The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 57, July 1953 - April, 1954 Page: 323

Lorenzo de Zavala and the Texas Revolution

the New World, Zavala brought to the role he was to play in the
vast area between the Sabine and the Rio Grande a lifetime of
experience unmatched by any of his contemporaries on the Texan
stage. Politics, revolution, government, journalism, medicine,
world travel, education-in all Zavala had inscribed his name.
Born in the environs of M6rida in 1788, he early entered on a
political career. After three years imprisonment at San Juan de
Ulloa, he was named to the Spanish Cortes. For the succeeding
fifteen years he was seldom out of public office. In this period he
served in the first and second constituent Mexican congresses and
on Agustin de Iturbide's rump junta nacional instituyente. He was
a member of the Senate, was twice governor of the state of Mex-
ico, was secretary of hacienda, was a member of the Chamber of
Deputies, and was Mexican minister plenipotentiary to France.
Far from the slowly rising emotions of the Texas settlers in
1834, Zavala represented Mexico in Paris. Here his resentment
against the progressive dictatorial demonstrations of Santa Anna's
Centralist government broke the dams of restraint. On August
30o, 1834, he resigned the Paris post in a scathing letter denounc-
ing Santa Anna for abandoning the Federalist Party that had
placed him in office, for suppressing the cabinet and permitting
the dissolution of state governments, and for his alliance with the
Roman Catholic church.3
This action sealed Zavala's doom with Santa Anna and marked
the compass point that set his course for Texas. Whatever plans
Santa Anna may have had for the reception of Zavala, the refugee
suspected the worst. Instead of testing the situation, he fixed his
mind on the northeastern corner of his nation's possessions, the
region where he had once held an empxesario contract. This
decision he kept from the government until he arrived in New
York. From there he notified both the president and the secretary
of foreign relations that he planned to settle in Texas, there to
3Zavala to Santa Anna, Paris, August 30o, 1834, in Charles Adams Gulick, Jr.,
and others (eds.), The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar (6 vols.; Austin,
1921-1928), I, 167-169; in La Oposicidn (Mexico City), November a7, 1834; in
La Lima de Vulcano (Mexico City), December 4 and 6, 1834; and in Comunica-
ciones Dirigidas al Exmo. Sr. Presidente, y al Ministerio de Relaciones por el
Ciudadano Lorenzo de Zavala (Mexico City, 1835).

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