> After gaining independence in 1821 Mexico had soon divided itself into liberal and conservative parties, the latter of which contained a monarchist faction. Monarchist plans had most clearly been laid out in an 1840 essay by the statesman José María Gutiérrez de Estrada, which argued that after two decades of chaos, the republic had failed, and that a European prince ought to be invited to establish a Mexican throne. Such ideas received official interest during the presidency of Mariano Paredes and during the last presidency of Santa Anna, but by the late 1850s the liberals had appeared to have achieved a decisive victory through the promulgation of the Constitution of 1857, and their triumph in the subsequent Reform War.
has mexico ever not been a failed state