Miguel Ramos Arizpe Biography

Miguel Ramos Arizpe’s family was among the first colonizers to settle in Saltillo in the year 1577. The regions of Texas, Tamaulipas. Durango and septentrional Chihuahua were colonized by families who first settled Saltillo and then Monterrey. The Spanish colonizers who settled these regions were mainly Basque, and their culture, character and lifestyle differed from other Castilians, Andalusians, Portuguese and Conversos (Christianized Jews). The Spanish settlers of these areas, as they were few, from the same origin and faced the same arduous conditions of the frontier formed a particular identity, which Miguel Ramos Arizpe characterized. He was born in 1775 in Saltillo, Coahuila, when the Spanish Empire still ruled over what is now America. Miguel’s family was part of the Ancien Regime, as his society was very traditional, teleological and agricultural; which corresponds to a way of seeing and being in the world, with a peculiar set of values like honor, prestige and power. Ramos Arizpe came from a family of deep Catholic & clerical traditions, which limited the hereditary power of the family. 

Ramos Arizpe had a profound love for the local homeland, for his beloved Saltillo, he always procured its improvement. When redacting the Federal constitution of 1824, in the article that referred to constitution of the Internal Provinces of Orient, Ramos Arizpe and Fray Servando Teresa de Mier had a scandalous discussion as they couldn’t define if the congress would meet in Saltillo or Monterrey; it was then decided that two separate states should be formed, the state of Coahuila and Nuevo Leon. He promoted the immigration and colonization of Coahuila and Texas, yet he at times disliked for prohibiting slave trade in the state. He was also in favor of Simon Bolivar’s project American confederation and urged the national congress to support it. When Ramos Arizpe was imprisoned in Valencia for denouncing Spanish tyranny in the Cortes, he was the major hero of the rebellion of Valencia against its tyrannic governor.

During the time that Ramos Arizpe drafted the Federal constitution of 1824, he also joined Masonry and created a local cult of York along Lorenzo de Zavala and U.S. ambassador J.E. Poinsett, as First Grand Orator. The cult became very successful, entire congregations of the Scottish sect held rituals of transition towards the ‘rising sun’ of York. As a consequence Ramos Arizpe won a plethora of passionate enemies. In 1828 he resigned from the Ministry of Justice and founded a political party called the ‘impartials’, so that the next president would not be a repository of hate that the liberal and conservative parties evoked. He also resigned and was excluded from the Scottish and York rites, as he pretended to avenge himself against the poisonous attacks of Lorenzo de Zavala.