Juan Nepomuceno Álvarez Hurtado (27 January 1790 – 21 August 1867), generally known as Juan Álvarez, was a Mexican general, federalist caudillo, a principal sponsor of the state of Guerrero and its first governor, and interim president of Mexico from 4 October to 11 December 1855. In a military career of more than fifty years he fought from the Mexican War of Independence through the war against the French-backed Second Mexican Empire and was the last veteran of independence to occupy the presidency.
During the independence era, he fought under José María Morelos and Vicente Guerrero on the Costa Grande and remained Guerrero’s principal lieutenant until his overthrow and execution. Guerrero's forces, made up of racially diverse peasants from the Costa Grande and Tierra Caliente passed to him and remained the core of his power. With that force he became the regional commander of the Revolution of Ayutla, which brought him to the presidency. His two-month government installed a cabinet that included a new generation of liberals and enacted the Ley Juárez, the opening act of the pivotal era of La Reforma. A racialized panic in the capital over his southern troops, together with a split in the Liberal camp, preceded his resignation in favor of Ignacio Comonfort.
Early life and family Álvarez was born on 27 January 1790 in Santa María de la Concepción de Atoyac (today Atoyac de Álvarez, Guerrero), in the barrio la Tachuela. His testament names his parents as Antonio Álvarez, “natural de España,” and Rafaela Hurtado, of the port of Acapulco. Nineteenth-century writers, including Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, identified the father as a Galician from Santiago de Compostela and recorded that Morelos nicknamed the young insurgent el Gallego.
As a child he studied in Mexico City under Ignacio Avilés. After his parents’ deaths he returned south around 1807; a tutor dissipated the inheritance and he worked as a vaquero. In his testament he wrote that whatever small property he and his wife had brought to the marriage “se acabó y desapareció con la guerra de nuestra independencia.” ("was lost, it disappeared with the War of Independence") He married Faustina Benítez in 1810. Their children included Diego Álvarez Benítez, later governor of Guerrero, and Encarnación Álvarez Benítez.
The family's ethnic background is not settled. Recent historiography, especially María Teresa Pavía Miller, argues that Acapulco had little Indigenous population, that Hurtado was a surname common among pardas, and that Álvarez was more plausibly Afro-descendant through his mother, while noting that no parish classification for her has been produced.
Opponents in his lifetime used African descent as an insult, calling Faustina Benítez a negra and marking Diego and Encarnación through their mother.
War of Independence Regular warfare under Morelos, 1810–1815 Álvarez joined José María Morelos on 17 November 1810 as a soldier in the second battalion of the Regimiento de Guadalupe. The southern columns he entered were later called pintos calentanos: peasant militiamen of Tierra Caliente and the Costa Grande, many of them Indigenous or Afro-descendant, marked in the region by mal del pinto and drawn from the same villages that had filled the colonial coastal militias.
He was promoted to sergeant within a month and later to captain of cavalry after distinguishing himself at El Aguacatillo and La Sabana in early 1811. Sent to receive the surrender of the Fort of San Diego at Acapulco, he was drawn in and fired upon. Most of the company were killed. A bullet passed through both his legs; he would have died if the soldier Diego Eugenio Salas, himself wounded, had not carried him out. The wounds never fully healed and for the rest of his life he could not walk without crutches. He was wounded again at a second action in La Sabana and at the assault on Tixtla under Hermenegildo Galeana, after which he was made colonel. In 1813–14 he fortified Cerro del Veladero and was beaten by José Gabriel de Armijo at Pie de la Cuesta.
Guerrilla warfare with Vicente Guerrero, 1815–1821
After Morelos’s execution in 1815, the pintos of Tierra Caliente and the Costa Grande went over to Vicente Guerrero, the last major insurgent commander still in the field in the south. Álvarez placed himself under his command and remained one of the coastal captains inside Guerrero’s army, alongside Isidoro Montes de Oca, and others who held the coast between Acapulco and Zacatula. For the next six years the two men fought a guerrilla war against royalist forces.
In 1821 Guerrero and Álvarez defeated the royalists at El Paso Cueva del Diablo. Álvarez accepted the Plan of Iguala despite his republicanism; Guerrero recommended him to Agustín de Iturbide as the most prestigious chief on the Costa del Sur. He took Acapulco on 15 October 1821 with battalions of pintos and Indians and was held there as commander of the port and fortress.
Lieutenant of Vicente Guerrero, 1821–1831 He followed Guerrero when he rose against the First Mexican Empire in 1823 and again sided with him in the 1828 presidential crisis. After the state legislatures elected Manuel Gómez Pedraza, Álvarez and Montes de Oca occupied Acapulco and seconded Santa Anna’s Plan of Perote, which set the election aside and named Guerrero president. When irregulars began looting Spanish haciendas in Guerrero’s name around Cuernavaca, Álvarez took about 1,500 men there and restored order. Some biographies add that he opposed a general expulsion of Spaniards and protected persons and property on the coast; other papers from his circle use anti-peninsular language. War of the South, 1830–1831 When the Plan of Jalapa installed Anastasio Bustamante and expelled Guerrero from the presidency, Guerrero withdrew to the south and took up arms. Álvarez, the strongman of Acapulco, was distrusted by the new government, removed from the port command, and ordered away on a pretext. In March 1830 he and Guerrero adhered to the federalist plan associated with , calling for the restoration of the purged state legislatures and the Constitution of 1824.
