1824 Constitution of Mexico

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The 1824 Constitution of Mexico was the first full constitution adopted by the Mexican Republic.

Enacted on 4 October 1824, following the overthrow of the short-lived Mexican Empire of Iturbide, the constitution stated that the new republic was to be styled the "United Mexican States" and was to be a representative federal republic of the people, with Roman Catholicism as the state religion.

Its legislature, the Congress, was bicameral. Similar to the United States, its lower house was the Chamber of Deputies (one deputy per 80,000 inhabitants) and upper house the Senate (two senators per state). A president and a vice-president were to be elected, for four-year terms, by the individual state congresses, with the lower house of the federal congress deciding in the event of a tie. Judicial power was in the hands of an eleven-member Supreme Court.

The republic's component parts were the states of Chiapas, Chihuahua, Coahuila y Texas, Durango, Guanaxuato (sic), México, Michoacán, Nuevo León, Oaxaca, Puebla de los Ángeles, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Sonora y Sinaloa, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Xalisco (sic), Yucatán, and Zacatecas, and the territories of Alta California, Baja California, Colima, and Santa Fe de Nuevo México. Tlaxcala, which had enjoyed special status since the time of the Conquest, was to have its exact status within the federation determined at a later date.

This document is also important in the history of the United States for it was to this liberal constitution that the defenders of the Alamo referred on the flag they flew, which was emblazoned with the date "1824". Under this constitution, American and European settlers were drawn to Mexican Texas by its broad promises of freedom. After the Anglo settlers of Texas had become accustomed to their land, however, the political and social conditions suddenly became much less liberal under the harsh rule of President Antonio López de Santa Anna, who rescinded the 1824 Constitution and replaced it with the anti-federalist 1835 Constitution, thereby dissolving the federation of "free and sovereign states" (which were replaced by French-style "departments"), centralising national power in Mexico City, and providing much of the impetus for the secession of Texas and the Mexican-American War. It also prompted the secession of several other Mexican states, including Yucatán forming the short-lived Republic of Yucatán, and Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas banding together to form the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande.