Conservative Party (Mexico)

The Conservative Party (Spanish: Partido Conservador) was one of two major factions in Mexican political thought that emerged in the years after independence, the other being the Liberals.

At various times and under different circumstances they were known as escoceses, centralists, royalists, imperialists, or conservatives, but they tended to be united by the theme of preserving colonial Spanish values, while not being opposed to the economic development and modernization of the nation. Their base of support was the army, the hacendados, and the Catholic Church.^[2]

In the constitutional history of Mexico they supported the movement to have a centralized republic as opposed to a federal republic, and produced the Constitution of 1836 and the Constitution of 1843. Certain Conservative intellectuals supported a monarchy for Mexico but between the First Mexican Empire and the Second Mexican Empire such ideas were reduced to a fringe movement.^[3] By the time the French launched their invasion of Mexico in 1862, monarchism was insignificant and the French at first struggled to find supporters among the Conservatives in their aims to establish a monarchical client state. Many Conservatives were eventually won over only to be disillusioned with the liberal inclinations of Emperor Maximilian. With the fall of the Second Mexican Empire the conservatives suffered a decisive defeat, and the party ceased to exist.^[4]