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The 'War of the Reform' was a Mexican civil war fought from December 1857 to January 1861, launched by the liberals and the moderate revolutionists dissatisfied with the Catholic Church's stronghold on government affairs. The war ended with the Liberals being victorious and President Benito Juárez moving his administration to Mexico City. After Congress had completed the task of voting in a new constitution, called the {constitution of 1857}, it called for elections of the federal government, as well as of the states. The legislature of each state established its own constitution based on the principles of the federal constitution. The first Constituent Congress, which functioned under the principles of the Constitution of 1857.

Contents

Background

Civil War

Foreign intervention

Government of Maximilian

Return of Juárez

See also

References

Background

In 1857, the situation became unstable, to the point that this first Constituent Congress, which had elected Ignacio Comonfort president of the Republic and Benito Juárez president of the Supreme Court of Justice, became worried over the extraordinary governing powers conferred to the executive. The tenor of events precluded even the observance of constitutional articles regarding individual rights,which was seen as perpetuating instability. This instability grew into one of the bloodiest wars in Mexico's history.
In December 1857 Félix Zuloaga announced the Tacubaya project, which stated that the Constitution ceased to be in effect and that Comonfort would continue to be the president, governing with broad powers; it called por a special session of Congress to draft a new constitution that would truly reflect the will of the citizens, doing away in the meantime with all those individuals who did not support this plan. In this period executions were common, and a number of people fled north to the , who after resigning his rights to the throne of Austria, accepted the offer to become the emperor of Mexico.
Before such panorama, the president. Benito Juarez issued a call to the Mexicans to be united against the invaders, but the congress, which was markedly anti-Juarista, resisted many of the presidential initiatives. So strong was the opposition in the Chamber that 51 deputies signed a formal request asking Juárezto resign due to his incompetence; nevertheless, 52 deputies voted in Juárez's favor, allowing him to keep power by a single vote. The President made a diplomatic effort to end the ultimatum of the tripartite alliance. The minister of Exterior Relations, Manuel Doblado initiated a message interchange with the European governments. Because of the urgency of the situation, Congress had to authorize the executive branch to take all necessary measures for the purpose of retaining independence, defending the integrity of the territory, and maintaining the form of government set forth in the Constitution and the Laws of Reform. The Mexican government managed to reach an agreement with the Spanish representative and to subscribe the text known as the Preliminaries of the Solitude. This document was backed by the British but not by the French, thus demonstrating their true intentions: invasion of Mexico.
On April 9, 1862, the powers suspended the negotiations of the Convention of London, reason why the Spanish and British troops left the country. Meanwhile Almonte, under protection of the French forces, had arrived at Mexico and taken control of the government. His government defended the intervention and organized a cabinet with members of the Conservative Party. At that time, the invading army undertook the march towards the Mexican plateau with the purpose of seizing the capital and making an impression to the Mexicans with the forces they commanded. Although it is certain that at first the invaders were surprised at being defeated at Puebla by General Ignacio Zaragoza in the famous Battle of Puebla ("Cinco de Mayo", 1862), the arrival of reinforcements and a new French leader, General Forey, would in the long run allow the invading army to arrive at the capital in 1863.
On May 31, faced with the imminent arrival of the French troops, Juárez and his cabinet left the capital. That same day Congress gave the president a new vote of confidence, it closed its sessions and dissolved. Nevertheless, several deputies, among them the president of the Chamber, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, decided to accompany the president in his peregrination toward the north. Initially, Juárez, his cabinet and the permanent delegation went to San Luis Potosí where the powers of the nation settled down. Later, the government of the traveling Republic would pass through different parts of the country, staying in spite of a thousand vicissitudes as the maximum organ of Mexican representation throughout the time that the French intervention and the empire of Maximilian I would last, and indeed many foreign governments continued to recognize the Juarez government-in-exile as the legitimate authority. The Congress granted extraordinary faculties to Juárez at the beginning of the fight, and allowed him to remain chief executive after his prescribed term ended in November 1865. Juárez decided to prolong his mandate beyond this date having adduced the severe circumstances in which the nation found itself, and with the purpose of avoiding the dismemberment of the Liberal group.

Government of Maximilian

The first actions General Forey undertook upon entering the city were aimed toward giving the invasion he was carrying out a tinge of legality. He proposed the formation of a Supreme Governing Board that in turn would select three people to exercise executive power. This Board, supported by 215 individuals, would make up the Assembly of Notables which would immediately sign a document directed at forming the interventionist government. In this document it was ordered that the nation adopt a moderate and hereditary monarchy headed by a foreign prince who would have the title of Emperor of Mexico. As stipulated, this title was to be offered to the Austrian archduke Ferdinand Maximillian. (Later it was declared that the provisional executive power would bear the name of Regency.)
Despite critiques of his invasive presence, from his first acts Maximillian gave clear signs of his liberal position with respect to certain topics such as the closure of the University, considering it reactionary. During the Empire, for example, he never spoke of seizing former clerical lands and property from their new owners. Furthermore, one of the emperor's first orders was to grant total freedom of the press so that everyone would be free to voice his opinions. Later the imperial government ordered that priests must perform the sacraments without requiring compensation. Income received from the nationalization of church properties would be turned over to the government; the emperor and his heirs would enjoy, with respect to church matters, the same rights as did the kings of Spain in their colonies, with civil control over marriages, births and death registrations, as well as over cemeteries, and, in short, a series of measures aimed at upholding some of the reform laws that had previously been passed under the Liberal government. The tenor of the orders issued by the imperial government did not please the Conservatives, much less the Church, which immediately pressured the emperor to eliminate all of the reform laws.
Maximillian found in the Conservatives a great resistance to his liberal policies, and in the Liberals an iron opposition since to them he represented the invaders, and, by extension, an attack on sovereignty and national institutions. And although the French army had enabled the Regency to govern in some of the states, it never managed to gain absolute control over the whole country. When the army withdrew from a city, Liberal groups immediately retook it for their cause. Unfortunately for them, when the American Civil War had ended, in 1866, Maximillian discovered that Napoleon had decided to withdraw his military support. This was done in part because a United States blockade of Veracruz prevented the arrival of reinforcements, and in part because the intervention had begun to be questioned in his own country, on both its own merits and for the onerous cost that it represented for France.

Return of Juárez

Through 1867, Juárez had retaken various strongholds once occupied by the imperialists for the Liberal cause, making it to San Luis Potosí, where he waited to retake the center of the country. If the "itinerant republic" had lost men during the fight, now foremost among their ranks were future politicians, like Colonel Porfirio Diaz, whose work during the war against France would be fundamental in the siege and capture of the city of Puebla, which made him the famous "hero of April 2." Finally, the military chiefs gained territory, and, when Querétaro surrendered, Maximillian was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death by firing squad. His death put an end to a tragic moment in Mexico's history. It meant the triumph of the Republic, the strengthening of the union and the national pride as well as of the Mexicans' capacity to safeguard their integrity.

See also

★ French intervention in Mexico

References

★ This article draws heavily on the in the Spanish-language Wikipedia, which was accessed in the version of November 2005.