Juan Almonte

Juan Nepomuceno Almonte Ramírez (May 15, 1803 – March 21, 1869) was a Mexican soldier, commander, minister of war, congressman, diplomat, presidential candidate, and regent. The natural son of Catholic cleric José María Morelos, a leading commander during the Mexican War of Independence, Almonte played an important role as a conservative in the Mexican Republic. He served as Minister of War during multiple administrations as well as in various diplomatic posts in the United States and in Europe. In 1840 he led government forces in an attempt to rescue president Anastasio Bustamante after the president was taken hostage by rebels in the National Palace. Almonte was minister to the United States in the years leading up to the Mexican American War and lobbied against its interference in Texas, which Mexico considered a rebellious province. Almonte was a leading figure in conservative efforts to re-establish monarchy in Mexico, supporting the French imperial forces during the Second French Intervention in Mexico and the establishment of the Second Mexican Empire under Maximilian I of Mexico. Almonte was serving as a diplomat in France when France withdrew military support of the Empire, which fell in 1867. He died two years later in 1869.

Somewhat surprisingly, townfathers in a village in Ontario, Canada, near Canada's capital, named their town Almonte, after Juan Nepomuceno Almonte Ramírez--in 1855. The pronunciation seldom ends in the 'ah' of the original Spanish.

Almonte was born in the town of Nocupétaro in the state of Michoacán, the out-of-wedlock son of José María Morelos, a Roman Catholic priest who led the insurgents in the Mexican War of Independence from 1811 to 1815, and Brígida Almonte. His mother, Brígida Almonte, was said to be of pure Amerindian ancestry.^{[citation needed]} In 1815 Morelos sent Almonte to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he was educated and learned fluent English. At his trial, Morelos was accused by the Mexican Inquisition following his capture that he had sent his son there to learn the doctrines of "heretical maxims of Protestantism," to which Morelos responded he sent his son there because of his concern about his son's safety in Mexico. While in New Orleans, Almonte worked as a clerk for hardware merchant Puech & Bein.^{[citation needed]} His time in the United States was cut short^{[citation needed]} when his father was executed on December 22, 1815, in the village of San Cristóbal Ecatepec.

Between 1822 and 1824, Almonte was on the staff of insurgent rebel leader José Félix Trespalacios in Texas and then was sent as a part of the Mexican delegation to London. Almonte assisted Ambassador José Mariano Michelena in negotiating a commercial and amity treaty with England. This was Mexico's first treaty as a new nation.

During the Mexican War of Independence, Almonte had been a noted partisan of Vicente Guerrero which would later cause him to go into hiding in 1830 after the liberal Guerrero, who had reached the presidency in 1828, was overthrown, and the conservative government of Anastasio Bustamante began persecuting his followers. During the presidency of Bustamante, Almonte was also associated with the liberals Isidro Rafael Gondra, Anastasio Zerecero, and José María Alpuche. He edited the progressive newspaper Atleta (The Athlete), which was forced to shutdown due to government fines.

Almonte married María Dolores Quesada on March 1, 1840, in Mexico City and they had a daughter named María de Guadalupe Anastacia Aleja Brígida Saturnina.

In 1834, Vice President Valentín Gómez Farías appointed Almonte and Col. José María Díaz Noriega to make an inspection tour of Texas and write a status report on what they witnessed. In late January 1836 Almonte was appointed aide-de-camp to Antonio López de Santa Anna and accompanied him to Texas in an attempt to quell the rebellion there.

Santa Anna led his army directly for San Antonio de Bexar, where a small group of Texians was garrisoned at the former Alamo Mission. As the Mexican army occupied the city, Texian co-commander James Bowie sent Green B. Jameson to speak with Santa Anna. Instead, Jameson met with Almonte. According to Almonte, the Texians asked for an honorable surrender but were informed that any surrender must be unconditional. In his March 6 journal entry after the battle, Mexican Almonte listed the Texian casualty toll as 250, with the survivors being five women, one Mexican soldier and one slave. Almonte did not record the names of either the defenders or the survivors, and his count was based solely on who was there during the final assault.