A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States by Timothy J. Henderson

Author:Timothy J. Henderson [Henderson, Timothy J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2008-05-13T07:00:00+00:00

5

THE ELUSIVE RECONQUEST

After his humiliating defeat at San Jacinto, it appeared certain that Santa Anna’s career had come to a crushing, ignominious end. But the perpetual dysfunction of the Mexican government, combined with a remarkable series of events, brought him once again to power. This time he would abandon all restraint, indulging his every debauched and vainglorious whim. Among those whims was the commissioning of a gilt-bronze statue of himself pointing defiantly northward, toward Texas. His detractors noted that the statue was also pointing in the direction of the mint, but the message Santa Anna wished to convey was clear: he, Santa Anna, was the man—the only man—who could carry out the ardently desired reconquest of the lost province.

Politicians decreed that the loss of Texas was a blight upon the nation’s honor and that recapturing that province was the primary national imperative. Unfortunately, they spent little time pondering the true reasons for the loss of Texas, choosing to blame that loss on the perfidy of the United States and of their own political rivals rather than on Mexico’s weakness. Analyzing and addressing the root causes of Mexico’s weakness was obviously a difficult task. The ambitious politicos of the 1830s and 1840s found it easier and more profitable to seize on the Texas issue as fodder in demagogic campaigns. The loss of Texas added still more poison to the already toxic brew that was Mexican politics.

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