A Texas Patriot on Trial in Mexico: Jose Antonio Navarro and the Texan Santa Fe Expedition (review)

This is an interesting study of the trial of José Antonio Navarro after the ill-fated attempt by the Texas Republic to seize eastern New Mexico. Navarro was one of three commissioners appointed by the president of the Texas Republic to persuade governor Manuel Armijo to "voluntarily" join Texas. Well edited, written in both Spanish and English as well as including an excellent introduction, A Texas Patriot on Trial in Mexico describes very well a key event during the conflict between Texas and Mexico during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Navarro managed to talk his way out of being executed. After the expedition failed, Navarro insisted to Armijo that he was only serving as a translator, that "my participation would serve only to avoid a crisis among my fellow citizens" (p. 32) and that he was ill. After his capture, Navarro was kept in the Acordada prison in Mexico City until his trial, which highlighted testimony from Mexican officers who criticized Navarro's role in the Texas revolt. One general noted that Navarro had been elected as a representative to the congress of Coahuila y Tejas but that during the l835 San Antonio siege, Navarro assumed a neutral stance. Navarro pleaded that he felt compelled to "pursue his natural right of physical preservation" (p. 55) when agitated colonists encouraged him to sign the Texas declaration of independence. Navarro claimed that he accepted his appointment as commissioner only after president David Burnet pressured him into participating.

The unconditional surrender of the expedition became critical to Navarro's defense on the charge of treason. The Texans insisted that they gave up without a fight because Armijo promised that their lives would be spared. The prosecutor for the Ordinary Military Tribunal decided not to pursue a death sentence for Navarro but then resigned his position, claiming poor health. Minister of War Jose Tornel and provisional president Santa Anna sought a death sentence. The new prosecutor requested the execution of Navarro but the court's legal advisor concluded that the military tribunal had overstepped its jurisdiction. After reviewing the case, the Military Supreme Court commuted Navarro's death sentence to indefinite imprisonment in a "healthful place" (p. 83).

On May 18, 1842 the reconstituted tribunal found Navarro guilty of betrayal and urged that he be shot. But the Mexico City legal advisor to the Comandancia General noted that Navarro had been promised by Armijo that his life would be spared and requested that the tribunal's sentence not be carried out. Santa Anna was unhappily surprised that the tribunal accepted the legal advisor's opinion. Tornel claimed that all legal steps had been followed and that the promise to guarantee the lives of the invaders had not been "verified." Only the national government, Tornel argued, had the right to issue pardons. Santa Anna then suspended the legal advisor in order to prevent the Military Supreme Court's opinion from giving tantamount recognition of the independence of Texas. Because the court had treated Navarro as a prisoner of war, Texas could be in a position to strengthen its claim as a sovereign nation. Santa Anna then decreed that the lower court be suspended and tried for having indirectly recognized Texas as independent. In February, 1843 another legal advisor noted that the law did not permit the Comandancias Generales to supercede legal decisions and assume judicial roles. Therefore the Supreme Military Court's decision to revoke the death sentence could not be overruled.

Perhaps the most instructive lesson from this event is the degree to which the Mexican judiciary resisted Santa Anna's determination to have Navarro executed. Clearly the Santa Anna regime respected legal norms despite its authoritarian nature. Navarro's declarations to the court certainly contain a bending of the truth because his contemporaries noted that Navarro strongly supported...