Mexico and Its Religion: With Incidents of Travel in That Country During Parts of the Years 1851-52-53-54, and Historical Notices of Events Connected With Places VisitedWilson, Robert Anderson
Religion
Mexico and Its Religion: With Incidents of Travel in That Country During Parts of the Years 1851-52-53-54, and Historical Notices of Events Connected With Places Visited
Wilson, Robert Anderson
Mexico -- Description and travel; Mexico -- Religion
In 1832 Santa Anna was elected successor to Pedraza as President of the
Federal Republic of Mexico. Texas had now of right the option of
returning into the family of Mexican States, or of maintaining her
separate existence; but she was under no obligation to return, for, the
confederacy having been once broken up, it was optional with the only
member that had not submitted to the usurper to re-enter this
unreliable family, or to continue outside. This election was not long
open; for, by the _pronunciamiento_ of Toluca (1835), the Federal
Constitution was again abolished, and Santa Anna became dictator in
fact, if not in name. The clergy were at the bottom of this last
revolution, and they demanded, as the price of their support, the
extirpation of heresy from the territory of the Republic. This meant
the indiscriminate slaughter of all Texans. Santa Anna, who, in all his
previous wars, had never shown a disposition to be cruel to the
vanquished, was so dazzled with the prospects before him as to be
willing to make the slaughter of the Alamo and of Fannin's division an
offering to a priesthood who were plotting for the restoration of the
Inquisition. The battle of San Jacinto was, in its consequences, more
disastrous to the designs of the ecclesiastical party than even to
Santa Anna himself.
MEXICAN VIEW OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.
Let me stop in my narrative of events to translate a Mexican's eloquent
denunciation of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is from the pen of General
Tornel, a most uncompromising enemy of that race and of its religion.
Thus he opens his account of the Texan difficulty:
"In order to understand what we to-day (1852) are, and what we to-day
value, it is indispensable to discover, and to perpetuate the history
of one of the greatest scandals of the age--all of its antecedents, all
of its consequences, all that can aid in coming to knowledge of this
greatest act of injustice of which the Mexican nation has been the
victim.
"Those who cross the sea change their skies, but not their nature. The
Anglo-Saxons abandoned their country from physical and moral
necessities, and on account of their political and religious quarrels.
Transporting themselves to the virgin forests of America, they brought
with them the characteristics of Northmen; they were distinguished for
sobriety, laboriousness, and industry; for ardor in their enterprises;
for constancy, and for that spirit of adventure which subjugates all by
the right of conquest. They leveled all obstacles by the vigor of their
arm and the sweat of their brow, and from their successes has arisen
the hope of acquiring every thing by the inspiration of their talents
and the force of their genius.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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