Conservative Party (Mexico)
At various times and under different circumstances they were known as escoceses, centralists, royalists, imperialists, or conservatives, but they tended to be united by the theme of preserving colonial Spanish values, while not being opposed to the economic development and modernization of the nation.
[4] The Plan of Iguala was a triumph for conservative principles, and in fact a reaction against the Trienio liberal in Spain, but monarchism was largely discredited after the First Mexican Empire's fall in 1823.
[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.
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.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
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.
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.
"[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.
[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.
