derlying cause of Mexico's internal struggles which culminated in the revolution of 1857.[1]
2. IMMEDIATE CAUSES.
The immediate causes of the revolution may be summed up as the aftermath of the defeat suffered in the war against the United States (1846–48). This defeat was followed by economic distress, political agitation and disorder on the one hand, and by dictatorship and oppression on the other.
The poorly equipped Mexican volunteers and non-combatants suffered much in trying to repel the invaders from the United States. The terms of peace, by which Mexico surrendered more than one-half of her territory, were humiliating. For the three years following the war, the expenditures of the government were more than twice its receipts. Taxes and levies upon industry became exorbitant. The masses and the middle class suffered while the upper classes, clergy and military, flaunted their luxury. Crimes and banditry increased. Yucatan and the states on the northern border were in revolt. To quell the rising disorder, the army was enlarged. A law, passed in 1848, which limited government troops to 10,000, was evaded by increasing state militias and bringing them under central control.
Santa Anna, upon his re-election in 1853, took control of all state properties and revenues and dissolved state legislatures. In 1847, Congress had passed a law authorizing sale or mortgage of certain church property to meet war expenses.[2] It was now proposed that the unused property of the church be pledged to secure a loan. The opposition of the
