Félix María Zuloaga | |
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President of Mexico by the Plan of Tacubaya |
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In office 11 January 1858 – 24 December 1858 |
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Succeeded by | Manuel Robles Pezuela |
Personal details | |
Born |
Álamos, Sonora |
31 March 1813
Died | 11 February 1898 Mexico City |
(aged 84)
Nationality | Mexican |
Political party | Conservative |
Félix María Zuloaga Trillo (31 March 1813 – 11 February 1898) was a Mexican general and a Conservative leader in the War of Reform. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Zuloaga served as unconstitutional interim conservative president of Mexico in opposition to the constitutional president Benito Juárez of the Liberal Party.
Zuloaga was born in Álamos, Sonora. He attended primary school in Chihuahua before entering a seminary in Mexico City, which he left. He returned to Chihuahua, enlisting in the civil militia in 1834. He participated in campaigns against the Apaches and Comanches.
He returned to the capital in 1838 and entered the army as a second lieutenant of engineers. He took part in the Pastry War against the French (1838) and the War of Texas Independence. Initially a liberal in politics, in 1840 he defended the government of President Anastasio Bustamante (who had both liberal and conservative connections). The following year he was allied with Antonio López de Santa Anna. He fought the separatists in Yucatán and directed the fortifications at Monterrey. During the Mexican–American War, he was mayor of Chihuahua.
He rejoined the army and in 1838 was named president of the Council of War of the garrison of Mexico City. In 1854, he fought against the liberals supporting the Plan de Ayutla and was taken prisoner. He was now a brigadier. In 1855, he was a representative of Chihuahua in the Junta of Representatives of the States that met in Cuernavaca.
Zuloaga fought against the conservatives in two campaigns in Puebla, but on 17 December 1857 he came out against the 1857 Constitution of Mexico and joined in a coup d'état staged by a junta of generals and leading Catholic clergy. Two days later, the wavering moderate President Ignacio Comonfort accepted the reactionary Plan of Tacubaya, thus abandoning the Constitution of 1857. Various liberals protested, including Benito Juárez, the president of the Supreme Court and constitutional vice-president, next in line to succeed to the presidency, but they were arrested and imprisoned.