requent changes of government, as political and military leaders vied for power," with Santa Anna managing to retain power in one form or another from 1823 until his final exile in 1845. The internal politics of Mexico are germane to this research because in the key intervening year of 1836, Santa Anna was Mexico's leading politician and the decisive figure at the Alamo.
Complicating the evolution of the Mexican political environment was that, in Texas in particular, there was at the time of independence from Spain an established and continually growing presence of American residents in the territory. In 1818, while apparently still feeling it could prevail both against Napoleon and in Mexico, the government of Spain offered land grants to anyone who could bring significant numbers of settlers into Texas territory. Spain's motive appears to have been to establish population enclaves that would likely be loyal to Spain and not the Mexican revolutionaries; in that connection, the land grants were conditioned on the settlers' conversion to Catholicism an
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