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Agustín de Iturbide (; 27 September 178319 July 1824), full name Agustín Cosme Damián de Iturbide y Arámburu and also known as Agustín of Mexico, was a general in the Mexican army then a politician, becoming Emperor during the First Mexican Empire. During the country's war of independence, he built a successful political and military coalition that took control in Mexico City on 27 September 1821, decisively gaining independence for Mexico. After securing the secession of Mexico from Spain, Iturbide was proclaimed president of the Regency in 1821; a year later, he was proclaimed Emperor, reigning from 19 May 1822 to 19 March 1823. In May 1823 he went into exile in Europe. When he returned to Mexico in July 1824, he was arrested and executed. He designed the Mexican flag.

Life before the war of independence

Agustín Cosme Damián de Iturbide y Arámburu was born in what was called Valladolid, now Morelia, the state capital of Michoacán, on 27 September 1783.  He was baptized with the names of Saints Cosmas and Damian at the cathedral. The fifth child born to his parents, he was the only male to survive and eventually became head of the family.
Iturbide's parents were part of the privileged class of Valladolid, owning farmland including the haciendas of Apeo and Guaracha as well as lands in nearby Quirio.  Iturbide's father, Joaquín de Iturbide, came from a family of the Basque gentry who were confirmed in nobility by King Juan II of Aragon. One of his ancestors, Martín de Iturbide, was designated as Royal Merino in the High Valley of Baztan in the 1430s, and thereafter many in the family held political or administrative positions in the Basque Country from the 15th century. As a younger son, Joaquín was not in line to inherit the family lands, so he migrated to New Spain to make his fortune there. While the aristocratic and Spanish lineage of Agustín's father was not in doubt, his mother's ancestry was less clear.

His mother was of pure Spanish blood born in Mexico, and therefore, a criolla. Some sources state she came from a high-ranking family in Michoacán. In the Spanish colonial era, racial caste was important to advancement, including military rank, and having some indigenous ancestry was often a disadvantage. Iturbide insisted throughout his life that he was criollo (native born of Spanish descent).

Agustín studied at the Catholic seminary called Colegio de San Nicolás in Valladolid, enrolled in the program for secular officials, though he was not a distinguished student. After that, he worked as an overseer at one of his family's haciendas for a short time, discovering he was a very good horseman.

In his teens, Iturbide entered the royalist army, having been accepted as a criollo. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the provincial regiment. In 1806, he was promoted to full lieutenant.

Marriage and family
In 1805, when he was twenty-two, Iturbide married Ana María Josefa Ramona de Huarte y Muñiz, member of the House of Tagle of the family of the Marquises of Altamira.  She came from Valladolid, from a prosperous family of businessmen and landowners.  She was the daughter of wealthy and powerful noble Isidro de Huarte, governor of the district, and the granddaughter of the Marquis of Altamira. With her dowry of 100,000 pesos, the couple bought the Hacienda of Apeo in the small town of Maravatío.

Military career
In the early 19th century, there was political unrest in New Spain. One of Iturbide's first military campaigns was to help put down a mutiny, headed by
Gabriel J. de Yermo.

He quickly grew in popularity amongst the royalists, whilst becoming a feared foe for the Insurgents. A peerless horseman and a valiant dragoon who acquired a reputation for achieving victory against numerical odds, his prowess in the field gained him the nom de guerre of "El Dragón de Hierro" or "The Iron Dragon", in reference to his skill and position in the army. He was given an important charge in the army. However, he was accused by locals of using his authority for financial gain although he was recognized as valiant in combat. Those accusations could not be proved but cost him his post. He turned down the offer to reclaim his post since he felt that his honor had been damaged. He may have been involved in the initial conspiracy to declare independence in 1809 that was headed by José Mariano Michelena in Valladolid. It is known by his and Hidalgo's documents that he was a distant relative of Miguel Hidalgo, the initial leader of the Insurgent Army. Hidalgo wrote to Iturbide, offering him a higher rank in his army. Iturbide writes in his memoirs that he considered the offer, but that ultimately turned it down because he considered Hidalgo's uprising ill-executed and his methods barbaric.

Combating insurgency

1810–1816

After the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1810, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla offered Agustín de Iturbide the rank of general in the insurgent forces. Agustín rejected the offer, as he repudiated the atrocities that the mostly-untrained insurgent army committed against Spanish civilians, choosing instead to fight for the royalist forces. Over the course of the war, Agustín fought against generals José María Morelos from 1810 to 1816 and Vicente Guerrero in 1820.

One of Agustín's first encounters with the rebel army was in the Toluca Valley in 1810 as it advanced toward Mexico City from Valladolid. Royalist and rebel forces engaged on the east bank of the Lerma River at the end of October in what is now known as the Battle of Monte de las Cruces. Royalist forces, under the command of Colonel Torcuato Trujillo, withdrew from the area, allowing rebels to take Toluca. Despite the loss by his side, Iturbide distinguished himself in this battle for valor and tenacity. He would later maintain in his memoirs that it was the only battle he considered to have lost (in which he was directly involved).

Iturbide's next major encounter with the rebels would be against Morelos himself and in his native city of Valladolid. Iturbide led the defenders. He demonstrated his tactical skill and horsemanship by breaking Morelos's siege of the town with a well-executed cavalry charge that caused the insurgent forces to withdraw into the forest. For that action, Iturbide was promoted to captain.

As a captain, he pursued rebel forces in the area, managing to capture Albino Licéaga y Rayón, leading to another promotion. In 1813, Viceroy Félix María Calleja promoted Iturbide to colonel and put him in charge of the regiment in Celaya. Then, in 1814, he was named the commander of forces in the Bajío area of Guanajuato, where he continued to pursue the rebels with vigor in a strongly contested area, and was Morelos's principal military opponent from 1813 to 1815.

The next major encounter between Morelos and Iturbide occurred in a town called Puruarán, Michoacán, on 5 January 1814. In the battle, rebel forces were soundly defeated by forces led by Iturbide, forcing Morelos to retreat to the Hacienda of Santa Lucía and to leave Mariano Matamoros and Ignacio López Rayón in command of the rebel army, with over 600 insurgents killed and 700 captured.  That marked a turn in the war as Morelos would never again achieve the same level of competency as he had before this defeat. Iturbide and other Spanish commanders relentlessly pursued Morelos, capturing and executing him in late 1815.

Relieved of command
Iturbide's fortunes reversed after his victory when a number of accusations of cruelty and corruption surfaced. The accusations could not be proved, but Iturbide considered his honor to be tarnished by them and expressed so in his memoirs, written in exile.

Iturbide's persistence against the rebels was widely known as well as his views against their liberal, anti-monarchical politics. In his diary, he refers to the insurgents as "perverse," "bandits," and "sacrilegious." In a letter to the viceroy in 1814, he wrote of how he had 300 rebels, to whom he referred as excommunicates, executed to celebrate Good Friday. Iturbide was also criticized for his arbitrariness and his treatment of civilians, in particular his jailing of the mothers, wives, and children of known insurgents. In 1814, he had captured 100 women and incarcerated them into different houses in order to be "re-educated. As for corruption, the Count of Pérez Galvez extensively testified that profiteering by many royalist officers, of whom Iturbide was the most visible, was draining the effectiveness of the royal army. Iturbide acquired a large personal fortune before 1816 by questionable dealings. Some of those shady practices included creating commercial monopolies in areas that he controlled militarily. Other accusations against Iturbide included sacking private property and embezzling military funds. In 1816, the viceroy relieved Iturbide of his command for corruption and cruelty.

However, one year later, with the support of an auditor, named Bataller, and staunch monarchists in the viceregal government, the charges were withdrawn. Iturbide's supporters further convinced the viceroy that he was needed to vanquish the last remaining rebel leader. However, Iturbide never forgot the humiliation of his dismissal.

Against Guerrero
Iturbide was fully reinstated to military command in November 1820 by viceroy Juan Ruiz de Apodaca. He was reinstated as colonel of the royalist army and general of the south of New Spain. For a couple of years after the defeat of Morelos at Puruarán, the independence movement had diminished significantly. However, Iturbide was given the task of putting down the remaining insurrectionist movement southwest of Mexico City led by Guerrero.  Iturbide installed his headquarters at Teloloapan. For more than a century, historians believed that Iturbide had first attempted to carry out his duty in destroying Guerrero but that he met with failure and so decided to strike an alliance with the rebel. However, in 2006, new evidence was discovered by Mexican historian Jaime del Arenal Fenochio: a letter between the two military leaders dated 20 November 1820, which also referenced a previous letter. Since communications had been proven to have existed between the two leaders before Iturbide ever set out to seek out Guerrero, it is now believed that both were then carrying out negotiations. Regardless, some encounters between the two military forces were unavoidable, as the troops of Guerrero and Pedro Ascencio (another insurgent leader) managed to force Iturbide's rear guard to withdraw from an ambush. In their further correspondence, Iturbide and Guerrero lament the clashes, and Iturbide further attempts to convince Guerrero of his intentions of liberating Mexico.

