Constitutional Elements (Mexico)

They are considered the direct antecedent and source of creation of the Sentimientos de la Nación of José María Morelos and, therefore, of the subsequent Constitution of 1824.

In the context of the Independence, and since the viceroyalty authorities of New Spain were not recognized in the absence of Ferdinand VII, on August 19, 1811, the Supreme National American Meeting, known as Junta de Zitácuaro,[7] was established in the town of the same name in Michoacán, as the governing body for what would soon become the Mexican nation, made up of the main leaders of the insurgency at that time, among them José María Morelos and Ignacio López Rayón.

[3] The document consists of a preamble which exalts the legitimacy and justice of the «Independence of America» and outlines that the deposit of sovereignty resides in the people: «We, therefore, have the unspeakable satisfaction and the high honor of having merited the free peoples of our country to compose the Supreme Court of the Nation and to represent the Majesty that resides only in them».The body of the Constitutional Elements is made up of 38 statements in the form of articles,[14] and contains the main ideas for the creation of an independent state proclaimed by the insurgency: The draft ends with a reflection on the past of the American people «forgotten by some, pitied by others and despised by the majority» and on its more hopeful future, with full equality and equity among men, where «cowardice and idleness will be the only thing that infames the citizen», and also with a religious exhortation: «bless the God of destinies who has deigned to look with compassion on his people».

[12] Within the Constitutional Elements, the philosophical and cultural background of Novo-Hispanic liberalism is noteworthy, from classic European representatives such as Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Suárez and Vitoria,[15] to thinkers from the American continent such as Francisco Javier Clavijero, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier and Francisco Javier Alegre, among others.

In America, during the independence period, some specific political ideas were distinguished as guidelines: [19] These contents can be found in the Constitutional Elements inherited from Rayón's pen, coming from his legal training.

Likewise, in its article 31, the Constitutional Elements offers, speaking of the inviolability of the home, the guarantees of «the celebrated Corpus huves Act of England», referring to the Habeas Corpus Act 1640, which contained the protection of individual liberty from non-jurisdictional detention, including the Crown, when such detention did not originate from a judicial authority.

[22] This reveals Rayón's knowledge of English law,[21] and places the Constitutional Elements, according to Soberanes Fernández, as the earliest antecedent of the Mexican amparo trial.

Ignacio López Rayón creator of the Constitutional Elements .
The Junta de Zitácuaro in whose context the Constitutional Elements were written. Mural in Zitácuaro , Michoacán .
The " Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ", adopted by the French National Constituent Assembly in 1789, which influenced the contents of the Constitutional Elements , mainly in relation to civil rights .