Fray Servando Teresa de Mier Biography

Fray Servando Teresa de Mier

(Monterrey, 1765-Mexico, 1827) Ecclesiastic, writer and Mexican politician who fought for the independence cause.Member of a family of the Creole upper bourgeoisie, his paternal grandfather was a native of Buelna (Asturias) and his father, Joaquín de Mier y Noriega, became a councilor of the City Council and governor of Monterrey (Nuevo León).Mier descended through the maternal line of the Buentello War, the first Spaniards to settle in the region.

Fray Servando Teresa de Mier

He made his first studies in Monterrey, but in 1780, forced by the family environment, he moved to Mexico to enter the Dominican convent and later at the College of Porta Celi, where he studied philosophy and theology.With a doctorate in theology degree, he returned to the Dominican convent to teach philosophy.

During the following years he enjoyed a certain renown and became famous as a preacher, especially when on November 8, 1794, he delivered a "funeral oration" for Hernán Cortés that drew lively attention.A month later, on December 12, the date of the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, in the Collegiate Church of Guadalupe, he delivered a famous sermon in which he rejected the traditions about the apparitions of the Virgin Mary, questioning their veracity..

In Cádiz he became involved with the family of the deposed viceroy José de Iturrigaray, who entrusted him with the defense of his management in New Spain, making documents and resources available to him, and joined the Society of Knights Rationals, initial nucleus of the famous Lautaro Lodge, which helped him move to London in October 1811, to escape police harassment and the hoaxes of the publicist Cancelada, in the service of the police.

In London, thanks to his friendship with the American refugees there, he completed the defense of Iturrigaray, whose work was initially titled History of the New Spain Revolution, Formerly Anahuac or True Origin and Causes of she...with her progress up to the present year of 1813 , added some very extensive reflections on the most recent events.The Historia was published in November 1813 in London, and he signed it as "José Guerra", his mother's surname.A friend of Blanco White, he discussed his Americanist positions and wrote two famous Letters to El Español , but he also developed extensive activity as a translator and editor, among other works in the Brevísima Relacion de Las Casas , the Representation of the American Deputation before the Cortes , and some other texts from his American friends.

His stay in London until May 1816 (interrupted by a short trip to Paris from July 1814 to April 1815, from which he returned in the company of Lucas Alamán) allowed him to befriend and interact with the Caracas residents Andrés Bello and Luis López Méndez.The latter offered him the house and library of the predecessor Francisco de Miranda; He also became involved with the Fagoaga family from Mexico and with the rest of the envoys of the Insurgent Juntas that were being formed in the American provinces.His meeting with the famous guerrilla Francisco Javier Mina, who arrived in London in May 1815, led him to join the expedition that was being prepared in England and which set sail from Liverpool on May 15, 1816.

After a very long journey, delayed by contrary winds, which allowed him to become intimate with Javier Mina, they both arrived in Baltimore on July 1, to begin an extraordinary military adventure: the preparation and development of an auxiliary division of the Congress of Mexico, which landed in Soto la Marina on April 21, 1817, ready to integrate and participate in the Mexican insurgent strategy.Mina's expedition, after an eight-month-long campaign in the lands of the Bajío (Michoacán and Guanajuato), ended in failure, and Fray Servando, who had spent some time defending the Soto la Marina fort, was taken prisoner by Viceroy Juan Ruiz.de Apodaca at the end of June 1817.

Led to the prisons of the Inquisition in Mexico City, he remained there for three years until his transfer to San Juan de Ulúa.Those were the years during which a long process was held, overloaded with testimonies, statements and confessions, which sought to demonstrate the complex and extensive plot woven around Mina and Mier, hoping to demonstrate the involvement of the most influential governments and politicians in England and the United States.Without reaching any conclusion, he was kept in prison, where he wrote the Apology and Relationship of what happened in Europe until October 1805 , later known as Memories , and the continuation of these memoirs with the title of Apologetic Manifesto .On May 30, 1820, when the Constitution of Cádiz was proclaimed again, he was transferred to the Corte prison in Mexico and in July he was sent to Veracruz and San Juan de Ulúa, on the way to Spain, because the viceroy had decided to exile him without charge to the Peninsula.

In San Juan de Ulúa he reviewed the Apologetic Manifesto and, in an atmosphere of greater freedom, wrote Some representations in his defense , Farewell letter to Mexicans , Political question: Can New Spain be free? and, finally, Idea of ​​the Constitution .In these texts the evolution of his thought is appreciated.Although he maintained his implacable condemnation of the Spanish domination of America, the cause and reason of all the evils of the present, he hesitated on the mode of organization and on the adoption or rejection of the monarchical or republican form, as well as on centralism or federalism.state.He was greatly influenced by the thought of the French Abad de Pradt, whose Spanish translations had just arrived in Mexico.

In February 1821 he starred in a new escape, when he escaped in Havana from the ship that was taking him to Spain , provisionally landing in Philadelphia, where he was reunited with his Hispanic American friends.In rejection of the Plan of Iguala issued by General Agustín de Iturbide, Fray Servando wrote and published in Philadelphia Instructive Political Memory , in which he declared himself a supporter of a republican government, rejecting the Treaty of Córdoba signed by Iturbide and by the new viceroy Juan O'Donojú.He decided to return to Mexico in 1822, when he was elected deputy for Nuevo León to the Constituent Congress, but he had to suffer again prison in San Juan de Ulúa, from February to May, imprisoned by the governor of this square, who remained faithful to the sovereignty Spanish.Released when Agustín de Iturbide proclaimed himself emperor, he took possession of his seat in Congress to confront what he now considered a dictator, for which he again suffered persecution and jail.

The uprising of General Santa Anna in Veracruz in In favor of the Republic, it brought together the opposition to Iturbide, in which Fray Servando participated, forcing him to renounce the Empire and embark for Europe.Once a new Congress was constituted, the Republic was proclaimed and the Constitution of 1824 approved, which forced it to confront Ramos Arizpe in the fierce discussion of the federal or centralist form of Government.On December 13, 1823, Fray Servando had delivered a famous speech in Congress called On Prophecies , in which he vigorously opposed the federalist system.The rebellion of the Provinces, which demanded a federal solution, copied from the admired American system and which threatened the dismemberment of the country, forced him to seek a compromise formula between politicians and doctrinaires.It accepted the declaration of a federal State (art.5), but refused to grant "sovereignty" to the regional States (art.6).In this way the great contradiction in the political history of modern Mexico was born.

Secluded in the Presidential Palace, which had been yielded to him by Guadalupe Victoria himself, the first constitutional president, he lived his last years between admiration and criticism of his fellow citizens.The historian Edmundo O'Gorman, an exceptional biographer and commentator, said of him: "Gifted with an easy word, scathing, erudite, intelligent and foul-mouthed, he always knew how to captivate the attention of his listeners.Writing was his favorite occupation; but a restless adventurer, more Occasionally, as a hobby, his entire work suffers from a lack of unity.That is not why it is disparaged.His work is admirable; the style is original and vigorous and all of it is animated by the passionate personality of its author."

He received the viaticum from Ramos Arizpe, his staunchest adversary in the constitutional controversy.In the presence of President Guadalupe Victoria and a large audience, whom he had invited when he sensed his fate days before, he died in his rooms at the Palace on November 17, 1827.He was buried in the Santo Domingo convent in Mexico City..