Antonio López de Santa Anna

Mexican military leader and politician

• Born: February 21, 1794
• Birthplace: Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
• Died: June 21, 1876
• Place of death: Mexico City, Mexico

Santa Anna dominated Mexico during the first forty years of its independence. Although his many presidencies and other power struggles were endemic to his time, he bears the greatest responsibility for the loss of territory to the United States and for retarding the development of political maturity in Mexico.

Early Life

Antonio López de Santa Anna (SAHN-tah AH-nah) was born on the family estate in eastern Mexico during the last decades of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. His family, of Spanish origin, had only arrived in Mexico a few years before his birth. The facts of his birth made him a criollo—a person born in America of recent Spanish origin—and that status would later influence his decisions in future political alliances.

Santa Anna had little formal education and did not get along well with his classmates when he was obliged to go to school. His only real interests from an early age were things military. In 1810, after a brief, failed attempt at a career in commerce in the city of Veracruz, he joined a local regiment of the Spanish army as a cadet. He soon transferred to a cavalry regiment and spent the next four years helping to subdue rebellions against Spain in what is now northeastern Mexico. He was promoted twice in 1812 for his service.

In 1813 Santa Anna saw action in Texas against both Mexican and American rebels. This first encounter with American rebels and the “war to the death” tactics that he witnessed Spain use against them would be important in his later dealings with Texas and the United States. After his return to Veracruz in 1814, he confined his military activities to putting down rebellions within the local region. He served as an aide to one of the last viceroys of Mexico in 1817, an assignment that took him briefly, and for the first time, to Mexico City. His spare time was spent furthering his education, particularly on military matters. It is important to note that Santa Anna did not like the pomp of Mexico City and preferred to spend his time in Veracruz. This would be a lifelong pattern in which his home province would provide the requisite base of operations for his many rebellions.

In 1820 a revolt of Spanish troops in Spain forced the king to restore the earlier, radical constitution of 1812. When this news reached Mexico, it set in motion a number of rebellions by criollo military officers within the ranks of local Spanish forces. Led by Agustín de Iturbide, these forces proclaimed an independent Mexico in 1821. Shortly after this proclamation, Santa Anna switched sides and declared his support for Iturbide and independence. This act was the first of a number of rebellions and changes of loyalty that characterized Santa Anna’s future life; it also signaled his new role as a major public figure. The pattern of pronouncing against an existing government and the promulgation of a “plan” that set forth the rebel leader’s concerns was the standard means of operation in Mexico during the first half of the nineteenth century. Therefore, Santa Anna’s use of it was nothing unusual.

Life’s Work

Santa Anna aided in securing the 1821 Treaty of Córdoba, in which Spain recognized Mexico’s independence. For this and other revolutionary activity, Iturbide promoted him to brigadier general. Within one year, he broke with Iturbide and proclaimed a federal republic in 1822. He served briefly in the Yucatan, married in 1825, and generally remained out of the public eye until 1829, when he defeated Spanish forces at Tampico, bringing considerable glory to himself nationwide. In the light of this glory, he rebelled against the government in 1832 and was elected president in March, 1833. He immediately retired to his estates, leaving the daily government to his vice president and leaving the way open for a takeover of the government in 1834, when he proclaimed a centrist republic to replace the previous federal one.

Given dictatorial powers, Santa Anna turned his attention to crushing anticentrist revolts in Texas and Zacatecas. He defeated Texan forces at the Alamo and Goliad in March, 1836. These two campaigns showed a brutal side of Santa Anna, one contradicted by his good treatment and even adoption of Texan prisoners during the 1840’s. Within one month of these victories, he was captured at the San Jacinto River by Sam Houston, forced to sign treaties recognizing Texan independence, and sent to Washington, D.C., before returning to Mexico.

After spending the next year in relative disgrace and seclusion, Santa Anna returned to national attention with the loss of a leg during the Pastry Wars of 1838-1839. Riding this wave of glory, he now hurried to defend Anastasio Bustamante, the same president he had ousted in 1832. Santa Anna served as a dictator from March to July, 1839, while Bustamante was away. Economic and political collapse led Santa Anna to revolt and gain power in 1841. In December, 1842, he again assumed dictatorial powers by abolishing a short-lived republic. He was elected president by a hand-picked assembly in 1843.

Between 1842 and 1844, Santa Anna increased the size of the army, undertook works of urban renewal, and furthered his cult of personalism through statues, medals, and the military honors accorded the reburial of his lost leg. At this time he also revised Mexican public education and revitalized the Academia de San Carlos, the nation’s premiere art institute. Decline began in 1844: Taxes for his elaborate lifestyle were too high, and rebellions broke out in the north and in the Yucatan. By 1845, crowds were defacing his monuments. Amid all this, his first wife died, but he soon remarried. In May of 1845, rebels captured Santa Anna, put him in prison, and then exiled him to Cuba “for life.”

Santa Anna returned triumphantly to Mexico on September 16, 1846, from his Cuban exile, having convinced U.S. diplomats that he alone could deliver more Mexican territory to the United States without a war. He then denounced negotiations and called for war with the United States. He was elected president on December 6, 1846. Santa Anna showed indecisiveness in the war with the United States. The Battle of Buena Vista was a stand-off, but Santa Anna retreated to Mexico City to quell political infighting. Within one year of his own return to Mexico, Santa Anna witnessed the American occupation of Mexico City. He fled to Jamaica.

