The Conservative Party (Spanish: Partido Conservador) was a political faction in Mexico between 1830 and 1867, which became a loosely organized political party after 1849. They were opposed by, and fought several civil wars against, the Liberal Party.

At various times and under different circumstances they were known as escoceses, centralists, royalists, imperialists, or conservatives, but they tended to be united by the theme of preserving colonial Spanish values, while not being opposed to the economic development and modernization of the nation. Their base of support was the army, the hacendados, and the Catholic Church.

In the constitutional history of Mexico they supported the movement to have a centralized republic as opposed to a federal republic, and produced the Constitution of 1836 and the Constitution of 1843. Certain Conservative intellectuals supported a monarchy for Mexico but between the First Mexican Empire and the Second Mexican Empire such ideas were reduced to a fringe movement. By the time the French launched their invasion of Mexico in 1862, monarchism was insignificant and the French at first struggled to find supporters among the Conservatives in their aims to establish a monarchical client state. Many Conservatives were eventually won over only to be disillusioned with the liberal inclinations of Emperor Maximilian. With the fall of the Second Mexican Empire the conservatives suffered a decisive defeat, and the party ceased to exist.

The Plan of Iguala was a triumph for conservative principles, and in fact a reaction against the Trienio liberal in Spain, but monarchism was largely discredited after the First Mexican Empire's fall in 1823. The conservatives suffered another setback with the triumph of federalism during the debates over the drafting of the Constitution of 1824. Their first candidate to reach the presidency was Anastasio Bustamante in 1830, but he both gained and lost the presidency through a coup as most other presidents did during the tumultuous era of the First Mexican Republic. A decade of conservative rule would be inaugurated in 1835 through the establishment of the Centralist Republic of Mexico, but the federalist constitution would be restored in 1846 after the start of the Mexican–American War. La Reforma, and the establishment of the Constitution of 1857 proved to be another triumph for liberal principles especially anti-clericalism, and conservatives lost the Reform War attempting to abolish the new constitution. During the Second French intervention, the conservatives would invite Maximilian of Habsburg, to assume the Mexican throne, but the Emperor proved to be a liberal, disillusioning many of his conservative supporters.

The liberal and conservative parties had not entirely coalesced at the time of the drafting of the Constitution of 1824, and yet the eventual Conservative cause of centralism was at the center of the debates. Ironically, a liberal, Father Mier would lay out the centralist arguments that would eventually form one of the core Conservative principles. Mier argued that the nation needed a strong centralized government to guard against Spanish attempts to reconquer her former colony, and that a federation rather suited a situation in which previously sovereign states were attempting to unite as had happened with the United States. New Spain had never been made up of autonomous provinces. Federation for Mexico, according to Mier would then be an act of separation rather than unification and only lead to internal conflict. The arguments for federation prevailed however, motivated by the long struggle for independence to seek as much autonomy as possible, and an eagerness to reap the salaries that would accompany local bureaucracies.

Conservatives would finally be able to discard the Constitution of 1824 after the overthrow of the liberal presidency of Valentín Gómez Farías in 1832. A newly elected conservative congress began work on a new constitution that would eventually come to be known as the Siete Leyes, which replaced the Mexican states with departments, inaugurating the Centralist Republic of Mexico. The governors of the departments were to be appointed by the central government from among candidates nominated by departmental assemblies.

Another Conservative constitution would be inaugurated in 1843 through the Bases Orgánicas, which continued the departmental system. The departmental governors were once again appointed by the central government from nominees submitted by the departmental assemblies.

Mexico through the Plan of Iguala, gained its independence as a Catholic confessional state, and even the liberal Constitution of 1824 declared the Roman Catholic religion the sole legally permitted religion.