(On This Day In History) June 22, 1876: General Santa Anna Dies In Mexico City

Embittered and impoverished, the once mighty Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna dies in Mexico City.

Born in 1792 at Jalapa, Vera Cruz, Mexico, Santa Anna was the son of middle-class parents. As a teen, he won a commission in the Spanish army and might have been expected to live out an unspectacular career as a middle-level army officer. However, the young Santa Anna quickly distinguished himself as a capable fighter and leader, and after 1821, he gained national prominence in the successful Mexican war for independence from Spain. In 1833, he won election to the presidency of the independent republic of Mexico by an overwhelming popular majority. His dedication to the ideal of a democratic role proved weak, though, and he proclaimed himself dictator in 1835.

Santa Anna's assumption of dictatorial power over Mexico brought him into direct conflict with a growing movement for independence in the Mexican state of Texas. During the 1820s and 1830s, large numbers of Euro-Americans had settled in the area of Texas, and many of them remained more loyal to the United States than to their distant rulers in Mexico City. Some viewed Santa Anna's overthrow of the Mexican Republic as an opportunity to break away and form an independent Republic of Texas that might one day become an American state.

Determined to crush the Texas rebels, Santa Anna took command of the Mexican army that invaded Texas in 1836. His forces successfully defeated the Texas rebels at the Alamo, and he personally ordered the execution of 400 Texan prisoners after the Battle of Goliad. However, these two victories planted the seeds for Santa Anna's defeat. "Remember the Alamo" and "Remember Goliad" became the rallying cries for a reinvigorated Texan army. Lulled into overconfidence by his initial easy victories, Santa Anna was taken by surprise at San Jacinto, and his army was annihilated on April 21, 1836. The captured Santa Anna, fearing execution, willingly signed an order calling for all Mexican troops to withdraw. Texas became an independent republic.

Deposed during his captivity with the Texan rebels, Santa Anna returned to Mexico a powerless man. During the next two decades, however, the highly unstable political situation in Mexico provided him with several opportunities to regain-and again lose-his dictatorial power. All told, he became the head of the Mexican government 11 times. Overthrown for the last time in 1855, he spent the remaining two decades of his life scheming with elements in Mexico, the United States, and France to stage a comeback.

Although he was clearly a brilliant political opportunist, Santa Anna was ultimately loyal only to himself and he had an insatiable lust for power. While Santa Anna played an important role in achieving Mexican independence, his subsequent governments were also at least partially responsible for the loss of the Southwest to the United States. He died in poverty and squalor in Mexico City at the age of 82, no doubt still dreaming of a return to power.

The same problem with Mexico today - massive corruption, power concentrated in the hands of a limited Euro-Hispanic power elite who also monopolizes most of the wealth, and masses of the Indian and mixed race majority living in ignorance and abject poverty.

Is it any wonder socialism and communism would flourish in such an environment?

We are indeed fortunate in Anglo-America. A true aristocracy of wealth never developed here - so far. The British government encouraged mass immigration from all parts of the British isles and even encouraged and actively recruited immigrants from other parts of Europe to come here . This created a large middle class and historic opportunities for wealth for the common man. For some reason the British aristocrats never moved here in any great numbers.

Contrary circumstances in South and Central America resulted in the kind of mess that is now threatening the integrity of our own borders.

Perhaps we should consider an invasion of Mexico, removal of the ruling elites from power, redistribution of land and money there, and education of the masses as real solutions to our southern border problems.

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There are several reasons.

First, the areas he lost were exceedingly marginal, vast though they were they had tiny populations and negligible immediate economic significance.

Second, his successes (or well-publicized heroism) occurred in or near the heart of the Mexican population, during the war against Spain and against Spanish and French invasions, in places like Vera Cruz and Tampico. He was also very effective at putting down rebellions (save one, naturally). It was his military specialty, and he was very successful at it, repeatedly over twenty years. It is usually forgotten that the Texan revolution came as part of a general rebellion of much of provincial Mexico, which he put down.

Third, he was an exceptional personality, a politician of magnetism and great ability, exploiting a chronically chaotic situation.

Fourth, Mexico’s other leadership options were, in general, no better. Santa Ana was not the only military dictator and coup plotter in the picture. Mexico was overrun with men like him.

Fifth, he was perhaps unique in having a reputation as a sort of Mexican Cincinnatus, as he was several times called upon to take over when Mexico was in difficulty, and he did in fact repeatedly voluntarily (and several times not-so-voluntarily) renounce power once the emergency of the day was over.

The big problem with Mexico has always been the direct correlation between political power and wealth. The wealthy had political power because of their wealth, and were always willing to co-opt an efficient warlord into their midst, providing him with wealth through corruption, intermarriage, etc.

Another way of looking at this is that you never want the same people to control most of the money and most of the guns.

There is relatively little “churning” of those with wealth. The families with great wealth today are largely those who were wealthy 75 years ago. This is not true in the US, where the wealthiest people in the country had never been heard of 25 years earlier, or in some cases 10 years.

“Is it any wonder socialism and communism would flourish in such an environment?”

Mexico (and most Latin American countries) have never had true free-market capitalism, even the diluted version we have in the US. Their system is crony capitalism, a very different animal.

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