Moderados (Mexico)

Moderados (Mexico), literally "moderates," a term applied to moderate liberals in nineteenth-century Mexico to distinguish them from the other liberal faction, the puros. The terms apparently date from divisions that arose during Valentín Gómez Farías's attempt to use church property to pay for the war against the United States in 1846–1847. Moderados opposed the measure in the legislature, then supported a revolt (known as the Rebellion of the Polkos) that forced withdrawal of the decree and the replacement of Gómez Farías with Antonio López de Santa Anna as president. The moderados later negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war and ceding California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to the United States in return for $15 million. The puros opposed the treaty, favoring continued resistance. The resulting split continued through the era of the reform and the French Intervention, with the moderados moving cautiously toward the disamortization of church property and the puros pushing for more rapid and radical changes. The moderados generally opposed explicit religious toleration during the Constitutional Convention of 1856–1857. Some moderados, such as Pedro Escudero y Echánove and José Fernando Ramírez, were able to support the emperor Maximilian, who was something of a liberal himself.

See alsoGuadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of (1848) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Walter V. Scholes, Mexican Politics During the Juárez Regime, 1855–1872 (1957).

Jesús Reyes Heroles, El liberalismo mexicano, 3 vols. (1957–1961).

Michael P. Costeloe, "The Mexican Church in the Rebellion of the Polkos," in Hispanic American Historical Review 46 (May 1966):170-178.

Charles A. Hale, Mexican Liberalism in the Age of Mora, 1821–1853 (1968).

Richard N. Sinkin, The Mexican Reform, 1855–1876: A Study in Liberal Nation-Building (1979).

Donald F. Stevens, Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico (1991).

Additional Bibliography

Aguilar Rivera, José Antonio. The Divine Charter: Constitutionalism and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Mexico. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005.

Rodríguez O., Jaime E. El manto liberal: Los poderes de emergencia en México, 1821–1876. Jurídicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2001.

                                          D. F. Stevens