Special Collections Division the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Vol. X * No. 1 * Spring 1996

The José Salazar Ilarregui Papers
by Maritza Arrigunga

There is a historical cliché that says the "winners write the history," and this is probably more true than historians like to admit. It is rare that the losing side in a conflict or the defeated nation in a war be treated objectively and fairly in the written histories that follow. In the spring of 1991, the Special Collections Division acquired the papers of José Salazar Ilarregui, one of the "losers" in the nineteenth century history of Mexico. Salazar served under Emperor Maximilian of Mexico as Imperial Commissioner for Yucatan and led the conservative forces on the Yucatan peninsula for nearly three years. These papers reflect the inner workings of Maximilian's government and the efforts of the conservative elements in the country to rule and bring stability to southeastern Mexico.

To understand the Salazar Papers, however, one must first know something about Mexican history in the 1850s and 1860s. In 1854-1855, a group of Mexican liberal leaders participated in the successful Ayutla Revolution in the state of Guerrero to overthrow the government of Antonio López de Santa Anna. One of the primary concerns of these revolutionaries was to write a new constitution that would embrace the liberal ideas in vogue in the nineteenth century. Their desire was to reform the government in order to regenerate the nation. This movement came to be known as La Reforma (the Reform).

In November 1855, the first reform law was issued abolishing the special privileges of the religious and military fueros. The fueros had granted soldiers and clerics the right to be tried by their own courts for civil or criminal crimes. After the passage of the reform law, the ecclesiastical and military courts handled only those cases dealing with canon or military law. This law, named after Minister of Justice Benito Juarez, generated relentless opposition by conservatives and divided the liberals into two factions.

Under the presidency of Ignacio Comonfort, a second controversial law was drafted, this one by his secretary of treasury, Miguel Lerdo de Tejada. The Ley Lerdo was promulgated on June 6, 1856. Its purpose was to increase the revenues of the government and stimulate the economy. All institutions were denied ownership of landed estates. Therefore all of the estates owned by the Catholic Church were to be sold. The church was forbidden to own land, but it would receive some money in selling its lands, and the government would benefit from collecting sales taxes from these transactions. Unfortunately, the law had other results. The revenues derived from the sales were minimal, and many wealthy Mexicans were deterred by the clergy from taking advantage of the anticlerical law. As a result, many foreigners were the ones to benefit from the law. The law was not restricted only to church lands. Indeed, any corporation was forbidden land ownership; consequently, the Indians' communal lands, the ejidos, were taken away leaving many Indian families landless.

The reform laws strained the social and political fabric of Mexico, but the breaking point came with the adoption of the Constitution of 1857. It had been drafted with the intent of removing all remnants of special privilege in Mexican society. Slavery and compulsory service were abolished, as were all titles of nobility. The constitution provided that instead of the vice president, the head of the Supreme Court would take over in the event of the death or incapacity of the president. Suffrage was offered to all males twenty-one years old if single, eighteen if married. The constitution also included a bill of rights guaranteeing freedom of speech, press, and education. Freedom of worship was implicit because Roman Catholicism was not made the state religion. Objections to many parts of the document were immediately voiced. The bishops saw freedom of education as contradicting canon law and argued that abolishing compulsory service would allow nuns and priests to renounce their vows.

Civil servants and military men were faced with a serious predicament. They could pledge allegiance to the constitution and face threatened excommunication by the Catholic Church, or they could oppose the constitution and lose their positions. The new constitution and its implementation divided Mexico into two irreconcilable camps, leading eventually to civil war, foreign intervention, and the Maximilian Empire.

In December 1857, the Plan of Tacubaya, advanced by General Felix Zuloaga, denounced the constitution and called for a new convention. After taking Mexico City, Zuloaga and his supporters dissolved Congress and tried to win President Comonfort to the cause, but the president hesitated, resigned the presidency, and left the country. Zuloaga was appointed chief executive by a junta. In the meantime, Benito Juarez, who as head of the Supreme Court was next in line for the presidency, assumed the presidency in Guanajuato, declaring that the constitutional government had been reestablished. Afterwards, he moved his liberal government to Veracruz. Now, Mexico had two presidents and two governments: one in Veracruz proclaiming "Constitución y Legalidad," and the other in Mexico City proclaiming "Religión y Fueros."

The War of Reform (1858-1860), sometimes called the Three Years War, was a long civil war marked by excesses on both sides. In late December 1860, the last battle was fought and won by the liberal army. In March 1861, Juarez won the presidential election, but the liberal triumph brought peace only for a limited time because complications with foreign powers had emerged.

After the war, the nation was bankrupt and owed more than $80 million to foreign powers. Juarez and his government were willing to accept their responsibility, but immediate payments were impossible. In July 1861, he decreed suspension for two years of all payments on foreign debts. In response, France, Spain, and Great Britain signed a treaty in October 1861 to join in an armed intervention to confiscate military forts and customhouses in Mexico, allegedly to collect revenues to cover the debts owed to their respective governments. The Spanish army, led by General Prim, arrived at Veracruz in December 1861 and was joined by English and French detachments a month later. In order to explain their presence, the European allies issued a proclamation in which nothing was said about debts. They had come to aid the country to solve its internal disorder and to "preside at the grand spectacle of [its] regeneration." The allies' leaders soon found their military commanders bogged down in disagreements, but they all acknowledged that the French had a deeper interest in Mexico than the other countries. Napoleon III was emperor of France and had an ambitious foreign policy. As a result, the British and Spanish decided to leave Mexico with the French.

