Carlos María de Bustamante Merecilla (4 November 1774 – 29 September 1848) was a Mexican statesman, historian, journalist and a supporter of Mexican independence. His historical "work early initiated an important Mexican national tradition of searching out and publishing basic materials on the Indian past and its fate in the colonial period." His writings in the 1820s shifted "the antiquarian bias of creole patriotism...into the ideology of a national liberation movement."