Ideology
Centralism
The liberal and conservative parties had not entirely coalesced at the time of the drafting of the Constitution of 1824, and yet the eventual Conservative cause of centralism was at the center of the debates. Ironically, a liberal, Father Mier would lay out the centralist arguments that would eventually form one of the core Conservative principles. Mier argued that the nation needed a strong centralized government to guard against Spanish attempts to reconquer her former colony, and that a federation rather suited a situation in which previously sovereign states were attempting to unite as had happened with the United States. New Spain had never been made up of autonomous provinces. Federation for Mexico, according to Mier would then be an act of separation rather than unification and only lead to internal conflict.[5] The arguments for federation prevailed however, motivated by the long struggle for independence to seek as much autonomy as possible, and an eagerness to reap the salaries that would accompany local bureaucracies.[6]
Conservatives would finally be able to discard the Constitution of 1824 after the overthrow of the liberal presidency of Valentin Gomez Farias in 1832. A newly elected conservative congress began work on a new constitution that would eventually come to be known as the Siete Leyes, which replaced the Mexican states with departments, inaugurating the Centralist Republic of Mexico. The governors of the departments were to be appointed by the central government from among candidates nominated by departmental assemblies.[7]
Another Conservative constitution would be inaugurated in 1843 through the Bases Orgánicas, which continued the departmental system. The departmental governors were once again appointed by the central government from nominees submitted by the departmental assemblies.[8]
Clericalism
Mexico through the Plan of Iguala, gained its independence as a Catholic confessional state, and even the liberal Constitution of 1824 declared the Roman Catholic religion the sole legally permitted religion.
The liberal presidency of Valentin Gomez Farias began a series of anti-clerical measures as early as 1834. The government shut down church schools, assumed the right to make clerical appointments to the church, and shut down monasteries.[9] It was at this point that the government began proposing the nationalization of church lands as well.[10] Conservative backlash led to the fall of the Gomez Farias administration.
The issue of nationalizing church lands was brought up again by Gomez Farias once more who had once again found himself in the presidency during the Mexican–American War. This time Gomez Farias urged the nationalization of church lands as a means of funding the war effort, but the efficacy and prudence of such a measure was questioned by Conservatives, even by moderate liberals.[11] There were clashes in the cabinet over the matter,[12] and another Conservative revolt known as the Revolt of the Polkos once again toppled Gomez Farias.
A final and ill-fated Conservative effort to fight back against the anti-clerical measures of the Liberal Party took place during the pivotal La Reforma period which was inaugurated by the Plan of Ayutla that brought the liberal Juan Alvarez to power. This time it was not only the nationalization of church lands, but the question of religious freedom, and thejurisdiction of canon law over clergy that was brought to fore during the discussions regarding the drafting of the Constitution of 1857. Jose Julian Tornel wrote a pamphlet defending the Catholic Church's management of property and finances against advocates of disestablishment, warning that the private market in both fields would be much less generous to the public.[13] Opponents of religious freedom argued that it would undermine national cohesion.[14] In the end however, the liberal measures triumphed, church properties not related to religious functions were nationalized, priests remained under the jurisdiction of canon law only in non-civil cases, and for the first time a Mexican Constitution did not declare Catholicism as the state religion.
Conservative backlash would trigger the Reform War, and it was during the war that the liberal president Benito Juarez went much further than the earlier reform measures by nationalizing all the remaining church properties in order to fund the war effort. The Conservatives would eventually lose the war in 1860, and the liberal separation of church and state remained entrenched.
The Military ‘Fuero’
In the Hispanic legal tradition, a fuero is a legal privilege in general and even in contemporary times it is still the term used to refer to legal immunity enjoyed by legislators and other statesmen. The fuero of the Conservative slogan ‘religion y fueros’ referred to a specific legal military privilege that amounted to a separate legal system for Mexican soldiers.
The fuero system in Mexico dated back to the colonial era, and historian Lyle McAlister writes that “the [fuero] rendered [the army] virtually immune from civil authority”.[15]
The efforts of the liberal president Valentin Gomez Farias to abolish the fuero a system contributed to the uprisings against his government.[16]
In 1852, under the Conservative presidency of Santa Anna, there were some efforts to moderately reform the fuero system. Under Minister of War, and future Conservative president of Mexico, Manuel Robles Pezuela, there were discussions to confine the fuero to military related criminal matters.[17]
Liberal efforts to abolish the fuero system through the Ley Juárez later integrated into the Constitution of 1857, further inflamed Conservative opposition and eventually helped trigger the Reform War, which the Conservatives ended up losing, effectively putting the matter to rest.
Corporatism
Corporatism is the principle that the legislative power of a nation ought to include representatives from bodies or corporations of various segments or classes in society.
