Antonio López de Santa Anna

Biography

Santa Anna served as a royalist officer for more than a decade during the Mexican War of Independence before going over to the insurgents in 1821. He went on to play a major part in the rise and fall of both the First Mexican Empire and the First Mexican Republic.

Elected president as a liberal in 1833, he soon turned to the conservatives, and in 1835 he helped replace the federal constitution of 1824 with the centralist Siete Leyes. He led the campaign against the Texas Revolution, was defeated and captured at San Jacinto in 1836, and signed the Treaties of Velasco acknowledging Texan independence. Over the next two decades he took the presidency many times, often with the army behind him, and he repeatedly changed sides between liberals and conservatives.

He commanded Mexico's forces in the war with the United States from 1846 to 1848 and prolonged the resistance even as Mexico lost. Back in power from 1853 as a dictator who called himself His Most Serene Highness, he sold more territory to the United States in the Gadsden Purchase. The liberal revolt under the Plan of Ayutla forced him from office and into exile in 1855. He was allowed to return in 1874 and died in Mexico City in 1876.