MIER Y TERAN: TRAGIC CASSANDRA OF PRE-TEXAS MEXICO

"Cassandra warned the Trojans about the Greeks hiding inside the Trojan Horse and they did not believe her..."

By Juan Montoya
It is difficult to imagine a more tragic figure than Manuel de Mier y Teran in northern Mexico and Texas history.
Born in Mexico City in 1789, he excelled in mathematics and engineering, and graduated from the College of Mines in Mexico City in 1811.

In that year, one year after Fr. Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla issued his Grito de Dolores and was later executed for treason against the Spanish crown, he joined the independence movement under Hidalgo's successor José María Morelos.

In 1821 he joined Agustin de Iturbide under the Plan of Iguala whose aim was to expel the Spaniards from the Mexican colony. At the time he joined Iturbide, Mier y Teran never thought that Iturbide would declare himself an emperor. Iturbide was exiled after the constitutional forces defeated his army of followers.

He then served in the first constituent congress in 1822 as a member of the committee on colonization of unoccupied lands. According to his biographers, he attained the rank of brigadier general in 1824 and served nine months as minister of war.

In 1827, the first president of Mexico named him to lead a scientific and boundary expedition into Texas to observe the natural resources and the Indians, to discover the number and attitudes of the Americans living there, and to determine the United States-Mexico boundary between the Sabine and the Red rivers.

Mier y Teran was a member of the Comisión de Límites (Boundary Commission) when it left Mexico City on November 10, 1827, and reached San Antonio on March 1, 1828, San Felipe on April 27, and Nacogdoches on June 3. By that time he had been named Commander of the Army of the North, which encompassed Coahuila and Texas.

He traveled with commission members Rafael Chovell, a mineralogist and later military commander at Lavaca; Jean Louis Berlandier, a botanist, zoologist, and artist; and José María Sánchez y Tapía, cartographer and artist. All kept diaries that have been published in part.

Illness and muddy roads delayed the commission's return, and they remained in East Texas until January 16, 1829, when they started for Mexico City.

 In his report on the commission, Mier y Terán recommended that strong measures be taken to stop the United States from acquiring Texas. He suggested additional garrisons surrounding the settlements, closer trade ties with Mexico, and the encouragement of more Mexican and European settlers. His suggestions were incorporated into the Law of April 6, 1830, which also called for the prohibition of slavery and closed the borders of Texas to Americans.

Mier y Terán was ordered to Tampico to help repulse a Spanish invasion in August 1829. He was made second in command under Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, and they became heroes of the nation by their successful expulsion of the Spanish force on August 20.

In November, 1829 – seven years before Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1836 – he warned the Mexican government of the plan by Texas settlers to break away from Mexico using the tactics they had used against France and Spain to dispossess them of vast territories in their American colonies.

"The Texas Department is in contact with a nation which has shown itself to be rapacious for land," he wrote. "While the world has taken little notice, the norteamericanos have grabbed all land that has been within their reach and in less than half a century have become owners of extensive colonies that belonged to Spain and France and of vast distant regions belonging to an infinity of native tribes which have since disappeared from the face of the earth."

And like Andrew Jackson, who openly proclaimed that the United States would utilize the "Texas formula" to acquire more western lands, Mier y Teran said there was no other more powerful nation like the norteamericanos which would travel silently through dark roads and make conquests of major importance throughout the world.

"They start by claiming feigned rights as in Texas which are impossible to sustain in a serious discussion, and base their ridiculous pretenses on historical acts that no one can prove...until they assert rights that are veiled under phrases of equality and freedom that result in a concession of territory by the targeted nation..."

"The sale of this department (Texas) reduces the territorial property and worth of the lands of all the rest of Mexico to half of what they are worth now. He who consents and does not oppose to the loss of Texas is a heinous traitor who should be punished with every kind of death."

In 1830, Mier y Terán was made commandant general of the Eastern Interior Provinces, a position in which he supervised both political and military affairs in Texas, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas.

His headquarters were near the new port of Matamoros, which had just opened.

Mier y Terán supported constituted authority, whether of a Federalist or Centralist regime, and continued to be concerned over the inability of incoming American settlers to assimilate into the Mexican culture.

When Santa Anna rebelled in January 1832, Mier y Terán tried to defend the Eastern Internal Provinces from Santa Ana and the Federalist rebels.

In poor health and subject to depression, he grew despondent over the problems of colonization in Texas and the continuing political problems on both the state and national levels.

On July 3, 1832, with the federalist forces gaining a significant victory near Matamoros and the increasing influx of Anglo-American settlers after abrogation of the Law of 1830, the general committed suicide by falling on his sword behind the church of San Antonio in Padilla, Tamaulipas. 

Ironically, it was the same place where Emperor Iturbide, his former general, had been shot after his return from exile.

Inundated as a result of a dam being built there, the town and church now lie under water.