Tafa

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Reform War

The Reform War (Spanish: Guerra de Reformat) in Mexico is one of the episodes of the long struggle between Liberal and Conservative forces that dominated the country’s history in the 19th century. The Liberals wanted a federalist government, limiting traditional Catholic Church and military influence in the country. TheConservatives wanted a centralist government, even amonarchy with the Church and military keeping their traditional roles and powers. This struggle erupted into a full civil war when the Liberals, then in control of the government after ousting Antonio López de Santa Anna, began to implement a series of laws designed to strip the Church and military, but especially the Church, of its rights, powers andproperty. Conservative resistance to this culminated in the Plan of Tacubaya, which destroyed the government of President Ignacio Comonfort and caused the remaining Liberals to move their government to the city of Veracruz. The Conservatives controlled Mexico City and much of central Mexico, but the rest of the states chose whether to side with the Conservative or Liberal government. Being lessexperienced militarily, the Liberals lost most of the early battles, but the tide turned when Conservatives twice failed to take Veracruz. Liberal victories accumulated thereafter until Conservative forces surrendered in December 1860. While the Conservative forces lost the war, guerrillas remained active in the countryside for years after, and Conservatives in Mexico would conspire with French forces toinstall Maximilian I as emperor during the following French Intervention in Mexico.
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Liberals vs. Conservatives in post Independence Mexico
After the end of the Mexican War of Independence, the country was strongly divided as it tried to recover from more than a decade of fighting. From 1821 to 1857, fifty different governments ruled the country.These governments included dictatorships, constitutional republican governments and a monarchy.[1] The political division is roughly divided into two groups, the Liberals and the Conservatives. The Liberal political movements had their beginnings in the secret meetings of the Freemasonry. The secret nature of the society allowed for discreet political discussion. Conservatives favored a strongcentralized government, with many wanting a European-style monarch. Conservatives favored protecting many of the institutions inherited from the colonial period including tax and legal exemptions for the Catholic Church and the military. Liberals favored the establishment of federalist republic based on ideas coming out of the European Enlightenment, and the limiting of the Church’s and military’sprivileges. Until the end of the Reform period, Mexico’s history would be dominated by these two factions vying for control and fighting against foreign incursions at the same time.[2] The Reform Era of Mexican history is generally defined from 1855 to 1876.[3]
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[edit]Ascendency of the Liberals in the 1850s
In the 1850s, the Liberal factionsgained political control under leaders such as Benito Juárez, Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, Juan Álvarez and others. This ascendancy came after the loss of about half of Mexico’s colonial territory to the United States in the Mexican-American War. Liberals believed that the Church and the military were the source of most of Mexico’s problems.[3]
Liberals had two internal factions, the puros or radicals, andthe moderados or moderates. These two factions united when Juárez and Melchor Ocampo, the leaders of these two factions and both in exile in New Orleans in 1854, supported the uprising of Juan Alvarez against Antonio López de Santa Anna, who was widely blamed for the loss of Texas and what is now the southwest U.S. The two set out principles in a document called the Plan of Ayutla.[3]The Plan...