independence allowed popular participation in politics, the
local elites, not just Spaniards, were against it.
Consequentially, Mexican elites viewed the Cádiz
Constitution, which opened the way to popular
participation, with extreme skepticism; they would never
recognize its legitimacy.
In 1815, as Napoleon’s European empire collapsed,
King Ferdinand VII returned to power and the Cádiz
Constitution was abrogated. As the Spanish Crown began
trying to reclaim its American colonies, it did not face a
problem with loyalist Mexico. Yet, in 1820, a Spanish army
that had assembled in Cádiz to sail to the Americas to help
restore Spanish authority mutinied against Ferdinand VII.
They were soon joined by army units throughout the country,
and Ferdinand was forced to restore the Cádiz Constitution
and recall the Cortes. This Cortes was even more radical
than the one that had written the Cádiz Constitution, and it
proposed abolishing all forms of labor coercion. It also
attacked special privileges—for example, the right of the
military to be tried for crimes in their own courts. Faced
finally with the imposition of this document in Mexico, the
elites there decided that it was better to go it alone and
declare independence.
This independence movement was led by Augustín de
Iturbide, who had been an officer in the Spanish army. On
February 24, 1821, he published the Plan de Iguala, his
vision for an independent Mexico. The plan featured a
constitutional monarchy with a Mexican emperor, and
removed the provisions of the Cádiz Constitution that
Mexican elites found so threatening to their status and
privileges. It received instantaneous support, and Spain
quickly realized that it could not stop the inevitable. But
Iturbide did not just organize Mexican secession.
Recognizing the power vacuum, he quickly took advantage
of his military backing to have himself declared emperor, a
position that the great leader of South American
independence Simón Bolivar described as “by the grace of
God and of bayonets.” Iturbide was not constrained by the
same political institutions that constrained presidents of the
United States; he quickly made himself a dictator, and by
October 1822 he had dismissed the constitutionally
sanctioned congress and replaced it with a junta of his