Bases Orgánicas

The Bases Orgánicas must be understood in the context of the nineteenth-century Mexican struggle between the conservative centralists and the liberal federalists.

A military junta was formed which wrote the Bases de Tacubaya, a plan that would radically restructure government, except for the judiciary.

Santa Anna began to scheme to dissolve the congress and left Nicolas Bravo in charge of the presidency on 26 October 1842.

However, José María Tornel the minister of war was the real power at the capital at this time, being the favorite of Santa Anna[3] President Bravo assured a commission that had been sent by congress that he would accept the new constitution, and Congress continued working on its draft until its work was interrupted by a pronunciamiento instigated by Santa Anna through Tornel[4] on 11 December 1842 in the town of Huejotzingo, calling for the dissolution of congress, and demanding the installation of a council of notables, elites who were to work on the new constitution.

Another decree on December 23 declared that the Council of Notables would call itself the national legislature, and the eighty men who were to make it up were finally named.

[8] The Bases Orgánicas continued the practice, first established in the Siete Leyes, of dividing the nation into political units now called departments, rather than into federal states.

The departmental assemblies were popularly elected yet were essentially confined to administering policing powers, and subject to review by the centrally appointed governors.

[12] He appointed the seventeen members of a presidential council authorized to propose to the government any regulations that might be deemed necessary for the public welfare in any branch of the administration.

[14] The senate was to be made up of 63 members with two thirds being elected by the departmental assemblies from among landed gentry, miner owners, merchants, and manufacturers.