The Triangular Revolt in Mexico and the Fall of Anastasio Bustamante, August–October 1841

Abstract

Anastasio Bustamante is one of the forgotten men of early nineteenth-century Mexican history. Like many of his contemporaries during the so-called age of Santa Anna – José Maria Tornel, Gabriel Valencia, Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga, to name only a few – he has attracted scant attention of biographers and little serious study has been made of his long and eventful career. Yet Bustamante was in full control of the presidency, as president or vice-president, for a longer period in total than any president before Porfirio Díaz and he presided over crucial stages in the nation's development from colony to sovereign republic. By ideological conviction or political expediency – it is still not clear which – he came to be the figurehead of the conservative, traditionalist forces in Mexican society which struggled to preserve not only their economic control but also their religious, social and moral values against what they considered to be the destructive onslaught of increasingly fashionable and radical liberal ideas. Born in 1780 at Jiquilpan (Michoacán), son of Spanish parents, trained as a doctor, Bustamante fought for the royalist cause in the war of independence until he joined with Iturbide in the plan of Iguala (1821). Various important political posts followed and he first rose to supreme power in 1829 when, as vice-president, he successfully led a rebellion against president Vicente Guerrero.