntamiento and the Question of Loyalty, 1846-1848

Abstract

WL EHEN WAR broke out in 1846 between Mexico and the United States, many Mexicans received the news with misgivings, but few could have predicted the chain of military disasters that followed. The ease with which invading armies cut to the heart of the country cruelly exposed the weakness of the national defense and discouraged the most valiant. Mexico enjoyed many impressive material and human advantages, while the invading armies were hardly more than bantam-sized and often dangerously exposed. Also the Mexican will to resist remained firm despite repeated defeats. Soldiers in the field, as well as most civilians, were incensed at the presence of foreign invaders on their soil and almost frantically eager to eject them. The major problem-the source of Mexico's weakness and frustration-was that she lacked a government able to exploit her advantages and transmute her stubborn will into effective action. Two decades of revolution and illegitimacy had wrecked her political institutions; president and congress had lost their capacity to focus and nerve Mexican resistance. Rough handling had soiled their reputations and stripped their positions of dignity and authority. A tainted office, men assumed, automatically tainted the officeholder, and all government leadership sank into disrepute. The aversion with which Mexicans viewed governmental activities extended to the war effort almost from its inception. The first military defeats were followed by two successful revolutions within six months, and these seemed to tear all sense of integrity from government direction of the war. Embittered, many men simply withdrew from public affairs to join the great inert majority of Mexican society. Others turned for leadership to the community, the Church, or the political action groups that gave Mexico the semblance of a party system. In this process the obligations of citizenship became subject