Recalling the Pomp and Populism of the 1822 Commission to the Californias

Abstract

Upon Mexico’s independence, its Regency dispatched commissioner Agustín Fernández de San Vicente to ensure the allegiance of officials and residents of remote Alta California. His strategies for this pivotal commission are analyzed for the first time here. Fernández, inspired by the grand style of the new emperor, Agustín Iturbide, designed a lavish presentation meant for mass appeal. Literature on the commission has been dominated to date by the biased and belated eyewitness testimony of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and Juan Bautista Alvarado, who depicted Fernández as a sleazy demagogue. This article critically examines their interventions and the conditions under which these were produced. Their stories about the commissioner drinking and gambling were probably exaggerated. Locals never found out that Fernández was lying about being a canon.