In his doctoral dissertation and first book on the subject titled La expulsión de los españoles de México, 1821-1828 (Mexico City, 1974), Harold Sims concluded with the first major expulsion law of 1827 and the immediate impact upon the Spanish community of Mexico. Sims traced themes that offered insights into the political, social, and economic conflict of the first Mexican republic. The Spanish minority, mistrusted and often hated as a symbol of colonial domination, became a major focus in the struggles between the competing Freemasonry factions, the escoceses and the yorkinos. While the escoceses were not antigachupín, the yorkinos demonstrated strong nationalist, federalist, and nativist orientation. They formed a growing party that was angry at the Spanish role in the colonial past and fearful of continuing intrigues directed against Mexican independence. By 1826, the yorkinos dominated the federal House of Deputies and supported widespread demands for the expulsion of a group that was both a symbol and an apparent security risk. With the Mexican economy mired in depression, many directed their anger toward the Spaniards.
In this book, Sims expands upon the base of his previous research to follow the gachupín tragedy through the second expulsion law of 1829. While one might be inclined to lack sympathy for some of the Spaniards, Sims shows that many were poor soldiers, sailors, and artisans who had deserted the imperial cause to settle, marry, and raise families. While many evaded the 1827 expulsion, the victory of Vicente Guerrero in January 1829, set the scene for a renewed effort to rid Mexico of Spaniards. Congress adopted a new law that was much less flexible and designed to extinguish concessions based upon social status, political beliefs, and family ties. Naturally, those who possessed connections or wealth fared better than poorer Spaniards, and some state governments were more lenient than others in enforcing the laws. Medical doctors could be bribed to certify well men ill if they could pay, while some chronically disabled Spaniards of more modest means underwent expulsion. Sims demonstrates the full impact of laws that damaged an economy already close to bankruptcy and that held tragic implications for families forced to separate or to endure exile to New Orleans, Bordeaux, and other foreign ports. Many of these people perished from yellow fever and other diseases before they completed resettlement. The expulsion laws damaged the thinly settled northern frontier regions, drained Mexico of vital specie, and denied the new nation valuable talent. In Sims’s view, the cost of expulsion was much too high in every sense. Mexico lost the merchants and investors who best knew how to operate the commercial networks and mines. The overthrow of Guerrero in 1830 slowed the process of expulsion, but could not restore the loss.
Sims’s comprehensive and exhaustively researched study on the decolonization of Mexico illustrates many of the complex difficulties of nationbuilding after a bloody war of independence. The author is successful in using the anti-Spanish campaigns to illustrate major social, economic, and political problems that were insoluble over a short period. The book sheds important new light upon the tortured history of the first Mexican republic.
