Conservative Party (Mexico)

The Conservative Party was one of two major factions in Mexican political thought that emerged in the years after independence, the other being the Liberals.

At various times and under different circumstances they were known as escoseses, 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. Their base of support was the army, the hacendados, and the Catholic Church.[1] While containing a noted monarchist element which ended up resulting in multiple efforts to establish a monarchy in Mexico, the conservatives were not always averse to the republican form of government, but they supported the movement to have a centralized republic as opposed to a federal republic.

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. The conservatives suffered another setback with the triumph of federalism during the debates over the drafting of the Constitution of 1824. Their first candidate to reach the presidency was Anastasio Bustamante in 1830, but he both gained and lost the presidency through a coup as most other presidents did during the tumultuous era of the First Mexican Republic. A decade of conservative rule would be inaugurated in 1835 through the establishment of the Centralist Republic of Mexico, but the federalist constitution would be restored in 1846 after the start of the Mexican American War. La Reforma, and the establishment of the Constitution of 1857 proved to be another triumph for liberal principles especially anti-clericalism, and conservatives lost the War of Reform attempting to abolish the new constitution. During the Second French Intervention, the conservatives would invite Maximilian of Habsburg, to assume the Mexican throne, but the Emperor proved to be a liberal, disillusioning many of his conservative supporters.

With the fall of the Second Mexican Empire the conservatives suffered a decisive defeat, and the party ceased to exist.[2]