Switching sides

Criollo rebellion
From 1810 to 1820, Iturbide had fought against those who sought to overturn the Spanish monarchy and Bourbon dynasty's right to rule New Spain and replace that regime with an independent government. He was solidly aligned with the Criollos. However, events in Spain caused problems, as the very monarchy for which that class was fighting was in serious trouble. The 1812 Cadiz Constitution, which was reinstated in Spain in 1820 after the successful Riego Revolt, established a constitutional monarchy, which greatly limited Ferdinand VII's powers. There was serious concern in Mexico that the Bourbons would be forced to abandon Spain altogether. That led to the disintegration of viceregal authority in Mexico City, and a political vacuum developed that the Mexican nobility sought to fill, seeking limited representation and autonomy for themselves within the empire. An idea arose in the class that if Mexico became independent or autonomous, and Ferdinand were deposed, he could become king of Mexico.

Alliance with Guerrero

Iturbide was convinced that independence for Mexico was the only way to protect the country from a republican tide. He decided to become the leader of the Criollo independence movement. However, to succeed, he would need to put together a very-unlikely coalition of Mexican liberal insurgents, landed nobility, and the Church. Therefore, he penned The Plan of Iguala, which held itself up on Three Guarantees: Freedom (from Spain), Religion (with Catholicism being the only accepted religion in the new country) and Union (with all inhabitants of México to be regarded as equals). In that manner, he was paving the road to gaining the support of the most powerful factions: the insurgents, the clergy and the Spaniards. The plan envisioned a monarchy, thus assuring the support of the royalists as well. Iturbide held a series of negotiations with Guerrero and made a number of demonstrations of his intentions to form an independent Mexico. Iturbide offered Guerrero a full pardon if he surrendered. Guerrero rejected the pardon but agreed to meet with Iturbide to discuss the independence of Mexico. In the "Embrace of Acatempán", named after the locale, they agreed to implement the plan, which was made public on 24 February 1821 by Iturbide, Guerrero, and another insurgent leader, Guadalupe Victoria. On 1 March 1821, Iturbide was proclaimed head of the Army of the Three Guarantees, with Guerrero fully supporting him and recognizing him as his leader.

Plan of Iguala

The plan was a rather vague document that sought the transition of the center of power in New Spain from Madrid to Mexico City.  Essentially, the idea was to bring Ferdinand VII to Mexico City to rule. If he did not come to Mexico, another member of the Bourbon royal family would be chosen to rule there. If no European ruler would come to rule México, the nation would have the right to elect a ruler by its own people. To attract the disparate parties involved in the scheme, the plan offered three guarantees: Mexico would be independent from Madrid, Roman Catholicism would be the official religion, and all inhabitants of the new nation, later México, would be considered equals, with no distinction being made between Spaniards, Creoles, Mestizos, etc., thus eliminating the complicated caste system that had been used until then and abolishing the use of slaves in the territory of the new nation as well.

The promise of independence convinced the insurgents to accept the proposal. The promise of the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church was offered to the clergy, who were frightened by anticlerical policies of Spanish Liberalism. The offer of equality between Criollos and the Spanish-born Peninsulares assured the latter that they and their property would be safe in the new state. That was important because the Peninsulares owned a significant part of the valuable real estate and many of the businesses in Mexico. If the Spaniards had left, that would have been disastrous for the Mexican economy.

The plan gained wide support because it demanded independence without attacking the landed classes and did not threaten social dissolution. Therefore, Iturbide succeeded in bringing together old insurgents and royalist forces to fight against the new Spanish government and what was left of the viceregal government.  Military leaders, soldiers, families, villages, and towns that had been fighting against one another for almost ten years found themselves joining forces to gain Mexican independence.  However, their reasons for joining together were very different, and those differences would later foment the turmoil that occurred after independence.

Both the sitting viceroy and Fernando VII rejected the Plan of Iguala. The Spanish parliament sent a new "viceroy," Juan O'Donojú, to Mexico. (Technically, the office of viceroy had been replaced by a "superior political chief" under the 1812 Spanish Constitution.) O'Donojú, however, arrived to witness a nation on the brink of achieving independence and knew that its consummation could not be stopped.

Independence

Iturbide met with O'Donoju and hastily negotiated a treaty, called the Treaty of Córdoba. Similar to the Plan de Iguala, the document tried to guarantee an independent monarchy for New Spain under the Bourbon dynasty. The successor state would invite Ferdinand VII to rule as emperor or, in default, his brother Don Carlos. If both refused, a suitable monarch would be sought among the various European royal houses. In the meantime, a regency would replace the viceroy. All existing laws, including the 1812 Constitution, would remain in force until a new constitution for Mexico was written. A key element was added at O'Donojú's suggestion: if Spain refused its right to appoint a regent for the Mexican Empire, the Mexican congress would have freedom to elect whomever it deemed worthy as emperor. That crucial clause was not in Iturbide's Plan de Iguala, a point against the argument that Iturbide entertained the notion of becoming the ruler when he started his campaign for Mexico's independence.

