The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 89, July 1985 - April, 1986 Page: 309
610 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Texas Question in Mexican Politics,
1836-1845
JOSEFINA ZORAIDA VAZQUEZ*
THE HISTORY OF MEXICO'S TRAGIC DECADE FROM THE SEPARATION OF
Texas to the time of the North American invasion remains to be
written. We Mexicans have avoided confronting the period during
which the prosperous and powerful kingdom of New Spain vanished,
leaving behind the mutilated republic of 1848. Some incomplete ac-
counts exist in classical Mexican historiography and in North American
monographs about the Texas Republic or the War with Mexico, but
most are explanations constructed on the basis of biased sources of the
time, often employed uncritically. It is difficult, furthermore, to charac-
terize the period, since the social turmoil that ensued after indepen-
dence, deriving from the dissolution of New Spain's organic society,
with the debilitation or ruin of some social groups (for instance, the
miners and artisans) and the strengthening or appearance of others
(such as the army, the moneylenders, and the foreign merchants),
translated into a political struggle that would not end until society
achieved a new equilibrium. The exertion of foreign pressures to pro-
tect commercial interests has not been sufficiently studied. Sometimes
foreign merchants had direct involvement in political pronunciamientos,
as in 1841.' More often they became indirectly involved, providing ad-
*Josefina Zoraida Vazquez has been associated with the Center for Historical Studies at El
Colegio de M6xico since 196o. Her publications include Historia de la historiografia (1965); Na-
cionalismo y educaci6n en Mdxico (1970); Mexicanos y norteamericanos ante la guerra del 47 (1972);
Historia moderna y contemporanea de Mexico, vol. I (1980); and The United States and Mexico (1985).
Research for this article was conducted under the auspices of a Guggenheim Fellowship,
1983-1984.
This article was translated byJesuis F. de la Teja, a doctoral candidate in history at the Univer-
sity of Texas, Austin. De la Teja's article "Bexar: Profile of a Tejano Community, 182o-1832,"
coauthored with John Wheat, appeared in the July 1985 Quarterly.
'Antonio L6pez de Santa Anna and Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga issued the pronunciamiento
of 1841, which sought to overthrow the government of Anastasio Bustamante and to abolish
the 15 percent tax on imports. (A pronunciamiento is a declaration of insurrection by a political
or military group for a stated set of reasons. Trans.)
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 89, July 1985 - April, 1986, periodical, 1985/1986; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117151/m1/365/?rotate=90: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.