Mina y Larrea, Javier (1789–1817)

Javier Mina y Larrea (b. 1 July 1789; d. 11 November 1817), Mexican insurgent leader. Born in Otano, Spain, he fought against the French in Spain until he was captured and sent to France. After Napoleon's defeat in 1814, he returned to Spain, then under the absolutist rule of Ferdinand VII (1784–1833), to lead a conspiracy to restore the Constitution of 1812. When the movement failed, he fled to London, where he met Lord Holland, an Englishman sympathetic to the Mexican insurgency, and Fray Servando Teresa de Mier (1765–1827). Together the three planned an expedition to New Spain to fight there against absolutism. In May 1816 he departed for the United States, where he obtained credit, money, and men. He landed in Soto la Marina in April 1817. Leaving some of his forces there, he continued inland to join the insurgents. Although he threatened the regime and was successful in several actions, his enterprise was doomed because the organized insurgency had disappeared with the death of José María Morelos y Pavón (1765–1815). Mina then joined José Antonio Torres (1770–1818) at the fortress of El Sombrero. After El Sombrero fell, he attacked the convoys that laid siege to the fortress of Los Remedios. He was captured at the ranch of El Venadito on 27 October 1817 and shot at Los Remedios.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Martín Luis Guzmán, Javier Mina, héroe de España y México, 3d ed. (1972).

José María Miquel I Vergés, Mina, el español frente a España (1945).

William Davis Robinson, Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution (1820).

Additional Bibliography

Ortuño Martínez, Manuel. Xavier Mina: Fronteras de libertad. Mexico City: Porrúa, 2003.

Torre Saavedra, Ana Laura de la. La expedición de Xavier Mina a Nueva España: Una utopía liberal imperial. Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 1999.

                                                       Virginia Guedea