Anastasio Bustamante

Anastasio Bustamante (1780-1853) was President of Mexico from 1830 to 1832 and then from 1837 to 1841. He was a Conservative. He first came to power by leading a coup against president Vicente Guerrero. Bustamante was deposed twice, and exiled to Europe each time. He later became a Senator.

An affluent politician and military leader best remembered for his key role in Mexico's experiment with centralized rule (1835-44), Anastasio Bustamante followed a path to power that was very similar to those of other Mexican leaders in the first half of the nineteenth century. Born in Jiquilpan, Michoacán, to Spanish parents, Bustamante attended school in Guadalajara and Mexico City before settling in San Luis Potosí to practice medicine. The Wars of Independence subsequently provided Bustamante with an avenue of both military and political advancement. Following the Hidalgo Revolt in Guanajuato, Bustamante joined Felix Maria Calleja de Rey's royalist forces in subduing the insurgents in Aculco, Guanajuato, Puente de Calderon, and Cuautla. Bustamante rose to the rank of general when he abandoned the royalist cause in 1821, seized the cities of Guanajuato and Celaya, and proclaimed his support for Agustín de Iturbide and the Plan de Iguala. Iturbide, upon ascending the Mexican throne, presented Bustamante with a captaincy general. At the same time, Bustamante took advantage of the fame and recognition that accompanied his military successes to secure himself a political post on the Junta Provisional Gubernativa (Provisional Government).

Bustamante's upbringing, along with his credentials as both an Iturbidista and a well-known military hero, appealed strongly to conservative political factions in the decades following Iturbide's fall from power. First, his Spanish heritage and traditional education established him in the eyes of the clergy and affluent classes as an hombre de bien--an individual who was both cultured and well-to-do, like themselves, and who would preserve the existing social hierarchy. Second, Bustamante's identification with the Iturbide monarchy appealed to advocates of a centralized form of government. Finally, conservatives were quick to realize that any viable candidate for political office (and especially the presidency) needed the support of the military, which wielded enormous power after Independence.

Without a stable base of support, Bustamante's hold on power would remain tenuous. Unlike Mexican caudillos Juan Álvarez and Antonio López de Santa Anna, whose power and influence stemmed from networks of local supporters in their home states, Bustamante's supporters represented a regionally diverse and frequently changing coalition of members and interests. In short, his popularity depended largely upon his maintaining a state of political, economic, and social stability, in which the conservatives could thrive. The bitter bipartisan struggle between liberals and conservatives, as well as the country's worsening economic crisis, made Bustamante's task increasingly difficult.

Bustamante's ascent to the presidency began in 1829 when he was elected vice president in the Vicente Guerrero administration. Bustamante served as a counterweight to Guerrero, whose mixed ancestry and efforts to politically mobilize the Mexican masses terrified many hombres de bien. Guerrero's reluctance to relinquish the extraordinary powers granted him during the Spanish invasion in the fall of 1829 led Bustamante to revolt against the president. Shortly thereafter, Bustamante assumed the presidency and ruled from 1830 until 1832. During this period, he strengthened his ties to the conservative factions by filling his cabinet posts with well-known conservatives like Lucas Alamán and enacting legislation that increasingly centralized power in the national government. At the same time, Bustamante directed the government forces fighting to suppress Guerrero and his followers in the so-called War of the South. The capture and execution of Guerrero in 1831 proved to be simultaneously the crowning glory and the death blow to Bustamante's administration.

Although conservatives lauded Bustamante's centralization policies and his administration's decision to execute a seemingly dangerous demagogue, Mexican liberals, who had begun to regain their popularity owing to Bustamante's inability to resolve either the country's foreign debt crisis or the general state of economic stagnation, portrayed the president as a would-be monarch and the murderer of a national hero. In 1832 liberals backed Santa Anna's rebellion against the Bustamante government. Shortly thereafter, Bustamante resigned the presidency and went into exile.

Within five years, the same forces that swept Bustamante from office would return him to the presidency. Continuing economic problems, along with the growing threat of war with the United States over Texas, had undermined the liberals' support and breathed new life into the conservatives' cause. Hombres de bien of all political persuasions came to believe that Mexico's only salvation lay in a strong centralized government. Anastasio Bustamante returned from exile and was elected president of the newly created Central Republic in 1837.

Bustamante subsequently attempted to bring stability to Mexico's political system by adopting a neutral stance and coopting conservatives and liberals alike into the new government. Events in the late 1830s almost immediately began to undermine Bustamante's efforts, however. First, the French blockade and siege of Veracruz in the 1838 Pastry War, despite proving unsuccessful, demonstrated that a centralized government was no more immune to external threats than its predecessor. In addition, as the states of Yucatán, Tabasco, and Chiapas followed Texas in seceding from the nation, and as Mexico's economic situation went from bad to worse, Bustamante attracted the growing criticism of both political camps. Conservatives looked upon his socializing with well-known liberals as evidence of his defection from the conservative cause, while liberals feared that his increasing need to assume extraordinary powers in times of crisis would lead ultimately to a monarchy. Disillusioned with their country's unending economic and political crises, Mexicans of all political convictions began to call for extreme measures. Bustamante's efforts to avoid measures that might alienate one faction or the other led to his being caricatured as apathetic and unable to follow a single course of action. The disintegration of his political base left the beleaguered president poorly equipped to handle the series of revolts that began in 1840 and ended with the dramatic siege of Mexico City in 1841, when Bustamante was forced from office and into exile. Although he returned to the Mexican political scene in the late 1840s, age and health led him into retirement in San Miguel de Allende, where he died in 1853, just five years after leading government forces one final time against a rebellion led by General Manuel Paredes y Arrillaga.

Bibliography

• Bustamante, Carlos Maria de, El gabinete Mexicano durante el segundo periodo del presidente D. Anastasio Bustamante. Mexico City: J.M. Lara, 1842
• Costeloe, Michael P., La primera republica federal de Mexico, 1824-1835. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1975

External links

• Anastasio Bustamante", Hispanos Famosos Website, http://coloquio.com/famosos/bustaman.htm (May 31, 2003).
• "Bustamante, Anastasio," Historical Text Archive, http://www.historicaltextarchive.com/print.php?artid=547 (May 31, 2003).