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TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
death of Guerrero was, practiced. An officer named Trinidad Rio in the State of Morelia promised to effect the flight of nine prisoners for eight thousand dollars. These unfortunates collected the sum with great difficulty, and, according to the contract, at midnight the door of the corral was opened and they began their flight, but the treacherous Rio had contrived a plan beforehand with the military commander of the state, Don Pedro Otero, for the recapture of tlie fugitives by patrols appointed for that purpose. This was done, and the prisoners, at the moment in which they were realizing their freedom, returned as prisoners to the jail and that night were shot. As a reward for this act Otero was appointed Brigadier General and Trinidad Rio emerged with his eight thousand pesos. Otero fell on the 3rd of August in the Battle of Posos which was fought against Montezuma. The usurper continued his career of extermination, exercising undis- turbed and without opposition his unlimited prerogatives until the 10th of January, 1832 when the Veracruz garrison, incited by Colonels Ciriaco Vasquez, Pedro Landero and Andronequi, started an uprising against the ministers of the Vice President, petitioning their removal from office because they were enemies of the Federal Constitution.· Up to this moment Santa Anna had remained on his hacienda near Veracruz in the lap of repose, but he was not content. He did not reap the profit which he had expected from his conspiracy against Guerrero. Although he had contributed powerfully to the elevation of Bustamante, he was not made a member of his cabinet nor placed in the way of promotion. Things had taken a turn which he did not like, and seeing that he was not being considered for the next election of President, a thing to which he had aspired for a long time, he de- cided to join the rebels and try his fortune in another contest. Busta- mante was not popular. His tyranny had become intolerable, and the nation was preparing to take up arms against him and in defense of the Constitution. In view of this state of affairs our hero believed that by overthrowing the Vice President he could gain more than he had gained by elevating him to power and with this hope he left his hacienda, Mango de Clava, dominated by the spirit of insurrection. Placing him- self at the head of the insurrection in Veracruz, Santa Anna declared open war on Bustamante, denouncing him as a cruel usurper, and ask- ing that the people recall General Pedraza as the lawful President of the Republic. The nation was astonished at this news of gross inconsistency. Al- :though the whole life ot this shameless man had been nothing more than a net-work of cont adictions, no one in the least expected such a ,daring contempt of pub, ic opinion from him. Santa Anna had been . the principal agent in deposing Pedraza, because he was an Aristocrat :and a Centralist, and in elevating Guerrero to the Presidency, because he was a Federal Republican, in assassinating him afterwards in order that Bustamante might establish a central despotism, and now in the face of the world he denounced the man whom he had helped to elevate to power and appealed to the nation to reinstate the man whom it had expelled from the country as a tyrant. Bustamante hoped to smother the insurrection in the beginning by taking the Ulua castle which he succeeded in doing by bribing the commander Flores, to whom he sent a letter offering him 25,000 pesos
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