Antonio López de Santa Anna

For three decades after independence, the general Antonio López de Santa Anna dominated the politics of Mexico, seizing, quitting and regaining the presidency again and again between 1833 and 1855. A skilled rebel and a poor strategist, he changed sides repeatedly between liberals and conservatives, and he led the country through the loss of Texas and defeat by the United States. He remains one of the most criticised figures in Mexican history.

Santa Anna was born on 21 February 1794 in Xalapa, Veracruz, into a respected criollo family. He joined a royalist infantry regiment in 1810, at sixteen, and spent the next decade fighting for the Spanish crown against the independence movement started by Miguel Hidalgo, seeing his commander carry out mass executions of insurgents. In 1821, when the royalist officer Agustín de Iturbide joined the rebels under the Plan of Iguala, Santa Anna changed sides too. He rose against Iturbide, by then emperor, in December 1822, and joined the coalition that ended the monarchy in 1823.

He married into a wealthy Veracruz family in 1825 and bought the hacienda of Manga de Clavo, his lifelong base. In 1828 he rebelled to put the liberal Vicente Guerrero in the presidency instead of the election winner. In 1829 he forced a Spanish invasion force to surrender near Tampico, ending Spain's last attempt at reconquest, and began to style himself the saviour of the nation and the "Napoleon of the West".

Elected president in 1833, he left the government to his liberal vice-president, Valentín Gómez Farías, whose measures against the privileges of the church and army provoked fierce resistance. In 1834 Santa Anna turned against his own administration, dissolved Congress and sided with the conservatives, who replaced the federal constitution of 1824 with a centralised system. Several states rebelled. In May 1835 he crushed the militia of Zacatecas and let his troops loot the city for two days.

The rebels included Texas, whose many settlers from the United States declared independence on 2 March 1836. Santa Anna marched north with a hastily raised, poorly supplied army. At the Battle of the Alamo on 6 March his troops killed 189 defenders, and on 27 March more than 340 Texan prisoners were executed at Goliad. The killings stirred support for the Texans. On 21 April Sam Houston's army routed his force at San Jacinto, and Santa Anna was captured the next day, signing treaties recognising Texas independence that the Mexican government rejected.

He recovered his standing in 1838, defending Veracruz against the French in the Pastry War, where a cannon shot cost him much of his left leg. He then ruled more dictatorially, censoring newspapers and jailing opponents, until he was overthrown in late 1844 and exiled to Cuba. When the Mexican–American War began, American agents believed he had promised to help broker a settlement, but after returning in August 1846 he fought the invaders instead. He lost at Buena Vista, Cerro Gordo and around Mexico City, which fell in 1847. At the peace in 1848 Mexico gave up its northern territories, and he went into exile.

Recalled by conservatives in 1853, he made himself dictator for life with the title "Most Serene Highness". He sold more land to the United States in the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, and a liberal revolt under the Plan of Ayutla drove him out in 1855. He spent nearly twenty years abroad, in places including Cuba, Colombia and New York, where he tried to sell chicle that an American associate, Thomas Adams, later used to found a chewing-gum business. Allowed home by an amnesty in 1874, nearly blind, he died in Mexico City on 21 June 1876. Historians count between five and eleven presidencies, depending on how his short terms and figurehead substitutes are counted.

Our 1815 map shows New Spain while he fought for the crown; our 1878 map shows the much smaller Mexico that remained after the Texas Revolution and the war with the United States.