LETTER XIII.
COURT CEREMONIES. GENERAL SANTA ANNA. DIPLOMATIC DINNER.
FOR some time after the installation of General Santa Anna as Provisional President of Mexico, under the system known in the political history of that country as the "Plan of Tacubaya,"[1] a difficulty existed between the Government, and Ministers of foreign nations, as to the etiquette which was to be observed on public occasions when it became necessary for them to meet ceremoniously. To such an extent had this variance of established rules been carried, that upon the consecration of the present Archbishop, the Envoy from France deemed it proper to mark his disapprobation, by retiring with his legation from the Cathedral.
These matters, which to us republicans seemed of no very great moment except as they had been rendered so by the Mexicans themselves, were, however, at length satisfactorily arranged; and on the first of January, 1842, the members of the different missions were invited to meet the President in the morning, for the purpose of exchanging the usual courtesies of the day, and to partake of a dinner in the evening. This invitation was sent with all due form through his Excellency, Mr. De Bocanegra, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. As the system of entertainment at table is quite a novelty in Mexican diplomacy, the invitation was entirely unexpected; and it was hailed by the whole corps as indicative of an agreeable change in our future intercourse.
Accordingly at noon on the first of January, the diplomatic body, In full uniform, met at the apartments of the Minister of Foreign Relations in the Palace. Here again, some trifling question of etiquette was started relative to the precedence of the Archbishop, which being arranged, the corps, as soon as it had been joined by the Ministers of State, was ushered to the hall of audience by an aid-de-camp of the President. Passing
- ↑ The revolution of 1841 after several fruitless battles, in which victory seems to have crowned neither side, and several as fruitless interviews of the Chiefs and messengers of the different parties, was at length terminated by a meeting of commanding officers at Tacubaya on the 26th of September, when a plan was agreed upon and signed by 191 persons, by means of which the existing Constitution of Mexico was superseded. By this system or "Plan de Tacubaya." consisting of 13 articles, a general amnesty was proclaimed—a call for a new Congress to form a Constitution agreed upon—and a Junta created, to be named by the General in Chief of the army. The Junta was to elect the Provisional President who, by the 7th article, was clothed "with all the powers necessary to reorganize the Nation and all the branches of administration;" or, in other words, with supreme power. That General was Santa Anna. He selected the Junta, and the Junta returned the compliment by selecting him!