The Constitution of 1843, formally known as the Bases Orgánicas took into account such principles, because while it established a chamber of deputies representing geographic districts, it also established a senate “composed of 63 members, one third from the industrial classes, including merchants”[18]
When the Conservative Mariano Paredes overthrew the liberal president Jose Joaquin Herrera at the end of 1845, he arranged for a new congress to be elected also taking into account corporatist principles. “Congress was to be composed of 160 deputies, representing the following nine classes, namely: real estate owners and agriculturists; merchants; miners; manufacturers; literary professions; magistracy; public functionaries; clergy; and the army.”[19]
Monarchism
Certain conservative intellectuals would support the establishment of a monarchy, and the Conservative Party would eventually collaborate with the French to establish the Second Mexican Empire. However, after the fall of the First Mexican Empire, Mexican monarchism was reduced to a fringe movement. A Conservative government was in power when Jose Maria Gutierrez Estrada published his monarchist essay in 1840, indeed it was directly addressed to President Anastasio Bustamante, but in response to its publication Estrada found himself facing backlash from both Conservative and Liberal parties, accusations of sedition, and was forced to flee the nation.[20]
In December 1845, the Conservative general Mariano Paredes published a pronunciamiento against the liberal government of the liberal president Jose Joaquin Herrera, ostensibly because the president intended to recognize the independence of Texas, but the pronunciamiento was also publicly perceived as containing monarchist sympathies.[21] Herrera was overthrown and Paredes became president. As the new government announced a plan for constitutional reform, the press began to attack monarchism.[22] The Conservative statesman Antonio Haro y Tamariz joined such critical voices, expressing skepticism that monarchy was the best form of government for Mexico and pointing out that monarchies are typically supported by a nobility and that there was no nobility in Mexico, sarcastically suggesting that the government start granting titles to generals.[23] The nonexistence of a Mexican nobility, as an obstacle to monarchy, was also pointed out by the liberal press at the time.[24] Ironically, Haro himself would later join a monarchist scheme that never got past the planning stages in 1856.[25] Meanwhile, in April, 1846 the Mexican-American War broke out. Paredes would eventually later declare his loyalty to the republican system for the time being and shifted his focus to the war effort.[26]
The overthrow of the liberal president Mariano Arista in 1850 brought the monarchist statesman Lucas Alaman to the position of Foreign Minister, serving under the Conservative presidency of a restored Santa Anna. The Mexican government now began official efforts at seeking a European candidate for a Mexican throne. Alaman kept his efforts secret from the public and from most of his fellow ministers.[27] The project was completely ended when Santa Anna was overthrown by the liberal Plan of Ayutla in 1855.[28] The monarchical project had been dealt an earlier blow when Alaman himself had died in 1853.
By 1861, when Napoleon III began the Second French Intervention in Mexico with the intention of overthrowing the government of the Mexican Republic and replacing it with a French-aligned monarchy, he found that monarchism no longer existed even among the Conservatives. The idea of a Mexican monarchy had reached Napoleon through certain Mexican monarchist expatriates, but most of them had been living in Paris for a significant amount of time and lacked awareness of true state of Mexican affairs.[29] After the French invasion began, leading Conservative José Maria Cobos published a manifesto arguing that ‘no one’ supported a ‘foreign monarchy’.[30][31] Conservative ex-president Miguel Miramón also opined that that there was no monarchical party in Mexico.[32] During this time, the official Conservative Party newspaper also endorsed republicanism.[33]
The Spanish commander Juan Prim who had already backed out of France's intervention noted the Mexican opposition faced by the French, arguing that “if the reactionary party wants to fight the French who intend to come to their country with the flag of monarchy, who remains in Mexico with monarchical ideas?”.[34] On July 22, 1862 Charles de Lorencez, then head of the French occupying forces, in a report to the French government wrote that "Nobody here wants a monarchy, not even the reactionaries."[35]
Some Conservatives had sought French intervention, but only to provide military aid in the aftermath of losing the Reform War, without any attempt to replace the Mexican Republic with a monarchy. Historian Hubert Howe Bancroft writes that “at first they only hoped for aid to restore their strength, without any thought of the European powers entertaining the idea of a monarchy in Mexico. The thought was, most probably, put into their heads by Napoleon III.”[36] Mexican minister to the United States at the time, Matias Romero opined that the Conservatives never would have considered a monarchy "if they had not received, directly or indirectly, the indication of proposing it from the French government. " [37] Mexican historian Francisco Bulnes has concluded that Napoleon made military intervention in favor of the Conservatives conditional upon accepting monarchy.[38] Eventually Conservatives would begin to join the French and the aforementioned ex-president Miramon would even die alongside Emperor Maximilian when he was executed after the fall of the Second Mexican Empire.
