QI The Book of the Dead

Iturbide didn’t like Santa Anna flirting with his sixty-year-old sister. Santa Anna was once more sent back home to Veracruz, but this time as the state Governor.
    He lost no time in securing himself a luxurious hacienda and large tracts of land, while imposing punitive taxes on the port’s citizens. He became so unpopular that the self-styled Emperor had to recall him to the capital. This was a mistake. Santa Anna’s antennae told him the wind was changing once more: he joined forces with the liberals to overthrow Iturbide and establish a republic under a new president, Vicente Guerrero. He later remarked:
    I did not know what a republic was myself, but the more I tried to reason with the people, the louder they cried, ‘Viva La Republica!’ so we all went off in search of one .
     
    In 1829 his moment of glory arrived. In Spain’s last attempt to retake their colony, 3,000 Spanish troops landed at Tampico on the Gulf of Mexico. Santa Anna, with half as many men, penned in the invaders for six weeks until lack of supplies and yellow fever forced them to surrender. Single-handedly, he had saved the Republic and become a national hero. He ‘modestly’ retired to his hacienda in Veracruz ‘until his country needed him’. He didn’t have to wait long. In 1833 he was elected president for the first time.

    Rather as with his wedding, Santa Anna didn’t feel the need to govern in person, staying at home on his ranch and delegating power to his vice-president, Valentín Farías. Unfortunately, Farías was a genuine liberal and within a couple of years his reforms had enraged the Catholic Church and disgusted the landed gentry – of which Santa Anna was a prominent member. Alarmed by the sudden intrusion of politics into his life, Santa Anna acted decisively, sacking Farías, suspending the new Constitution, and imposing a central dictatorship. This provoked several Mexican states, including Texas, to declare their independence. Mexico was at war yet again.
    It was the Texan campaign that made Santa Anna famous outside Mexico. On 6 March 1836, after a twelve-day siege, his 1,500-strong force took the small garrison known as the Alamo. Hugely outnumbered, the Texans resisted bravely, but Santa Anna offered no quarter, ordering the execution of all who surrendered. The brutality of his troops that day probably changed the course of the war and certainly ensured his reputation in America as a sadistic tyrant. Even after the garrison had capitulated, Mexican soldiers continued to shoot and bayonet the corpses, which were then heaped into an unceremonious pile and burnt. As well as the folk heroes Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, another 250 Texans were slaughtered. Only women and children and two slaves were spared. They were turned loose to spread panic through the rest of the state. Three weeks later, Santa Anna excelled himself by ordering the massacre at Goliad when 342 unarmed Texan prisoners of war were shot by Mexican troops, the survivors being clubbed, stabbed or trampled to death by cavalry.
    Once news of these atrocities leaked out, the Texan army wasinundated with volunteers. Led by General Sam Houston, they got their revenge by ambushing Santa Anna’s army at San Jacinto while it was enjoying its siesta. Falling on the enemy with the now legendary cry ‘Remember the Alamo!’, they killed over half the drowsy Mexicans in eighteen minutes. Santa Anna escaped but was captured the next day. Having ditched his fancy uniform he was identified by the fact that he was the only prisoner wearing silk underwear, hardly standard issue for a Mexican infantryman. Forced to sign a humiliating peace treaty to save his own life, he was disowned by his government and exiled to the United States. Texas became an independent republic with Houston as its president.
    In 1837 Santa Anna crept home to lick his wounds. But history intervened again. The French fleet arrived to blockade Veracruz, ostensibly in support of an extremely angry French pastry-cook called Monsieur Remontel. He had written to Louis-Philippe I complaining bitterly of the chaos that reigned in Mexico City, which was having a deleterious effect on his pastry business. Like a Hispanic King Arthur, Santa Anna charged into the fray. In Mexico’s hour of need, he would once more save his fatherland from foreign domination. The government had no choice but to back him.
    He won the ‘Pastry War’, but lost his leg in the process. A cannonball killed his horse