Tornel’s efforts at abolition, he later recalled, were calculated at establishing “a barrier between Mexico and the United States” by discouraging further immigration of Americans into Texas, although he had been unable to convince a majority of his fellow legislators to join him.12 When Spain mounted an invasion of Mexico in July 1829, however, the Mexican Congress invested President Guerrero with emergency war powers, suspended the Constitution, and allowed him to rule the country by decree for the duration of the crisis.
