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Este artículo versa sobre la deuda externa de México en el siglo dicinueve. Revela la manera en que los acreedores británicos, representados por su Committee of Mexican Bondholders (Comité de Tenedores de Bonos Mexicanos) y su agente, Francis Falconnet, negociaron el pago en efectivo de 2.5 millones de dólares del dinero de indemnización pagada por Estados Unidos después de la guerra México-Estados Unidos de 1846-1848. Las transacciones financieras internacionales; los intereses gubernamentales franceses, estadounidenses y británicos; la política mexicana doméstica y la probable corrupción de la élite política mexicana, son algunos de los temas explorados en este ensayo. This article concerns Mexico's nineteenth-century foreign debt. It reveals how British creditors, represented by their Committee of Mexican Bond holders and its agent, Francis Falconnet, negotiated payment in cash of 2.5 million of the indemnity money paid by the United States after the Mexican-U. S. War of 1846-1848. International financial transactions; French, U.S., and British government interests; and Mexican domestic politics and probably corruption in Mexico's political elite are among several themes in this essay.

This article examines the 1850 presidential election in Mexico. It is divided into five sections: party political background, electoral regulations, candidates, campaign, results. General Mariano Arista was the successful candidate in what was the first genuinely contested presidential election since independence.

El presente artículo se ocupa del desarrollo que tuvieron los festejos que anualmente se llevan a cabo en la ciudad de México para celebrar el día de la independencia. La elaboración del programa de actividades para los días 16 y 27 de septiembre era responsabilidad de una Junta Patriótica. Esta Junta, integrada por voluntarios, se renovaba cada año mediante una elección y se encargaba de las finanzas, administración y ceremonial de los festejos. Se describe aquí la integración de la Junta, sus finanzas, regulaciones e implicaciones políticas durante la época de Santa Anna.

A prominent feature of Spain's response to the rebellions of its Latin American colonies, both during the constitutional régime of 1810–1814 and the absolutist system of Ferdinand VII from 1814–1820, was wide-spread bureaucratic confusion. When José García de Léon y Pizarro became Secretary of State in 1816, he found the whole question of the pacification of America in a deplorable state which had reached ‘un punto de exasperación increíble’1In a Council of State session of December 1816, the Navy Minister, José Vázquez de Figueroa, angrily denounced the red tape and inefficient administrative system in which decisions were lost in ‘una verdadera lucha de papeles’.2

The main outlines of Spain's trading relations with its Latin American colonies are well known. Although in the eighteenth century, under pressure from international political and domestic economic considerations, the Bourbon monarchs had permitted some liberalization, the fundamental policy remained that of confining transatlantic commerce to the mother country. Even after the so-called free trade laws were issued by Charles III, only certain ports within the peninsula and relatively few merchants were able to engage in the American trade. These merchants acted on their own account buying and selling cargoes within Spain or from Europe, or as commission agents arranging the import-export cycle for a fixed fee or percentage. Few were manufacturers in their own right and most gained a substantial part of their business from the fact that Spain remained to a large extent a channel through which foreign manufactures were sent to the colonies. Organized in their powerful guilds, they constituted an effective and influential vested interest group, determined to protect their highly privileged position against any attempted incursions by foreigners or Spaniards. Their reasons, of course, were obvious and often denounced at the time. Commerce with America was highly lucrative and large fortunes were made from it, particularly during the last quarter of the eighteenth century when a significant expansion in the value and volume of trade took place.

In the summer of 1835 Mexico chose to abandon the federal form of government instituted a decade earlier in 1824 and to replace it with a centralized republic. The dismantling of federal laws and institutions and the enactment of those designed to replace them occupied the next eighteen months until on December 30, 1836 the process of change to the new system culminated in the publication of a new constitution, the so-called Constitutión de las Siete Leyes. This fundamental change in the political structure of the nation was not achieved without considerable dissent and the protracted transitional period permitted many groups who opposed the new order of things to air their views and in some cases, notably in Zacatecas and Texas, to attempt military resistance. The supporters of centralism found themselves, therefore, obliged to make and justify their case for change and to convince themselves as well as their opponents that their proposals represented the popular will. It is with this centralist case for change, or manifesto, that this article is primarily concerned.

Before the establishment of commercial banks in Mexico in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the aspiring merchant or impecunious landowner had few sources from which he could borrow capital. Funds were available within the country but the rich preferred speculation in government bonds and securities to investment in agricultural or industrial enterprises. Financial deals in which enormous interest rates were paid by the government to private individuals became almost a matter of public scandal and were widely condemned by politicians of all parties. The only institution to operate an extensive lending policy was the Roman Catholic Church which, through the offices of its Juzgado de Capellanías, continued after independence its practice of lending money to any person able to provide adequate security for a loan. Although the contractual terms demanded were by no means onerous to the borrower, nevertheless there was much criticism of these fiscal activities by the clergy. The liberals in particular attacked the Church’s control of the land which was a direct consequence of its lending operations. The Church’s defense against these attacks was based firstly on its rights under both civil and canon law, and secondly, on the benefits which the nation’s economy received from the widespread clerical investments. Furthermore, the clergy insisted that they were genuinely interested in utilizing their wealth for the advantage of the people and country as a whole. Hence their funds were invested by way of loans in every kind of industrial and agrarian venture.

O-N January 11, 1847, Valentin G6mez, Farias, vice president of Mexico, signed a law which authorized the government to appropriate ecclesiastical property and goods to the maximum value of fifteen million pesos.' One third of this sum was to be taken from the regular and secular clergy within the archbishopric. The purpose of this radical measure was to obtain the funds which General Antonio L6pez de Santa Anna had insisted were necessary if he was to continue to prosecute the war against the invading United States army. In spite of the military danger, both public and clerical reaction to the law was immediately hostile, and within four days rumors of imminent armed rebellion to force repeal of the law were reported in the press.2 Faced with this threat, G6mez Farias moved a regiment and a battalion of the National Guard, suspected of revolutionary intentions, to barracks located at some distance from the National Palace.3 Then on January 16 the clergy, who had been openly condemning this latest assault on the wealth of the Church, were forbidden by the government to make political speeches. Still the bishops and their chapters in every Mexican diocese continued to denounce the law in numerous representations hurriedly dispatched to the central government and to the Congress.4 Furthermore, the proclerical press lost no time in rousing

S PAIN S response to the revolution of its American provinces was determined by a single, consistent policy: recognition of independence would not be granted. Starting from that fundamental position, however, which never varied and before 1820 was rarely even questioned in public, successive Spanish governments explored every conceivable avenue open to them in the hope of finding the means of pacifying America and effecting its reunification with the mother country. Numerous ways of achieving this objective were put forward and many were tried. These included conciliation talks with leading insurgents; offers of amnesties, pardons, and bribes; industrial and agricultural reforms; the creation of empires headed by Spanish princes; and the widespread use of military force. Among these and other options suggested, the most controversial solution, fervently promoted as the best means of pacifying America and equally fervently opposed by those who argued that it would bring about the ruination of the peninsula, was the granting of international free trade to the American provinces. This article seeks to trace the course of the free trade controversy, which was at the center of Spain's American policy for much of the decade between 1810 and 1820 and which affords considerable insight into the vested interest groups and motives of those who influenced Spain's response to the independence movements. Spain's traditional trading monopoly with its American empire had been the subject of extensive debate and change, particularly during the last decades of the eighteenth century. Cadiz, Barcelona, Malaga, Santander, and other city-ports in the peninsula and in America that had benefited from the liberalization of the commercial system enacted main