Andrés Quintana Roo

Mexican politician

Andrés Eligio Quintana Roo (30 November 1787 – 15 April 1851) was a Mexican liberal politician, lawyer, and author. He was the husband of fellow independence activist Leona Vicario. Quintana Roo was one of the most influential men in the Mexican War of Independence and served as a member of the Congress of Chilpancingo where he presided over the National Constituent Congress, which drafted the Mexican Declaration of Independence in 1813. He served multiple terms in the Chamber of Deputies, serving as its president twice. Quintana Roo also served as a member of the Mexican Supreme Court. He edited and founded many newspapers including El Ilustrador Americano (The American Illustrator) El Semanario Patriótico Americano (The American Patriot Weekly), and El Federalista Mexicano (The Mexican Federalist). The Mexican state of Quintana Roo was named in his honor.

Quintana Roo was born to Don José Matías Quintana and Doña María Ana Roo de Quintana, descendants of Canarian settlers who resided permanently in the Yucatán Peninsula. They were married June 20, 1786 in their house in Mérida. His paternal grandparents were Gregorio Quintana from Galicia and Martina Tomasa de Campo from Campeche. On his mother's side his grandparents were Antonio Roo y Font from Tenerife and Leonarda Rodríguez de la Gala, also from Campeche.

In 1805, the elder Quintana became part of a group known as the Sanjuanistas. The group met to discuss social and political issues, in particular the slavery of the indigenous population. The group took their name from their meeting place, the Ermita de San Juan Bautista (Hermitage of Saint John the Baptist) where the group leader, José María Velázquez, was a priest. In 1808, the Napoleonic Army invaded Spain and overthrew the Bourbon dynasty. In 1810 in Cádiz, Spain — one of the last cities free from the French armies — an assembly (cortes) of the Spanish peninsular and overseas provinces met to discuss the future of the Spanish Empire without a monarch. This was the political climate the Sanjuanistas found themselves in. In March 1812, the Cortes of Cádiz issued a new Spanish constitution. In July, Miguel González Lastiri, Yucatán's representative at the Cortes, arrived with seven copies of the new constitution, one of which fell into the hands of the Sanjuanistas. Having read the document, they quickly became its promoters and opened their group any who wanted to join. By October, the Sanjuanistas had pressured the hesitant governor of Yucatán, Manuel Artanza y Barrial, to enforce the new constitution.

As a lawyer, one of Ignacio López Rayón's great gifts was organization. After the defeat of Hidalgo, he gave structure to the army under the auspices of the Junta de Zitácuaro, one of the first governing bodies in Mexico not to recognize the authority of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In addition to military and administrative organization, López Rayón organized a group of spies and propagandists which came to be known as Los Guadalupes. They took their name from the Virgin of Guadalupe to juxtapose themselves from the Spaniards who venerated the Virgin of the Remedies. In order to protect their identities, Los Guadalupes would use various pseudonyms in their communications. Very few people are known for certain to have been in this group but it is likely they centered their operations in Mexico City and most of them were lawyers. Still, they were a diverse group that included women, priests, and nobles as well. They maintained regular communication with López Rayón, sent him current newspapers and publications from Spain and the U. S., and weapons, money, and men. Perhaps most importantly, they set up a line of communication between López Rayón and José María Morelos y Pavón. Andrés Quintana Roo and Leona Vicario were married soon after in Tlalpujahua. Following these defeats, Quintana Roo and the Congress were forced to relocate frequently. On October 22, 1814, in the city of Apatzingán, the Congress issued the Decreto Constitucional para la Libertad de la America Mexicana (Constitutional Decree for the Liberty of Mexican America), better known as the Constitution of Apatzingán, drafted by Quintana Roo, Carlos María de Bustamonte, and José Manuel de Herrera. In May 1814, Fernando VII had regained his throne and abolished the liberal Constitution of Cádiz. With the defeat of the French forces in Spain, Fernando was free to send more soldiers to Mexico, and so Iturbide redoubled his efforts against Morelos and the Congress. Much of the territory that had been won by Morelos was lost and the Congress was kept always on the move. In July 1815 Oaxaca and Acapulco fell to José Gabriel de Armijo. In late September, the Congress agreed to move to Tehuacán, Puebla, guarded by the armies of Morelos and Nicolás Bravo. En route to Tehuacán, on November 5, the caravan was intercepted by royal soldiers commanded by Manuel de la Concha. Morelos covered the retreat of the Congress and was captured, taken to Mexico City, and executed on December 22. Though the Congress reached Tehuacán, it was dissolved shortly after.

In January 1830 the presidency of Vicente Guerrero (who had been appointed president extra legally) was usurped by Anastasio Bustamante, the same who had intercepted the letters of Leona Vicario in 1813. Soon, senators loyal to Bustamante proposed laws that would remove the legal and moral authority of Guerrero to govern. The senate refused to act on these propositions and so it was passed to the Chamber of Deputies which formed a four man commission, which included Quintana Roo, to resolve the issue. The Chamber's commission agreed that Guerrero lacked the legal and moral authority to govern, but Quintana Roo made a point to say that "if his election was not constitutional, neither, and by logical consequence, was that of Bustamante," since neither man had won an election. Bustamante's popularity began to wane after he captured and executed Guerrero (despite having already orchestrated the Camera of Deputies to declare him morally unfit to govern). A revolt began in January 1832 to remove Bustamante from power and replace him with Manuel Gómez Pedraza who had been the legitimate winner of the election against which Guerrero revolted. The rebels offered command of their army to Santa Anna which he accepted. The revolt was short and successful; by December Bustamante had resigned and Gómez Pedraza had assumed power. Gómez Pedraza was a polarizing figure. When he called congress into session in 1833, too few representatives showed up and he formed a private council, of which Quintana Roo was a secretary, to conduct the business of congress until elections could be held in March.

Three months later, elections were held in which Santa Anna won the presidency, although he would frequently hand executive duties to his vice president, Valentín Gómez Farías. After the election and the exile of Bustamante, Quintana Roo rejoined the Camera of Deputies. In October of that year he said, "Political discussions must be entirely alien to the chair of the Holy Spirit and the character of a religion such as Christianity, whose fundamental basis is to dispense with governments." In 1838, in the midst of the Pastry War with France, Quintana Roo entrusted a letter to former Academía de Letrán member and current Minister of the Exterior Joaquín Pesado, to be delivered to his former enemy and current president (returned from exile) Anastasio Bustamante to offer a monthly stipend of 500 pesos to support the war effort. Though Bustamante refused the money, he published the letter sent by Quintana Roo in a newspaper as an example of patriotism. His remains lie next to those of his wife, Leona, in the mausoleum of the Column of Independence in Mexico City.

Quintana Roo's name lives on in Mexican geography with the state of Quintana Roo in the Yucatán peninsula. The name of Cancún's soccer stadium bears his name. Statues and busts of Quintana Roo can be found around the country. There are statues in Mérida, Yucatán; Chetumal, Quintana Roo; Solidaridad, Quintana Roo; Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City; and busts on Isla Mujeres and Cozumel, Quintana Roo. His name was given to a public library in Mexico City. Numerous roads and schools have been named for him throughout Mexico. He was featured on the MXP$20,000 and MXN$20 bills.