Andres Quintana Roo

Home where Don Andrés Quintana Roo was born

Andrés Eligio Quintana Roo (Mérida, Yucatán, November 30, 1787 - Mexico City, April 15, 1851) was a lawyer, poet and politician from New Spain, an insurgent in the independence process from Mexico. He was the husband of Leona Vicario, who stood out during the Mexican war of independence. He is the son of José Matías Quintana and María Ana Roo, descendants of Canarian settlers who settled in the Yucatán peninsula in the 18th century and older brother of the Catholic priest Tomás Quintana Roo.

Biography

Studies and early years

He studied his first letters at the San Ildefonso Seminary in Mérida, he showed great capacity for letters; in 1808 he continued his studies in Mexico City at the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico. His father established the first printing press that published newspapers in the Yucatan peninsula. Matías Quintana's attitude was considered subversive by the crown and he was apprehended by the authorities of the viceroyalty; he was sent to jail in San Juan de Ulúa. Quintana Roo completed the baccalaureate of arts and canons, he graduated as a lawyer being an intern in the law firm of Don Agustín Pomposo Fernández.

San Juanista

In 1802 in Yucatán a group called Sanjuanistas was formed, it was founded by Pablo Moreno, a Yucatecan philosopher and the chaplain José María Velázquez, this group included notable characters such as the father of Andrés Quintana Roo and Lorenzo de Zavala; The group advocated for the suppression of indigenous servility, parochial obventions and privileges to the Spanish Crown. Almost immediately, a group opposed to the Sanjuanistas called the Rutineros arose on the peninsula.

Independence of Mexico

He was one of the heroes of the Independence of Mexico. Member of the Chilpancingo Congress, he presided over the Constituent Assembly that formulated the Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of North America (1813). He deputy and senator, several times Secretary of State, magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation; he edited and edited the newspaper American Patriotic Weekly; author of the work Sixteenth of September, among others. In his honor, the state of Quintana Roo, in Mexico, was named. There is also a small municipality in the state of Yucatán that bears his name.

His remains rested in the Column of Independence from 1925 until May 30, 2010, when they were transferred to the National Palace for conservation, analysis, and authentication.

In his role and contribution to the insurgent cause he falls mainly on an intellectual role, this can be explained thanks to his professional training in law and not in military issues. So Don Andrés Quintana Roo was inserted into the propaganda work in El Ilustrador Americano and El Semanario Patriotico Americano, newspapers published from 1812 to 1813.

In August of that same year, with José María Morelos y Pavón calling for the creation of a Congress and calling for meetings. Andrés Quintana Roo met the servant of the nation there. Guillermo Prieto narrates in his memoirs that Mr. Quintana was perplexed by the talent and ideas that emanated from General Morelos. It is so that after having designated the positions that would be occupied in the Congress of Chilpancingo and José María Murguía y Galargui being president in office in November 1813. The latter would leave the position when he was not able to remain in office, leaving the vice president of Congress, a young Andrés Quintana Roo, as effective president of the organization.

Ana Carolina Ibarra maintains that after an itinerant Congress and several insurgent defeats, we speak of Hermenegildo Galena who fell in the area of Coyuca, in the current state of Guerrero on August 27, 1814. The Constitution of Apatzingán was proclaimed on October 22, 1814 and although Quintana Roo is not among the signatories, this was one of the main masterminds along with Carlos María de Bustamante and Ignacio López Rayón, according to the researcher.

Political career in Mexico

After the consolidation of the independence struggle signed between the insurgents and the royalist faction, the challenge would be the planning of a free and sovereign State, even in the face of economic adversities and political divisions due to the different national projects that were being considered. mind. The different ways of governing that the federalists, centralists or monarchists would have. Quintana Roo worked in political life as a man clinging to his federalist liberal ideals, although he never served as a senator, if he held the positions of deputy in the Instituting Congress of 1822, after federalist deputy in the Second Constitutional Congress in 1827-1828. He ended up being president of the Chamber of Deputies in 1831-1832.