From Jamaica, Santa Anna went to Colombia. From there, he was recalled to Mexico to save a nation in chaos that saw no solution to its problems. He was elected president in March of 1853 with dictatorial power and by December had assumed the title of “His Most Serene Highness.” Faced with many of the same problems that existed in his previous tenure of office, Santa Anna sold the territory of the American southwest known as the Gadsden Purchase to the United States in an effort to refill the public coffers. Facing failure on all fronts, he sailed into exile again in 1855, first to Colombia and then to Saint Thomas in the modern U.S. Virgin Islands. This would be his last flight from power.

Despite his exile, Santa Anna could not avoid Mexican politics. He returned to his country in 1864 to support the French-backed emperor Maximilian. Within one month of his return, the French expelled him. In true fashion, Santa Anna turned his efforts to toppling Maximilian, spending considerable time in the United States propounding his ideas. While trying to enter Mexico in 1867, Santa Anna was imprisoned for nearly six months. Having lost most of his land and wealth and feeling the end at hand, he wrote his will. In November, 1867, he began his final exile, first in Cuba, then in the Bahamas. A broken Santa Anna returned to Mexico under an amnesty in 1874. Having returned home, he completed his memoirs and died on June 21, 1876. He was buried the next day near Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Significance

The period from the 1820’s to the mid-1850’s is often referred to as the Age of Santa Anna, for no other single force had such a constant and powerful effect on Mexico at this time. In many respects, Santa Anna’s life was similar to that of many of his contemporaries, for these same years saw constant short-term governments that ranged the political spectrum from federal republic and central republic to dictatorship and monarchy. Few presidents served out their full terms of office, and military rebellions were the norm.

Santa Anna served five times as elected head of state and took power on several other occasions. When he ruled, he ruled absolutely, usually with a careful eye to clients’ interests. When he was not in power, he made it difficult for strong opposition to develop. He represented the typical military leader of both his time in Mexico and in other areas of Spanish America by his cultivation of personalism, which substituted loyalty to and patronage from the person of the military leader rather than political institutions.

This cult of personalism and the use of armed forces to propound and defend it effectively retarded the growth of strong political institutions in Mexico. Santa Anna’s alternate protection of and attacks on the Roman Catholic Church reflected the divided opinions of his day and presaged the Reform of 1857 and even the strong anticlericalism of the 1930’s. Driven by personal ambition and lack of education, Santa Anna is best seen as an opportunist who could raise an army from nothing and turn disastrous defeats into resounding personal achievements through a timely preempting of rising popular or elite demands. He is best remembered as the one person who is most responsible for the alienation to the United States of roughly half of Mexico’s territory.

Bibliography

Calcott, Wilfred H. Santa Anna: The Story of an Enigma Who Once Was Mexico. Reprint. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1967. Reprinted from an earlier 1936 edition, this is the first major modern treatment of Santa Anna. It presents the contradictions present in Santa Anna’s personality and the problems they posed for effective rule in Mexico.

Costeloe, Michael P. The Central Republic in Mexico, 1835-1846: “Hombres de Bien” in the Age of Santa Anna. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Costeloe studies the men of position and wealth in Mexico as they interacted with Santa Anna as clients and opponents. The author presents Santa Anna as one of this group, explaining to some degree his move to a more autocratic government.

Hardin, Stephen L. The Alamo, 1836: Santa Anna’s Texas Campaign. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. Recounts Santa Anna’s slaughter of about two hundred people at the Alamo on March 6, 1836, and how this action set off the war for Texas independence.

Jones, Oakah L. Santa Anna. New York: Twayne, 1968. Part of Twayne’s Rulers and Statesmen of the World series, this is a detailed account and remains one of the standard biographies of Santa Anna. Includes a handy chronology.

Lynch, John. Caudillos in Spanish America, 1800-1850. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1992. Lynch treats the origins, characteristics, and development of the caudillo (military-political leader) through the formative years of the Spanish American republics. He then analyzes the careers of four caudillos, one of whom is Santa Anna, and finds him the least constructive of the figures studied.

O’Brien, Steven. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. New York: Chelsea House, 1992. Part of the Hispanics of Achievement series, this book, written for a younger audience, presents Santa Anna in a generally favorable light. Some illustrations included.

Olivera, Ruth R., and Liliane Crété. Life in Mexico Under Santa Anna, 1822-1855. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. Largely based on the observations and comments of visitors to Mexico and important residents there, this work presents an overview of daily life during the “Age of Santa Anna.” Olivera covers the arts, industry, festivals, and social classes. This is one of the few studies to present Santa Anna in other than purely military or political context.

Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de. The Eagle: The Autobiography of Santa Anna. Austin, Tex.: State House Press, 1988. A translation of Santa Anna’s account of his life and achievements. Although it is quite readable, Santa Anna generally presents himself as the victim of the conspiracies or incompetence of others, which is very much in the style of Santa Anna’s other publications.

Scheina, Robert L. Santa Anna: A Curse Upon Mexico. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2002. A military and political history of Santa Anna, depicting him as a political opportunist but a brave and resourceful military leader.