To show the military might of the alliance, Iturbide co-ordinated with associated royalist and insurgent commanders in the provinces, opting for a replay of the strategy of closing in on Mexico City from the periphery, which Morelos had attempted in 1811–14. However, Iturbide had the advantage of having most of the former royalist army on his side. Iturbide marched into Mexico City on 27 September 1821, his own birthday, with the Army of the Three Guarantees. The army was received by a jubilant populace who had erected arches of triumph and decorated houses and themselves with the tricolor (red, white, and green) of the army. Cries of "¡Viva Iturbide I!" were heard first on that day.  The next day, Mexico was declared an independent empire.

What remained of the royalist army retreated to Veracruz and was cornered in the fortress of San Juan de Ulúa, and O'Donoju, who had been assured an important position in the government of the new empire, died shortly afterwards, dishonored by his Spaniard compatriots.

Iturbide was named President of the Provisional Governing Junta, which selected the five-person regency that would temporarily govern the newly independent Mexico. The junta had 36 members who would have legislative power until the convocation of a congress. Iturbide controlled both the membership of the junta and the matters that it considered. The junta would be responsible for negotiating the offer of the throne of Mexico to a suitable royal. Members of the former insurgent movement were left out of the government.

This new government was overwhelmingly loyal to Iturbide. Opposition groups included the old insurgents as well as a number of progressives and those loyal to Ferdinand VII. Many liberals and progressives also belonged to Masonic lodges of the Scottish rite, leading these branches of the opposition to be called escoceses (Scots). The plan of Iguala was a compromise of the differing factions, but after independence, it became clear that some of the promises it had made would prove very difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish. This state of affairs started to lead to turmoil, even among those in power.

Iturbide moved to Mexico City and settled himself in a large palatial home that now bears the name Palace of Iturbide. The mansion was lent to him by the family that owned it but was not living in it.

Iturbide began to live extravagantly. He demanded preference for his army and also personally chose ministers. In the meantime, Ferdinand VII rejected the offer of the Mexican throne and forbade any of his family from accepting the position, and the Spanish Cortes rejected the Treaty of Córdoba.

Emperor Agustín I

Shortly after signing the Treaty of Córdoba, the Spanish government reneged.  Ferdinand VII had regained the upper hand against the liberals in Spain and increased his influence outside the country. He even had credible plans for the reconquest of the old colony.  For those reasons, no European noble would accept the offer of a Mexican crown.  In Mexico itself, there was no Mexican noble family that the populace would accept as royalty.

In the meantime, the governing junta that Iturbide headed convened a constituent congress to set up the new government. The new government had indirect representation, based on the Cadiz model, but the Plan of Iguala and the Treaty of Córdoba were clear that the order of things would be kept as it had been before the Cadiz Constitution. Thus, Iturbide and the junta declared that they would not be bound by the Cadiz Constitution but kept the Congress that was convened. That led to division, which came to a head in February 1822. In its inauguration, Congress swore that it would never abide for all of the powers of the state to fall into the hands of a single person or entity. It, however, proceeded to assign sovereignty to itself, rather than to the people, and proclaimed that it held all three powers of the State. It also considered lowering military pay and decreasing the size of the army. Those moves threatened to reduce Iturbide's influence in current and future governments.

That led to political destabilization, which was resolved temporarily when Iturbide was elected Emperor of the Mexican nation. However, it is not clear whether he took the crown at the insistence of the people or simply took advantage of the political situation.

Some call Iturbide's decision a coup and state that the public support for him was orchestrated by him and his followers. Others insist that the people's offer of the throne was sincere, as there was no other candidate and the people were grateful to him for the liberation of Mexico.  The latter accounts stress that Iturbide initially rejected the offer, in favor of persuading Ferdinand VII to change his mind about ruling Mexico, but then reluctantly accepted. When the liberating army entered Mexico on 27 September 1821, the army sought to proclaim Iturbide as Emperor, which he himself stopped. A month later, on 28 October, he was publicly proclaimed Emperor by the people but again refused any such attempt.

The US government appointed Joel Roberts Poinsett as a special envoy to independent Mexico when Iturbide was declared emperor since James Monroe was concerned about how popular and long-lasting the regime might be. Poinsett indicated the empire was not likely to be enduring, but the US still recognized Mexico as an independent country. Poinsett's Notes on Mexico are an important source as a foreign view of Iturbide's regime. Poinsett also took advantage of the opportunity to proposition Iturbide's government on the issue of the US wish of acquiring Mexico's northern territories but was soundly refused.