On May 31, President Juarez and his cabinet were forced to move to San Luis Potosí, where he remained until December 22, 1863. From that point on, Juarez would be on the run in Northern Mexico, from Chihuahua to Saltillo to Monterrey. It took almost a year for French General Elie Forey and his forces to take Mexico City, but when they did he organized a provisional government. The government was a triumvirate formed by two conservative generals and a clergyman acting as regent. In addition, an Assembly of Notables, consisting of 215 Mexican citizens, was called to decide on the future government of the country. The assembly proclaimed that Mexico would be a hereditary monarchy with a Catholic prince as emperor. The chosen candidate, previously selected by Napoleon III, was the Austrian archduke, Ferdinand Maximilian von Habsburg. In October 1863, a delegation headed by José María Gutierrez de Estrada offered the crown to Maximilian. He accepted the offer on the condition that the Mexican people should vote in favor of the offer. After this Marshal Achille Bazaine, who had replaced Forey as French commander in chief, masterminded a favorable plebiscite.

On May 28, 1864, Maximilian and his wife, Carlotta, arrived at Veracruz, and two weeks later the young couple made their jubilant entry into Mexico City. For the next ten months Maximilian's government established control in all but four of Mexico's twenty-four provinces. However, the imperial armies, both French and conservatives, found out that they could not control and pacify the entire country. Benito Juarez had maintained his government in Paso del Norte, and his forces gained strength at the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865. A large volume of surplus military equipment was transferred to the Mexican republican forces, while thousands of discharged American veterans joined the liberal army.

Napoleon III was under pressure from the U.S. to withdraw from Mexico, and France's Chamber of Deputies advised against a costly Mexican campaign while their country needed to prepare for the rising Prussian threat. Bowing to this pressure, Napoleon announced that his forces would be withdrawn in three separate stages. Marshal Bazaine advised Maximilian to abdicate, but he refused. By mid-March 1867, all foreign troops were evacuated, and
only a few cities were under the imperial banner: Mexico City, Puebla, Veracruz, and Merida.

In February Maximilian had taken command of the imperial army in Queretaro. On May 15, Maximilian and his army fell to the republican forces of General Mariano Escobedo. After a perfunctory trial, Maximilian was executed. With his death the second empire collapsed and the Conservative Party died as a political force in Mexico. Since then the term "conservative" has carried with it the stigma of association with traitors and foreign invaders. In some instances, the three years of Maximilian's government is not even discussed in Mexico's official history. Moreover, the records of imperial forces or administrations that were not destroyed by the triumphant liberal-republican armies were deliberately left to oblivion or natural destruction. The liberal victory of 1867 is seen by most Mexican historians as the beginning of a new era in the nation's history.

Salazar Ilarregui took office as the Imperial Commissioner for Yucatan on September 4, 1864. He served in that capacity until March 1866. On March 3, Maximilian transferred him to Mexico City to head one of the national ministries (Gobernación.) He remained in the nation's capital until October 1866, when he was sent back to Merida, Yucatan's capital. While he was in Mexico City, the Imperial Commissioner for Yucatan had been Don Domingo Bureau. On November 10, 1866, Salazar once again assumed the government of Yucatan, and Bureau was appointed Imperial Commissioner of Veracruz. Salazar held this position until he capitulated to the republican armies in June of the next year.

A large portion of the Salazar Ilarregui Papers concentrates on his second term, providing minute details of the last six months of his administration before his surrender to the forces of General Cepeda Peraza on June 17, 1867. There are a few files from his early administration in 1864, but only two reports from 1865. There are also several accounts and reports from various imperial administrative and military officials during the administration of Domingo Bureau. These deal primarily with internal affairs and the so-called Caste War of 1866 (April-November). Included in the papers are military and official correspondence from Commander Francisco Canton Rosado, General Felipe Navarrete, and commanders Pablo Tommasek, Juan Ortoll, and José Lara.

José Salazar Ilarregui was born in Hermosillo, Sonora, in 1823. He graduated from the Colegio de Minería as a mathematical engineer. He was commissioned to work in 1849-1850 on the U.S.-Mexico boundary survey mandated by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. He also worked on the measurement of the Mesilla. On July 8, 1863, he represented Chihuahua in the Assembly of Notables to choose the future government of the country and later was in charge of the Ministry of Public Works. He was exiled to New York after the fall of Maximilian, but returned at the request of the Mexican government to teach, which he did until his death in 1892. In 1850 his work on the border survey was published under the title Datos de los trabajos astronómicos y topográficos dispuestos en forma de diario, practicados durante el año de 1849 y principios de 1850 por la Comisión de Límites en la línea que divide esta República de los Estados Unidos. Salazar had the reputation of being a scientist and a man who was fair and honest. Even his political enemies admired and respected him.

His papers reflect a tumultuous time in Mexico's history and a point of view rarely told and currently unpopular in Mexico. The José Salazar Ilarregui Papers include two boxes of documents dating from 1864 to 1867. The papers are open for research. For more information about the papers, please call Maritza Arrigunaga at (817) 272-3393. [Webmaster's note: The finding aid for the Ilarregui Papers is now available on the Special Collections web site].

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