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José Francisco Vidaurri y Villaseñor was the governor of the Mexican province of Coahuila y Texas for a brief period in 1834. He was a strong advocate of Mexican federalism.

Biography

Vidaurri y Villaseñor was the half-brother of Pedro José Vidaurri y de la Cruz, who was the father of the Mexican politician Santiago Vidaurri​.

Villaseñor was appointed governor of the Mexican province of Coahuila y Texas in 1833 or early 1834, taking over the government of the province on January 8 of the last year. However, he only remained in the government until July 23, when he was replaced by Juan José Elguézabal as governor of the province.

As a defender of federalism, he traveled to San Antonio, Texas, in August of that year in order to obtain support for the federalist party. Villaseñor even defended that the entire population of northern Mexico was in favor of that political ideology, compared to the population of the South, which he considered "ignorant" and more permissive of despotic governments (he pointed out that the southerners "can only be governed by a despotism"), because they supported centralism. Villaseñor also defended the independence of northern Mexico, posing it as an independent country. His defense of the region's independence was based on the aforementioned political differences between the north and the south (i.e., a federalist north versus a centralist south). In fact, Villaseñor was sure that his proposal would be successful and that the north of Mexico, regardless of whether Texas became a republic or remained part of Mexico, would obtain its independence. However, the Texas press, which belonged to Anglo-Saxon publishers (such as Telegraph and Texas Register) was opposed to Texas remaining in Mexico, although it supported the federalists.

On January 17, 1840, Villaseñor participated in a convention held in Laredo, Texas to proclaim the so-called República de Río Grande. The new republic would consist of the states of Coahuila y Texas, Tamaulipas, and Nuevo León and would be an independent country from Mexico. This convention consisted of Jesús de Cárdenas (president of the convention), Antonio Canales Rosillo (commanding general of the army), Juan Nepomuceno Molano (the delegate of Tamaulipas), Manuel María de Llano (the delegate of Nuevo León), and José María Jesús Carbajal (the secretary of the convention), as well as Villaseñor, who served as the delegate of Coahuila. However, the new country only lasted 293 days, as Mexican General Mariano Arista forced its dissolution. The country was dissolved on November 6, 1840.

References

1. Harrison, Horace V. (1957). LOS FEDERALISTAS DE 1839-40 Y SUS TANTEOS DIPLOMÁTICOS EN TEXAS. Pages 328-329.
2. El separatismo de Vidaurri. Milenio, Mexico City, August 26, 2016. Accessed December 16, 2024.

• Governors of Spanish Texas