Famed Mexican author José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, El Pensador ("the Mexican Thinker"), the author of El Periquillo Sarniento, wrote about the subject at the time: "If your excellency be not the Emperor, then our Independence be damned. We do not wish to be free if your excellency will not be at the lead of his countrymen." Timothy E. Anna points out that in the months between the achievement of Independence and his crowning as Emperor, Iturbide already practically ruled the nation, as he was president of the Regency, and the junta had granted him command over all land and sea forces. He was appointed protector of commerce, navigation, local order and ports and was given the right to expedite passports and navigation licenses even after the Emperor had been instated (and according to the Emperor's wishes). Iturbide had what he could have possibly wanted before becoming Emperor, Anna notes, and so it is not probable that Iturbide conspired to appoint himself Emperor. Iturbide himself notes in his memoirs written in exile: "I had the condescension–or, call it weakness—of allowing myself to be seated in a throne I had created for others."

Historians point out that Iturbide had quite possibly all the power, influence, and support he needed before redacting the Plan of Iguala, to crown himself Emperor, and he still wrote the Plan with the clear intention of creating a throne meant for a European noble.

Most historical accounts mention the crowd that gathered outside what is now the Palace of Iturbide in Mexico City shouting "Viva Iturbide!" and insist for him to take the throne of Mexico in May 1822. The crowd included Iturbide's old regiment from Celaya. Some detractors of Iturbide insist that this demonstration was staged by Iturbide himself or his loyalists. From a balcony of the palace, Iturbide repeatedly denied his desire for the throne. One interesting twist to the story is reported by Mexico City daily La Jornada, which states that Iturbide held the first popular referendum in Mexico. According to the article, Iturbide sent out a questionnaire to military and civilian leaders as to whether the people preferred a republic or a monarchy. The answer came back in favor of a monarchy. Iturbide asked the demonstrators that night to give him the night to think it over, and to respect the wishes of the government. The Congress convened the next day to discuss the matter of Iturbide's election as Emperor. Iturbide's supporters filled the balconies overlooking the chamber. The Congress confirmed him and his title of Agustín I, Constitutional Emperor of Mexico, by a vast majority. After Iturbide's abdication, members would state that it had elected Iturbide out of fear for their lives, as the common folk were present during the vote and loudly proclaimed Iturbide, and no member voted against his crowning as Emperor. However, three days after Iturbide had been elected Emperor, Congress held a private session in which only it was present. It ratified the decision, created titles for the royal family, and declared Iturbide's title to be lifelong and hereditary.

Iturbide's coronation was held at the Mexico City Cathedral on 21 July 1822, and his wife, Ana María, was crowned empress, in an elaborate ceremony. It was attended by the bishops of Puebla, Guadalajara, Durango, and Oaxaca. According to the author Pérez Memen, Archbishop of Mexico Pedro José de Fonte y Hernández Miravete objected and did not attend. Iturbide was crowned by Rafael Mangino y Mendivil, the head of the Congress, in itself a statement by Congress: the state, not the church or any other power, would be sovereign. The Congress decreed the crown to be hereditary with the title of "Prince of the Union." As emperor, Iturbide had sovereignty over lands bordered by Panama in the south and the Oregon Country in the north, including the current countries of Central America and the US states of California, Texas, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico. Central America only briefly was part of the Mexican Empire of Iturbide (from 1821 to 1823), because by 1823 the local patriots, both liberal and conservative, made a move for total and absolute independence from Mexico and Spain.

Downfall

Dissolution of Congress

The republicans were not happy with Iturbide as emperor. While the Catholic clergy supported him, the coronation dashed republican hopes, and while the Plan of Iguala and the Treaty of Córdoba directed that in the event of it being impossible to install a European on the Mexican throne, a national sovereign could be chosen, some of the royalists who had supported Iturbide had hoped for a European ruler. Many of the landed classes supported Iturbide and those documents because they offered a sense of continuity with the past. Iturbide's election to the throne was against their wishes, and many of them withdrew their support for him and conspired against the new empire.

The strongest opposition to Iturbide's reign came from the Congress, where a significant number of its members supported republican ideas.  Many of these members also belonged to Masonic lodges, which provided an easy forum for communication. Those ideas found a voice when Manuel Codorniu founded the newspaper El Sol, essentially becoming the in-house publication for the Scottish Rite lodge in its struggle against Iturbide.  Iturbide's government was notoriously harsh in turning down territorial negotiations with agents of the US government, as attested by Poinsett.  The United States was itself a republic as well, meaning Iturbide's relations with the US were on shaky ground. The Congress, believing itself to be sovereign over the Emperor and the people and the recipient of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers, antagonized Iturbide. The Congress refused to draw up a new monarchical Mexican Constitution with a role for the Emperor. Furthermore, people loyal to the Emperor became aware of a conspiracy that involved several members of the Congress who planned to kidnap the Emperor and his family and overthrow the Empire. As a response to this claimed threat to his life and to combat the resistance, Iturbide dismissed the Congress on 31 October 1822 and two days later created a new junta, the National Institutional Junta, to legislate in its place, answering only to himself.

