Manuel Santa María

Manuel Santa María (* 1767 in Seville , Spain , † June 26, 1811 in Chihuahua (City) , Mexico ) was a Spanish officer who served as governor of Nuevo León . In the Mexican War of Independence he sided with the Mexicans and was shot by the Spanish in 1811.

Life

Manuel Santa María was born in Seville, Andalusia in 1767 . When he was a child, his family traveled to New Spain , where his father held the office of mayor ( alcalde ) of Taxco and later as a judge at the Real Tribunal de la Acordada .

Manuel Santa María embarked on a military career and joined the infantry regiment of Mexico in 1784 as a cadet. In 1795 he was promoted to captain, he had combat missions on the island of Hispaniola against the French republican and against rebel slaves. From 1805 he served as governor of the Spanish province of Nuevo León. For his services he was inducted into the Order of Santiago .

When the armed uprising of the Mexican independence movement began with the Grito de Dolores in September 1810, Santa María had the task of opposing the rebels and putting down the revolt. However, too few soldiers were available to him; he requested reinforcements from General Félix María Calleja del Rey , which he was initially denied. The situation was made more difficult because sympathy for the insurgent cause spread among the few soldiers in the Spanish army in Nuevo León.

When the army of the independence movement under Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende withdrew from the Spanish troops to the north in late 1810 and reached San Luis Potosí , Manuel Santa María decided to switch sides. The entire military and civil leadership of the province went with him. The Mexican army, under the command of José Mariano Jiménez , was received with full honors in Monterrey .

The few troops from Nuevo León were integrated into the army of Allende and Hidalgos and made their way north to find protection from the approaching Spaniards on the one hand and to persuade the United States to support the Mexican side on the other .

On March 21, 1811, Santa María was surprised and captured by Spanish government troops near the village of Acatita de Bajan, together with the leaders of the independence movement Ignacio Allende, José Mariano Jiménez and Juan Almada . The Spaniards brought the insurgents to Chihuahua, where they were sentenced to death by a military tribunal for high treason. On June 26, 1811, they were shot dead on the Chihuahua parade ground.

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• Biography (spanish)
• Isidro Vizcaya Canales: En los albores de la Independencia: las Provincias Internas durante la insurrección de don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, 1810-1811 . Fondo Editorial Nuevo León, Monterrey, Mexico 2005, ISBN 970-9715-04-6 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed February 3, 2016]).