First Mexican Republic

The First Mexican Republic began with the federal constitution of 1824 after the collapse of the First Mexican Empire. The new state attempted to balance national authority with powerful regions while confronting debt, military intervention in politics and continuing disputes over church, army and citizenship.

Frequent changes of government and conflict between federalists and centralists made public authority unstable. Mexico City, provincial estates and frontier regions experienced the republic differently, while older colonial hierarchies survived alongside new republican institutions.

Barbara Hambly’s Days of the Dead places Benjamin January in Mexico in 1835, where a murder investigation unfolds as the federal republic approaches its replacement by a centralist system.