The National Institutional Junta was directed to create much-needed legislation in economic matters, create a provisional set of laws for the Empire, and then issue a call for a new Constituent Congress.  The formulation of the new Congress was changed in how many representatives each Mexican province was granted.  The new Congress would also be in charge of issuing a new Mexican Constitution. Iturbide persecuted his enemies, arresting and jailing a score of former members of the Congress, but that did not bring peace.

A number of prominent politicians and military leaders, many of whom had supported Agustín as emperor, turned against him for having "made a mockery of national representation" in the new Congress's composition. Among those were prominent Insurgent leaders Vicente Guerrero, Nicolás Bravo and Guadalupe Victoria.

Meanwhile, Mexico suffered as an independent country.  Ferdinand's resurgence as a ruler in Spain and his clear intentions to reconquer Mexico meant that no European nation was willing to recognize Mexico's independence, and most broke off economic ties with the new state. Iturbide's economic policies were draining resources as well. To increase his popularity, he abolished a number of colonial-era taxes. However, he still insisted on a large and very well-paid army and lived extravagantly himself. The elite turned against him when he imposed a 40% property tax.

The situation did not last long. Soon, Iturbide was unable to pay his army, creating discontent in a significant portion of his power base. When criticism of the government grew strong, Iturbide censored the press, an act that backfired against him. Opposition groups began to band together against him. Leaders such as Valentín Gómez Farías and Antonio López de Santa Anna began to conspire against the imperial concept altogether and became convinced that a republican model was needed to combat despotism.

Veracruz and the Plan of Casa Mata

Santa Anna publicly opposed Iturbide in December 1822 in the Plan of Veracruz, supported by the old Insurgent hero, Guadalupe Victoria. Santa Anna would later admit in his recollections that at the time, he did not know what a republic was. Iturbide had tried to stop Santa Anna by inviting him to Mexico City.  Recognizing the danger of such an invitation, Santa Anna responded with his Plan de Veracruz, which called for the reinstatement of the old Constituent Congress, which would then have the right to decide the form of government of the new nation. Curiously, it did not specifically call for a republic or for the abdication of Iturbide. Santa Anna wrote to Iturbide, explaining his reasons and swearing to sacrifice his own life if it was necessary to ensure the safety of the Emperor. Iturbide's enemy-turned-ally, Vicente Guerrero, turned back to enemy when he and General Nicolás Bravo escaped México City and allied themselves with the rebels. In a proclamation that explained their reasons, they also called for the reinstatement of the disintegrated Congress, which would then decide the fate of the nation. Bravo and Guerrero wrote that they swore to abide by the Congress's decision, even if it decided to stay as a Constitutional Empire and it elected Iturbide again to lead them.

Iturbide sent his most trusted man, his protégé of sorts, General Echávarri, to combat the rebels.  Santa Anna considered escaping to the United States but was stopped by Victoria. Santa Anna retreated and fortified himself in the city of Veracruz with his superior artillery. Victoria was separated from Veracruz, fighting behind Imperial lines. Bravo and Guerrero were defeated, with Guerrero suffering such a grievous injury in battle that the nation believed him dead until he resurfaced months later. However, Echávarri and several other imperial officers turned on the empire; away from Mexico City, the loyalty of the imperial armies proved patchy.  Santa Anna, joined by republicans Guerrero, and Bravo, and imperial generals Echávarri, Cortázar y Rábago, and Lobato, proclaimed the Plan of Casa Mata, which called for the installation of a new Congress and declared the election of the emperor null and void.  Casa Mata also called for giving provinces the right to govern themselves in the interim until the new Congress was formed, an attractive prospect for the provincial governments.  They accepted the plan, with the exception of the province of Chiapas.  Much of the area now known as Central America declared its opposition to Mexico City and Iturbide's rule. In 1823, authorities in what are now Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras convened a Congress to declare themselves independent from Mexico and Spain as the United Provinces of Central America.

Santa Anna's army marched toward Mexico City, winning small victories along the way.  Iturbide gathered and sent troops to combat Santa Anna who did not put up a strong resistance. Many military leaders who Iturbide appointed turned on him upon contacting Santa Anna's forces. Iturbide later admitted he had made a mistake by not leading his armies himself. Iturbide recognized that although his provisional junta was working to call a new Congress, most of the nation had already accepted the Plan of Casa Mata. Recognizing the wishes of the country, Iturbide personally reopened the same Congress that he had closed in March 1823 and presented his abdication to them.  He later wrote that he was choosing abdication over bloody civil war. However, Congress refused to accept his abdication, arguing that acceptance of abdication would imply that the existence of the throne was legitimate. Instead, they nullified their own election of Iturbide as emperor and refused to acknowledge the Plan of Iguala or the Treaty of Córdoba.

