Antonio lopez de santa anna facts
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10 Facts About the Surreal Life of Antonio López de Santa Anna
Best remembered by Americans for his role at the Alamo, there was much more to the life of Antonio López de Santa Anna than that singular event. He is one of the most colorful figures in Mexico’s past. He had a hand in Mexico’s fight for independence and the turbulent events that followed and played a role in the Texas Revolution, politics, and the Mexican-American War. From supreme power to exile, he ensured his legacy as one of Mexico’s most controversial figures.
1. His Provincial Upbringing Once Embarrassed Him
Antonio López de Santa Anna was born February 21, 1794 in Veracruz, Mexico. His parents belonged to the middle class, known as criollos, people born in the “New World” to Spanish-born parents. He had some education and worked briefly as a merchant before he was appointed to serve in the infantry, which was described as a “good fit” for him. He worked his way up through the military and made a
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1. Santa Anna headed the Mexican government on 11 occasions.
The decades following Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821 were plagued bygd political dysfunction. Both violent and nonviolent coups were regular occurrences, and the opportunistic Santa Anna took advantage of the instability. He constantly changed with the political winds and declared han själv at various times to be both conservative and liberal, democrat and dictator.
From 1833 to 1835, he served as Mexico’s president kvartet times before becoming a military-backed dictator. Although disgraced after the Texas Revolution, Santa Anna staged a political resurrection and served as president seven more times between 1839 and 1855.
2. He proclaimed han själv the 'Napoleon of the West.'
Napoleon's Strategic Genius
Santa Anna idolized another 19th-century figure who straddled the military and political spheres—French kejsare Napoleon Bonaparte. The Mexican general was a devout reader of Napoleonic biographies and an av
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Antonio López de Santa Anna
Antonio López de Santa Anna, a military and political leader who served as president eleven times during the course of his remarkable career, was the central figure in Mexican public life during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. As elsewhere in Latin America, the Mexican political landscape was influenced less by ideology than personality, with caudillos (charismatic, authoritarian leaders) playing a dominant role. An opportunist willing to change allegiances for reasons of political expediency, Santa Anna personified caudillismo in Mexico in the decades following its independence from Spain.
Born to middle class criollo parents in Jalapa in 1794, Santa Anna joined the military at age sixteen. Upon the outbreak of the War for Independence he joined the Spanish colonial army, serving under José Joaquín de Arredondo, who in 1812-13 crushed anti-royalist resistance in Texas, foreshadowing Santa Anna's campaign to subdue the region in 1