Vicente Guerrero - Legacy

Legacy

Guerrero is a Mexican national hero. The state of Guerrero is named ln his honour.

In 1821, Mexico accepted Americans to settle the Texas territory under the conditions that the settlers convert to Catholicism and observe Mexican laws, including the abolition of slavery. On 15 September 1829, President Vicente Ramon Guerrero, emancipated all slaves within the Republic of Mexico:

The President of the United States of Mexico, know ye: That desiring to celebrate in the year of 1829 the anniversary of our independence with an act of justice and national beneficence, which might result in the benefit and support of a good, so highly to be appreciated, which might cement more and more the public tranquility, which might reinstate an unfortunate part of its inhabitants in the sacred rights which nature gave them, and which the nation protects by wise and just laws, in conformance with the 30th article of the constitutive act, in which the use of extraordinary powers are ceded to me, I have thought it proper to decree:

1st. Slavery is abolished in the republic.

2nd. Consequently, those who have been until now considered slaves are free.

3rd. When the circumstances of the treasury may permit, the owners of the slaves will be indemnified in the mode that the laws may provide.

And in order that every part of this decree may be fully complied with, let it be printed, published, and circulated. Given at the Federal Palace of Mexico, the 15th of September, 1829. Vicente Guerrero to José María Bocanegra.

However, Guerrero immediately received strong warnings from Texas, where most of the slaveholders were located, of "serious inconvenience apprehended by the execution of the decree of the 15th of September last, on the subject of abolition of slavery in that department and the fatal results to be expected, prejudicial to the tranquility and even to the political existence of the state." Thus, scarcely two months later, Guerrero sent a note dated 20 November communicating to the governor and military garrisons of Texas that the Texas slaves would remain enslaved.

Several towns in Mexico are named in honor of this famous General, including Vicente Guerrero in Baja California and the Mexican State of Guerrero, on the mainland of Mexico. Guerrero Negro in Baja California Sur, however, is not named after him -- as popularly believed, due to his African ancestry in an almost entirely non-black nation -- but after the "Black Warrior", a whaling ship that shipwrecked in the area.