Executive leadership of the country was passed to the "triumvirate," made up of the generals Guadalupe Victoria, Nicolás Bravo, and Pedro Celestino Negrete.

Exile

On his way to exile, Iturbide and his family were escorted by former insurgent leader Nicolás Bravo, who treated Iturbide harshly. Though the republican movement had triumphed, the people still held Iturbide in high regard and greatly admired him. On his way out of the city, his carriage was surrounded by the people, the horses dismissed and the people sought to drag the carriage themselves out of the city. That treatment was customary in the entrances or exits of great figures in or out of a city. The soldiers escorting Iturbide prevented that from happening and would henceforth lead the former emperor on hidden roads, as the government feared a popular rising in favor of Iturbide.

On 11 May 1823, the ex-emperor boarded the British ship Rawlins en route to Livorno, Italy (then part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany), accompanied by his wife, children, and some servants. There, he rented a small country house and began to write his memoirs, known under the name of Manifiesto de Liorna. Iturbide and his family struggled financially during this time despite claims by historians and some members of the Congress that deposed him that Iturbide had indulged in illegal enrichment throughout his military career and rule. In exile, Iturbide was approached by a Catholic coalition of nations that sought to enlist his help in a campaign to reconquer México for Spain. Iturbide declined. Spain pressured Tuscany to expel Iturbide, and the Iturbide family moved to England.

There, he published his autobiography, Statement of Some of the Principal Events in the Public Life of Agustín de Iturbide. When he was exiled, Iturbide was accorded a government pension, but it was never received by Iturbide. Congress also declared him a traitor and "outside of the law" to be killed if he ever returned to Mexico. Iturbide was unaware of the penalty. After his death, many an author decried the decree calling for Iturbide's death, as it was against all known precepts of the law at the time: it was unheard of that a law could be issued solely against a specific citizen, instead of issuing a general law that would be applied to particular cases.

Reports of a probable further Spanish attempt to retake Mexico reached Iturbide in England. He wrote in his memoirs that he was very worried about the future of Mexico. He continued to receive reports from Mexico and advice from supporters that if he returned he would be hailed as a liberator and a potential leader against the Spanish invasion. Iturbide sent word to congress in Mexico City on 13 February 1824 offering his services in the event of Spanish attack.  Congress never replied.

Conservative political factions in Mexico finally convinced Iturbide to return.

Execution and burial

Iturbide returned to Mexico on 14 July 1824,  accompanied by his wife, two children, and a chaplain (Joseph A. Lopez).  He landed at the port of Soto la Marina on the coast of Nuevo Santander (the modern-day state of Tamaulipas).  They were initially greeted enthusiastically, but soon, they were arrested by General Felipe de la Garza, the local military commander. Felipe de la Garza had been the head of a short-lived revolt during Iturbide's reign. De la Garza gave up without a fight and was presented to Iturbide, who chose to pardon the general and reinstate him in his old post. The roles, as it happened, had not been reversed. Perhaps it was because of this debt that de la Garza wavered in his resolve to detain Iturbide, at first receiving him warmly but then arresting him and, on the way to his trial, de la Garza gave Iturbide command over the military escort that accompanied them and requesting that Iturbide presented himself to the nearby village of Padilla. Iturbide gave his word of honor and did as was bid, surrendering himself to authorities. The local legislature held a trial and sentenced Iturbide to death.  When a local priest administered last rites, Iturbide said, "Mexicans! In the very act of my death, I recommend to you the love to the fatherland, and the observance to our religion, for it shall lead you to glory. I die having come here to help you, and I die merrily, for I die amongst you. I die with honor, not as a traitor; I do not leave this stain on my children and my legacy. I am not a traitor, no." He was executed by firing squad on 19 July 1824. Three bullets hit him, one of which delivered the fatal blow.

The aftermath of his execution was met with indignation by royalists.  The sentiment of those horrified by the execution was compiled by novelist Enrique de Olavarría y Ferrari in "El cadalso de Padilla:"
"Done is the dark crime, for which we will doubtlessly be called Parricides."

His body was buried and abandoned at the parish church of Padilla until 1833. In that year, President Santa Anna, deciding to rehabilitate the memory of Iturbide, ordered that his remains be transferred to the capital with honors. However, it was not until 1838, during the presidency of Anastasio Bustamante, that the order was confirmed and carried out. His ashes were received in Mexico City with much pomp and ceremony, and the same Congress that had been against him for so many years gave him honor as a hero of the War of Independence, if not the short imperial reign after.

