Coup of 1852

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The **1852 Mexican Coup d'état**, more commonly known as the **Coup of 1852**, took place on October 16, 1852 and was a military coup d'état conducted by the Armed Forces of Mexico with the support of the Conservative Party which toppled the liberal government of Valentín Gómez Farías and marked the beginning of the seventeen year dictatorship of José Mariano Salas.

Following the independence of the Mexican state as the First Mexican Empire in September 1821, the government of Mexico became dominated by the independent liberal faction led by Valentín Gómez Farías, who was appointed as the first prime minister of Mexico by Emperor Agustín. Despite a coalition government with the independent conservatives from 1828 to 1842, the liberals under Gómez Farías remained in power for the first thirty one years of the new Mexican state. After the death of Emperor Agustín in 1843, the liberals became increasingly radical and attempted to radically re-write the constitution of the Mexican Empire to include reforms to emancipate and recompense former slaves, as well as to expand the voter base, to create a semi-independent judicial system, and loosening government control over the economy by reducing tariffs on imports. Whilst most of the policies were broadly popular with the general public, they were fiercely opposed by the royal family, noble elites, and the conservative faction in congress - to better unite in opposition to the reforms, the independent conservative faction formed the Conservative Party to contest the 1850 general election under the leadership of José Mariano Salas.

After the Conservative Party's failure to win the 1850 general election, reactionary forces began to reach for increasingly underhand tactics in a bid to prevent the reforms. One such method was the Conservative Party's bid to pressure Emperor Pedro I to dismiss the government of Valentín Gómez Farías and install an ideologically conservative government. However, despite his personal opposition to Gómez Farías, Emperor Pedro I refused to take action against his government for fear of sparking a popular uprising, and argued that a slow shift to a constitutional monarchy might help preserve the monarchy for significantly longer than an authoritarian one would. After having been frustrated by Emperor Pedro I's inaction against the liberal reforms of Valentín Gómez Farías, conservative leader José Mariano Salas assembled an alliance of conservative politicians and the armed forces to conduct a coup d'état against the government in a bid to prevent further reforms.

On October 16, 1852, forces loyal to Salas entered the Palace of Iturbide and took Emperor Pedro I prisoner, before forcing him to dismiss Gómez's cabinet and appoint Salas as president of the Council of Ministers. Following the coup d'état, Salas and the Conservative Party formed a cabinet dominated by powerful figures within the armed forces and the conservative nobility. The coup of 1852 was deeply unpopular with the general public, who, largely unaware of the emperor's imprisonment, blamed Pedro I for dismissing the government and appointing a new conservative cabinet; in spite of this, José Mariano Salas governed as a largely popular president of the council of ministers and used public resentment against the monarchy to introduce a new constitution which virtually stripped the emperor of all political power. On November 16, 1852, the Congress of Mexico was dismissed in preparation for new elections under the new constitution, but would not meet again until 1874.

In August 1853, the government formally abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the existence of the Republic of Mexico, with José Mariano Salas as the first republican president. Under President Salas, the Republic of Mexico was an autocratic, corrupt, and authoritarian state in which organised opposition was harassed and cronyism ran rampant throughout government. The deposed liberal faction of Valentín Gómez Farías used the early republican period to reform into the Mexican Radical Party, whilst the deposed monarchist faction eventually coalesced around the Restoration Party led by the former emperor's son, Pedro de Iturbide, who would later unite the opposition factions together to depose Salas during the First Mexican Revolution, before proclaiming himself as Emperor Pedro II in 1881.