We find him occupying the position of Undersecretary of Relations during the mandate of Agustín de Iturbide, lasting a few months in the position due to the convulsive situations, speaking about armed uprisings. With the arrival of Santa Anna in 1832, Quintana Roo held the position of Minister of Justice for Ecclesiastical Business where he sought to reform and modernize the country from a secular state, the transit of church properties as they were not profitable.

Andrés Quintana Roo turned out to be one of the first politicians to implement these ideas where he attacked the church, with its due responses from the Institution and its sympathizers. The lawyer disagreed that the pulpit of the church was used as a space for political harangues. In addition, he decreed the elimination of the coercion for the collection of the tithe on October 27, 1833 and the elimination of the civil coercion of the fulfillment of the monastic vows on November 6, 1833. These decrees were immediately abolished by Santa Anna when he saw the reactions contrary to the conservative wing. This caused Quintana Roo to resign from his position to what he saw as a fickle government that opted only for the sympathy of supporters and not for entrenched ideals.

Don Andrés, throughout the documentary research we found that fervent support for the federal cause and defense of sovereignty. Upon the arrival of the French troops in the so-called War of the cakes, we find a statement addressed to Anastasio Bustamante offering all his goods, at the service of the country.

On November 4, 1841, Andrés Quintana Roo agreed to travel as Commissioner of the General Government and returned to Yucatán to deal with the separatist affairs that the Peninsula had been dragging since the independence of Mexico. It is worth mentioning that among the tasks of the Yucatecan lawyer, the balance between national unity and federalism was always sought, that is, the freedom and autonomy of the republican states. Thus, being a native of those lands, he is well received, facilitating negotiations to avoid the territorial disintegration of the peninsula.

At the end of the days of Andrés Quintana Roo he never detached himself from political life but he also focused on intellectual production. Thus, he serves as "First Vice President of the Mexican Institute of Sciences, Literature and Arts, founder of newspapers such as El Federalista Mexicano, until his last days, he was honorary president of the Lateran Academy and surrounded himself with young liberals who shared his passion. for the construction of a modern country.”

Relationship with Leona Vicario

He was a disciple of Agustín Pomposo Fernández de San Salvador, whose niece was Leona Vicario, but there was a problem: Don Agustín supported the Crown and Andrés supported the insurgency. Andrés requested permission to marry Leona but was denied due to her ideological differences. Agustín Pomposo Fernández was an intellectual character of his time, he was in charge of running the family business affairs, in addition to having been rector of the University on two occasions Quintana Roo joined the insurgents; and taking advantage of the forced separation, Doña Leona secretly rendered eminent services to Independence. Leona was discovered in 1813 for rendering services to the insurgency and was locked up in the Colegio de Belén (Mexico City), despite the support that, despite everything, her uncle gave her in court. She managed to escape disguised and married Andrés in Tlalpujahua, Michoacán. After the dissolution of the Congress in Tehuacán in Puebla, Andrés Quintana Roo and Leona Vicario decided to remain in Michoacán. From that moment her life would be based on a need to hide in different regions.

Until finally, after having passed a series of penalties and having given birth to his first daughter, whom they would call Genoveva, they received the pardon in March 1818. From there the family resided in Toluca with very few resources, without being able to pass to the city of Mexico and without the possibility of recovering any of the large assets that had formed part of the inheritance of Leone Vicario, confiscated as part of the booty of the realistic troops. Only until 1820, the couple was authorized to return to Mexico City; in that same year, Quintana Roo's admission to the Bar Association was accepted.

They lived together in the house at Brasil 37 (former Calle de Los Sepulcros de Santo Domingo) that had been given by the first independent governments to Leona Vicario, in compensation for the assets that had been seized from her for her participation in the insurgency. With the death of his wife in 1842, Quintana Roo moved to the house located at number 153 of the current Venustiano Carranza street, in the La Merced neighborhood, Mexico City, where he spent his last years.