Mexican Independence
The same spirit of liberty that led British colonists to declare their independence in 1776 inspired Spanish colonists to assert their independence in the early 1800s. On the morning of September 16, 1810, a priest named Miguel Hidalgo made a fiery speech in the town of Dolores in New Spain. His words set off a long and bloody war to make New Spain an independent country.
During most of the war for Mexican independence, California remained uninvolved and unaffected. The only direct contact with the war came in 1818 when two "revolutionary" ships sacked and burned several settlements along the California coast. Three more years of fighting, all to the south of California, were necessary before Mexico achieved its independence in 1821.
When news of Mexican independence reached California the following year, the old red and gold imperial flag of Spain was lowered over the presidio at Monterey. A crisp new flag, bearing an eagle and a snake, rose in its place. As the flag unfolded in the breeze, the assembled soldiers shouted: "Viva la independencia Mexicana!"
Secularization of the Missions
The missions of California, like the missions on all Spanish colonial frontiers, were intended to be temporary institutions. When the work of Christianization and acculturation was finished, the missionaries were to be replaced by secular clergy and the mission lands distributed among the former neophytes. This process was known as secularization.
Following the establishment of Mexican independence in 1821, demands for the secularization of the missions intensified. The constitution of the Republic of Mexico endorsed the equality of all Mexicans regardless of race. Mexican liberals concluded that the missions--which denied basic liberties to the Indians--were unconstitutional.
The Indians themselves were becoming increasingly restive under mission rule. A coordinated revolt broke out in 1824 among Chumash neophytes at three of the missions along the Santa Barbara Channel. Meanwhile, Native-born Californios saw the missions as an obstacle to the economic development of the province; they believed that the missions' control of prime agricultural lands and the indigenous labor force retarded the growth of private ranches and farms.
In 1834 Governor José Figueroa issued a proclamation ordering the secularization of the California missions.
According to the 1834 secularization proclamation of Governor José Figueroa, half the property of the California missions was to be distributed to the former mission Indians.
Unfortunately most Indians did not receive any of the mission lands; those who did rarely kept them for long. Lorenzo Asisara, a former neophyte at Mission Santa Cruz, later remembered that during secularization his people were given some "old mares that were no longer productive and very old rams." They also received a portion of the mission lands, "but it did not do the Indians any good."
Between 1834 and 1836 each of the twenty-one California missions was secularized. Governor Figueroa, who died in the midst of the secularization proceedings, appointed administrators to supervise the disposal of mission properties. The administrators sold off the cattle, grain, and lands that rightly should have gone to the former neophytes. The vast bulk of the mission properties ended up in the hands of a few prominent Californio families.
The final blow to the missions came in 1845 when cash-strapped Governor Pío Pico auctioned off the remaining mission properties--including the crumbling mission churches. One dispirited padre lamented: "All is destruction, all is misery, humiliation and despair."
A small group of ranchero families, mostly California-born, emerged as the new elite of Mexican California. Their wealth and power was based on the enormous ranchos they acquired from the Mexican government. Each rancho grant was accompanied by a diseño or map. The maximum legal limit for a private rancho grant was 11 square leagues--about 50,000 acres. Not even this generous limit was always applied; some individuals received multiple grants.
Typical of the new elite was Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, grantee of several ranchos in present-day Solano and Sonoma counties. Born in Monterey, Vallejo became the most prominent land-owner in northern California. From his casa grande in the new pueblo of Sonoma, Vallejo ruled over a feudal barony of vast lands, herds of cattle, and a large retinue of Indian laborers.
The ranchero oligarchy was divided by personal, factional, and sectional disputes. Rivalries between norteños and sureños foreshadowed later disagreements between northern and southern Californians in the twentieth century.