page_title: First Mexican Republic
section_title: Creating new institutions
hierarchical_section_title: First Mexican Republic / Creating new institutions
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Mexico in 1824 after the creation of the territory of Tlaxcala Español: Mapa de Mexico en 1824 despues de la creacion del territorio de Tlaxcala
context_page_description: The First Mexican Republic, known also as the First Federal Republic, was a federated republic, under the Constitution of 1824. It was nation-state officially designated the United Mexican States. The First Mexican Republic lasted from 1824 to 1835, when conservatives under Antonio López de Santa Anna transformed it into a centralized state, the Centralist Republic of Mexico.
  The republic was proclaimed on November 1, 1823 by the Constituent Congress, months after the fall of the Mexican Empire ruled emperor Agustin I, a former royalist military officer-turned-insurgent for independence. The federation was formally and legally established on October 4, 1824 when the Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States came into force.
  It was bordered on the north by the United States and Oregon Country; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Central America, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Although the region of Central America gained independence when Mexico did and was part of the territory of the Mexican Empire, it chose not to join Mexico's federated republic and was allowed to do so.
context_section_description: States had to create a functioning political system, which under the constitution was to have powers divided between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.  The new system had to grapple with creating a new legal system and deciding who was a citizen.
  The 1821 Plan of Iguala signaled a new direction for an independent Mexico, calling for the abolition of class distinctions and legal racial categories, while continuing traditional lack of equal standing for women. In the new federated republican era, equality before the law meant eliminating noble titles and special privileges (fueros) of particular groups.   The result in theory leveled differences between classes. The transition from royal civil and criminal courts to a court system in the new order was not easy.  Crown edicts no longer had force and new legal codes had not yet come into being. No one knew what laws were valid, there were vacancies in judgeships, and few trained lawyers.  States were accorded the power over most civil and criminal legal matters. The separate court of the mostly Spanish merchants, the consulado, was abolished, but the military and ecclesiastical courts remained in place as part of their fuero. For members of indigenous communities, the removal of colonial-era protections of their community lands and their access to the special General Indian Court made them more vulnerable in the new federated republican order.
caption: Map of Mexico in 1824 with its 19 states and 5 territories
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