MILITARY AND NAVAL FORCES PRO-INSURGENTS IN THE NORTH-EASTERN TERRITORIES AND MARITIME BORDERS OF NEW SPAIN, 1813-1819

The paper examines the naval and military forces that in the name of the Mexican insurgents were active at the northern and eastern limits of the viceroyalty of New Spain during the civil war of the second decade in the nineteenth century. The paper focuses on the number and origins of the forces' participants, the motives and interests of their activities, the strategies and tactics employed during their campaigns and naval attacks. The paper argues that there were different forms of linkages between these forces and several groups of insurgents, beginning with commercial interests and the search for personal gains, specially by corsairs who were active in the Gulf of Mexico, up to projects that aimed the liberation of Spanish centres of power, like San Antonio Mar, or the penetration of vast zones of the viceroyalty and union with local groups of insurgents, as was the plan of Xavier Mina. The paper intents to demonstrate the considerable activity of external forces at the territorial and maritime limits of the viceroyalty as well as the great hopes deposited in their aid by the Mexican insurgents, but that ultimately the incidence of these activities was minimal in the consummation of the process of independence.