A Veracruz jarocho in Mexico´s National Palace
Antonio López de Santa Anna, the British proposal and the centralist dilemma
UNAM-United Kingdom
Speakers:
Dra. Ana Elena González Treviño (director of UNAM-UK)
Dr. Will Fowler (researcher at the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland)
Photograph: "Acción militar en Pueblo Viejo, Septiembre de 1829" -painting by Carlos Paris, in 1835. On display at the Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones (ex Monastery of Churubusco), in the Coyoacan borough, Mexico City, Mexico. 30 May 2009 Wikipedia Commons
Antonio López de Santa Anna experienced definitive crossroads in Mexican history, such as the British proposal of accepting Texan independence in 1835 in return for the support of British armed forces to put a stop to US expansionism. His military heroism impeded his acceptance. As hacendado, i.e., wealthy landowner from Veracruz, he is committed to the productivity of his land, and the urban elite in Mexico City looks down on him. His centralist government from Mexico City has a strong Veracruzano taste. A santanista journal in 1849, La palanca (The Lever), held by the British Library, justifies dictatorship explaining that the population is not ready for universal suffrage and democratic life. The search for a European prince such as Maximilian intended to create European alliances to counter US hegemony. This project also failed, but reiterated appeals to Santa Anna reveal that, within certain contexts, Messianic individuals, often military leaders or landowners with a populist vein, tend to become the heroes of the moment, despite their inevitable fall from grace at a later stage.
Ana Elena González Treviño
Ana Elena González-Treviño is full professor and researcher in English Literature (Titular "C") at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She has a B.A. in English, an M.A. in Comparative Literature from UNAM, and an PhD in English from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. She has specialized in literary and cultural studies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, cultural history, translation and literary criticism. She has published forty academic articles and book chapters. She has coordinated four collective books of literary and translation studies, and a book as sole author. She has directed and taken part in several research projects funded by PAPIIT-DGAPA. She directs a digital humanities project, Imaginary Mexico based on imagology about the representation of Mexico in seventeenth and eighteenth-century print culture. She has supervised 39 BA, MA and PhD dissertations; she has and taken part in 89 BA, 25 MA and 12 PhD adjudicating committees. She is a member the Critical Theory Seminar and the Digital Humanities Seminar. She has published a book of original poetry. She is a member of the National Research System, SNI. She was head of the Modern Languages Department and is the director of the Centre for Mexican Studies, UNAM-UK.
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Dra. Ana Elena González Treviño, (director of UNAM-UK)
Will Fowler, (researcher at the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland)
Will Fowler
One of the most distinguished British scholars on Mexican history, Will Fowler obtained his doctoral degree at Bristol University with a dissertation about Orizaban polititian and military leader, José María Tornel y Mendívil (1795-1853), supervised by Michael P. Costeloe, Josefina Zoraida Vázquez and Anne Staples, the latter both from El Colegio de México. He works at the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the author of Santa Anna, ¿héroe o villano? (2018) originally published in English as Santa Anna of Mexico (2007) and La Guerra de los Tres Años (1857-1861) , besides numerous books about the political history of Mexico and Latin America, some of which are Mexico in the Age of Proposals, 1821-1853 (1998), Tornel and Santa Anna (2000), Latin America since 1780 (3rd edition 2016) and The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico (2016). He has coordinated 14 collective works of political history, including El conservadurismo mexicano en el siglo XIX (1999), Gobernadores mexicanos (2008) y Diplomacia, negocios y política. Ensayos sobre la relación entre México y el Reino Unido en el siglo XIX (2018). His research focuses on the political ideas and practices of nineteenth-century Mexico, diplomatic relations between Mexico and the United Kingdom, events such as the Three Years War, and the biographies of Tornel and Santa Anna. He was President of the British Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS). He coordinated a research project about the Mexican pronunciamiento in the nineteenth century financed by the AHRC in the UK. He was director of the Modern Language Faculty at St. Andrews. He is currently finishing a theoretical work, The Grammar of Civil War. A Mexican Case Study (1858-61) and he is planning to write the biographies of Maximilian of Habsburg, Tomás Mejía and Miguel Miramón.