On August 23, 1931, the galleries of Lima's bull ring, the Plaza de Acho, rang with deafening applause. The object of this public tribute was Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, a young provincial politician who had just finished exhorting his fellow countrymen to join him in a movement for the regeneration of Peru. This day truly belonged to Haya, for it symbolized his return to the lists of Peruvian politics and the resumption of an active national political career that would be stilled only by death almost half a century later. This moment of triumph in the Plaza de Acho must have been especially sweet, for a little over eight years before, on May 23, 1923, Haya, as a young student leader, had organized a protest against the government of President Augusto B. Leguía. Military forces, however, dispersed the demonstrators killing several and wounding many in the process. Haya's reward for this manifestation of anti-establishment behavior was arrest, imprisonment, and ultimately, in October of 1923, deportation. Thus Haya's triumph of 1931 served, at least in part, as a vindication for the events of 1923 and the subsequent years of exile.

The rediscovery of classical civilization and the rapid spread of Humanism through the writings of Erasmus, ushered in the Renaissance. The reawakening turned people outward from the involuted, mystically oriented outlook of the Medieval era. It was a time of rapid change, the period of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The new philosophic outlook was manifested in the arts, and the Gutenberg press and copperplate engraving disseminated new ideas along with classicism. The discovery and publication in 1511 of the Roman builder, Vitruvius, was the catalyst to the renewed interest in Greco-Roman forms. These classical forms, however, were for the most part, an external expression of classic Roman “orders” (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite) imposed upon structural innovations formulated in the Gothic period. Since highly skilled craftsmen such as Cellini, Ghiberti, Donatello and Brunelleschi worked as painters and sculptors as well as architects, buildings tended to be treated as surfaces and backdrops for embellishment.

Padre António Vieira commenting on the colonial government of Brazil to the Crown in 1654.

On the Tagus River approximately eight kilometers from the center of Lisbon stands a monument to Portuguese overseas exploration and expansion—O Padrão dos descobrimentos — erected in 1960 on the 500th anniversary of Prince Henry the Navigator. Facing the Tagus is Prince Henry. Flanking him on each side and representing the reasons behind the success of Portuguese exploration and expansion are several symbolic figures. King Manuel, during whose reign many of the discoveries were made, illustrates the complete support of the Crown that many of the expeditions enjoyed. A priest carrying a cross depicts the religious motives behind expansion—the spreading of Christianity to the heathen. There are also a caulker and a carpenter both important in the production of new sailing vessels. A pilot with an astrolabe portrays the significance of the scientific aspects of overseas exploration. Luís de Camões holds his Os Lusiadas, the epic poem that depicted the triumphs of Portuguese expansion. There are even widows in tears to remind viewers of the great loss of men that Portugal suffered during her conquests. Another important figure depicted on the monument is the conquistador with drawn sword, the symbol of the military—“the backbone of the empire.”

Historians are familiar with the short-lived alliance between General Antonio López de Santa Anna and the Mexican Federalists that was formed in July 1832 and lasted until April 1834. After achieving its goal of overthrowing the centralist regime of Anastasio Bustamante, the alliance led to the exercise of power by Santa Anna's Federalist vice president, Valentín Gómez Farías, in April 1833, and it disintegrated a year later when Santa Anna returned to Mexico City from his hacienda to seize personal control of the government. By April 1834 the army officer corps and the ecclesiastical hierarchy had become incensed at the Federalists' anti-military and anti-clerical reform program and were demanding the ouster of Gómez Farías and the dissolution of Congress. Members of the proprietary class of central Mexico and a considerable portion of the masses, who had been incited by the clergy, also joined the clamor against the Federalists. One of the factors that contributed to Santa Anna's extraordinary success as a politician was his shrewd sense of timing. In this case, it is well known that he turned against the Federalists when opposition to them from important sectors of the population became widespread and heated. What is not so well known is that, in the absence of such broad opposition, he chose to suppress an anti-Federalist revolt of senior army officers that broke out in May 1833. He did so even though the rebels offered to make him “supreme chief of the nation” if he adhered to their movement. Just as an understanding of Santa Anna's decision to break openly with the Federalists in April 1834 provides important insights regarding his political methods and goals, an assessment of his decision not to do so eleven months earlier in May 1833 can shed additional light on the tactics and objectives that helped to make him the most formidable political figure in Mexico during the post-independence period. Accordingly, this article will analyze the reasons for Santa Anna's decision not to support the anti-Federalist revolt of 1833.