Antonio López de Santa Anna

Santa Anna commanded the Veracruz garrison when Mexico won independence in 1821 and spent the next three decades as the central figure in nearly every constitutional shift and military crisis the young nation faced. He overthrew the liberal Gómez Farías twice after riding to power with him, dissolved Congress by force when convenient, and played both sides of every ideological divide. His leadership dragged out the Mexican-American War longer than it might have lasted, and when it ended he authorized the Gadsden Purchase, selling yet more territory north. Overthrown and exiled under the Plan of Ayutla in 1855, he faded into irrelevance during the Reform War and the French intervention. He returned as an old man in 1874 and died two years later in obscurity, leaving a legacy Mexicans summarize with bitter clarity: the man who failed the nation most.