Royalist Counterinsurgency in the Mexican War for Independence: The Lessons of 1811

Abstract

OST HISTORIANS of the Mexican independence period have focused upon the insurgents. As a result we know a great deal about that group's leaders, campaigns, organizations, ideology, constitutions, press, uniforms, machismo, and martyrdom. Although some significant recent scholarship has been directed to economic factors, corporate bodies and social sectors of the time without special regard for political alignment, the traditional emphasis on the rebels continues unabated, and its very volume tends to warp our understanding of what actually happened.' In spite of the celebrated heroics of the ins-ugents and of their often admirable experiments with free institutions, it is plausible to argue that the royalist factions managed to meet with tenacity and ingenuity each crisis from Viceroy Iturrigaray's flirtation with criollism in i8o8 to Iturbide's triumph in 1821. If such continuity can be demonstrated, there is all the more reason to examine The Other Side in Mexico's war for independence.2