Álvarez took the field as colonel of the División Protectora de la Soberanía de los Estados. Bustamante sent Nicolás Bravo against him. On 18 April 1830, from Venta Vieja, Álvarez wrote to Bravo that a fight between Mexicans would be a crime when they ought to be defending the country from foreigners. Bravo attacked before dawn on 24 April and reported Álvarez was driven toward El Veladero. The war continued as Álvarez fought on at El Veladero, El Manglar, Dos Arroyos, Las Cruces and Chilpancingo, After a setback near Chilpancingo, Guerrero made his headquarters in Acapulco. Álvarez stayed at Texca and supplied the coast, in part through the Genoese brig Colombo of .
War minister José Antonio Facio then paid Picaluga to seize Guerrero and Álvarez together. On 14 January 1831 both men were invited to dine on the Colombo in Acapulco harbour. A disturbance at the fort called Álvarez back; Guerrero went aboard and was taken. Álvarez failed to free him. Guerrero was tried by court-martial and shot at Cuilapan, Oaxaca, on 14 February 1831. On 13 April 1831 Álvarez signed a convenio with Bravo that ended the War of the South.
Caudillo of the south, 1831–1854 Civic and regional historiography treat Álvarez after 1831 as the heir of Guerrero’s soldiers as well as of his political claim. On 12 August 1832 he seconded the Plan of Veracruz and rose againts Bustamante at the Fort of San Diego. In the manifesto to his division he called Guerrero the “victim of Cuilápam,” said that crime alone would justify the rebellion, and told the southerners they were not spectators of a revolution that had been born among them in 1830. He went on fighting centralism, including the 1833 defense against the Plan of Escalada. In 1838 he offered his forces to the government in the Pastry War. In 1841 he was promoted to general de división, during Antonio López de Santa Anna’s government after the Plan of Regeneración.
In the 1840s he mediated peasant land and tax revolts in Chilapa and the Tierra Caliente and recruited village fighters into federalist coalitions. Historian Peter Guardino has argued that this was his lasting importance: he tied peasant traditions of municipal office and village land defense to national federalism.
Opponents described that coalition in racial terms. Conservative writers accused him of threatening a guerra de castas. Santa Anna later wrote that Álvarez resembled “la pantera… por el odio constante contra nuestra raza.” ("The panther… because of the constant hatred against our race".) Supporters answered with the paternal Tata Juan.
Mexican–American War Álvarez had warned that the colonization laws of 1824 would deliver Texas to the United States. In 1847 he brought the southern cavalry to the Valley of Mexico. According to a standard Mexican biographical notice, he fought mounted because the Independence wounds still forced him to use crutches on foot. At the Battle of Molino del Rey Santa Anna ordered him to strike the American flank with several thousand cavalry. The charge that Santa Anna wanted was not delivered as a decisive blow. After the war Santa Anna accused him of inaction and of watching from a mule. Mexican defenders reverse the blame onto Santa Anna’s orders and onto officers who balked at serving under him.
Creation of Guerrero Álvarez was the principal regional sponsor of a new federal state carved from the south of Mexico, Puebla and Michoacán and named for Vicente Guerrero. The state was erected on 27 October 1849; Álvarez was named provisional commander that day and confirmed as first governor when the local legislature met at Iguala in January 1850. As governor he opposed the Plan del Hospicio, which aimed to unseat President Mariano Arista and recall Santa Anna. He told correspondents that nothing would be gained by bringing that man back, but did not take up arms against the plan. He wrote to Arista offering Guerrero as a refuge for the constitutional government; Arista declined and resigned on 5 January 1853. Santa Anna returned in April. Álvarez kept a quiet face until the dictatorship closed in on the south.
Revolution of Ayutla
On 20 February 1854 Álvarez pronounced against Santa Anna. On 1 March Colonel Florencio Villarreal proclaimed the Plan of Ayutla with about 400 pintos. A preamble set forth grievances against the dictatorship, and was followed by nine articles.
Santa Anna and his officers were stripped of authority in the name of the people. After a majority of the nation had accepted the plan the revolutionary commander in chief was to convoke an assembly of representatives from each state and territory to choose an interim government. The interim president was granted sufficient authority to carry out the tasks of government and protect national sovereignty. The states who accepted the plan were to form new government while the indissolubility of the republic as a whole was emphasized. The interim president was to convoke a congress. Trade and military affairs were to be adequately administered. Conscription and passport laws were to be abolished. Opponents of the plan were to be treated as threats to national independence. Placed either Nicolás Bravo, Tomás Moreno and Juan Álvarez the head of the movement.
The plan was ratified at Acapulco with a few amendments, including a provision allowing changes to be made in accordance with the national will, and Álvarez was chosen as head of the movement. Ignacio Comonfort seconded him.