History of Nuevo León

[1] After several failed attempts, a group of settlers, among them several families of converted Jews, arrived on the Mexican coast aboard the Santa Catarina.

Carvajal and his followers, which consisted of more than sixty soldiers and outlaws, were reputed to have made a fortune capturing and selling Indian slaves.

The establishment of Spanish settlements in Northern Nuevo León, was often slowed down by attacks of Native Americans, of Coahuiltecan origin such as Alazapas, Cuanales, and Gualeguas, among others.

[7] The distance and poor condition of access routes were a factor for the delayed post service, from the capital of New Spain to the relatively remote northern provinces.

[8] The ideology or ideals which Miguel Hidalgo fought were at his first attempt not well received in the Provincias Internas de Oriente, because of stronger ties with Spain and loyalism to Fernando VI, and counter-insurgency movements were present on the region, mainly in the first years of the war, with the movement of a former insurgent general Ignacio Elizondo, who changed to the army of loyalists of Fernando VI, the reasons are controversially disputed, but its understood that he was a loyalist when he joined the insurgent side, and its convictions were stronger when he was influenced and persuaded by general Ramón Díaz de Bustamante to organize a plot to caught major insurgency precursors such as Miguel Hidalgo, Ignacio Allende, and Mariano Abasolo, whom Ignacio Elizondo, caught at Bajan, Coahuila, in 1811, while they were fleeing northward toward Monclova, ultimately hoping to reach sanctuary in the United States.

[9] In the later years of the war, movement toward insurgency were less frequent and the independence sentiment was reasserted but there was some discomfort about the situation because of a general displeasure with the news that José María Morelos, one of the leaders of the movement, had convoked a constituent congress in Chilpancingo, in the south of Mexico, and had named himself representative of the Nuevo Reino de León, although he had absolutely no prior connection to the region.

The combat with the Apaches, Comanches, runaway Kickapoos and North American filibusterers, while brutal and inhuman, gave a great deal of experience to the Nuevoleonese militias, who defeated the Mexican Army in several battles.

The combat skills of local heroes Juan Zuazua, José Silvestre Aramberri, Mariano Escobedo, Lázaro Garza Ayala and Jerónimo Treviño were all tempered by those skirmishes.

[11] The leader of this self-defense movement was Santiago Vidaurri, who proclaimed the Plan de Monterrey in 1855, restoring the sovereignty of Nuevo León.

Later a sympathizer with the Confederacy in the American Civil War, Vidaurri democratically annexed the Mexican state of Coahuila by plebiscite and later declared the República de la Sierra Madre, one of Nuevo León's two famous attempts at separatism (the other being the Republic of the Rio Grande in 1840).

Upon the death of his chief military supporter, general Juan Zuazua, he was easily taken prisoner by other Nuevoleonese loyal to Benito Juárez, who decreed the deannexation of Coahuila.

In the 1970s some terrorist groups espousing communist ideology and identified with the social problems of southeastern Mexico plagued Nuevo León with assassinations of important businessmen, among them Eugenio Garza Sada.