On 27 October 1839, his remains were placed in an urn in the Chapel of San Felipe de Jesús in the Mexico City Cathedral, where they remain. On the stand is an inscription in Spanish that translates to "Agustín de Iturbide. Author of the independence of Mexico. Compatriot, cry for him; passerby, admire him. This monument guards the ashes of a hero. His soul rests in the bosom of God."

Iturbide's remains still rest in the Metropolitan cathedral.

Iturbide's role in history

While Iturbide's reign lasted less than a year, it was the result of and further defined the struggle between republican and traditional ideals, not only in Mexico, but also in Europe. For a number of Mexican autonomists, a constitutionally sanctioned monarchy seemed a logical solution to the problem of creating a new state as it seemed to be a compromise between those who pushed for a representative form of government and those who wished to keep Mexico's monarchist traditions. In this view, a republican, federalist government was virtually unheard of; for 300 years New Spain had lived in a monarchy, so a continuation of some form would have aided national stability.  Historian Eric Van Young states that Iturbide's seizure of the crown "seems less cynical and idiosyncratic when it comes along at the end of the independence struggle." The rest of the 19th century would be marked by oscillation between the two political extremes, with each side gaining the upper hand at one point or another. The old Mexican nobility kept their titles and coats-of-arms close at hand, ready for a return. Members of the Iturbide family intrigued against the Mexican government in Madrid, New York City, Paris, and Rome as late as the 1890s.

Liberal or republican ideas were and would continue to be embraced by creoles outside the Mexico City elite. These came out of Bourbon reforms in Europe that were based on the Enlightenment. Attacks on the Church by liberals in Spain and elsewhere in Europe would be repeated in Mexico during the La Reforma period. Ideals of the Constitution of Cadiz would find expression in the 1824 Constitution of Mexico.  This constitution would influence political thought on both sides of the Mexican political spectrum, with even Iturbide bending to it when he created the first congress of an independent Mexico. After Iturbide, there was wide general consensus, even among the landed elite, that some form of representative government was needed. The question was how much power would be in legislative hands and how much in an executive.

Iturbide's empire was replaced with the First Republic. Guadalupe Victoria was elected as the first president, but in subsequent years, Vicente Guerrero became the first in a long line of Presidents to gain the Presidency through a military revolt after losing an election. Guerrero was betrayed and assassinated, and Santa Anna would rise to avenge him, beginning an era of Mexican history that Santa Anna dominated. This regime would oscillate and finally be overcome by the Plan of Ayutla. The new Government would struggle between anti-clerical, reformist views and conservative views during the Reform War. During the French Intervention the country would face Civil War amongst conservative, Catholic, Europe-adherent monarchists led by the ironically liberal Maximilian I of Mexico, and liberal, masonic, anti-clerical, reformist and United States-adherent liberals led by the American-backed Benito Juárez. Having prevailed, Juárez died after 15 years of forcefully remaining as president. Porfirio Díaz in the late 19th century would install a one-man rule which imposed upon México its first true period of relative peace, in exchange for freedom, and Díaz remaining for the next 30 years in power. He would be overthrown by the Mexican Revolution.

In historical memory

Early in the independence period of Mexico's history, even the day used to mark Independence would be based on one's political stance. Conservatives favored 27 September for celebration, when Iturbide entered Mexico City, but liberals preferred 16 September to celebrate Hidalgo's call for rebellion against Spain.

In 1921, former revolutionary general and newly elected president of Mexico Álvaro Obregón mounted a massive centenary celebration for Mexican independence, even larger than the one that Porfirio Díaz had staged in 1910. It was the first time since the mid-19th century that the date was commemorated. The 1921 commemoration was an opportunity for Obregón to assert his own state-building vision by appropriating a piece of Mexico's history. By overseeing the ceremonies, Obregón could shape and consolidate his own position in power, which was then relatively weak.  The Mexican Army benefited from the celebrations with new uniforms and equipment, and there was even a re-enactment of Iturbide's triumphal entry into Mexico City.

In modern Mexico, the liberal tendency has dominated, such that much writing about Iturbide is hostile, seeing him as a fallen hero who betrayed the nation by grasping for personal power after independence.

Iturbide's strategy of defining a plan and using the military to back it up started a trend in Mexican politics that would dominate until the 20th century. He can also been seen as the first "caudillo," or charismatic military leader, who used a combination of widespread popularity and threat of violence toward opposition to rule and would be followed by the likes of Antonio López de Santa Anna and Porfirio Díaz.

Mexico owes its name to Iturbide, that of Mexico, as opposed to "United Mexican States." While the latter is considered the official name, the inhabitants of the country refer to it by the name of Mexico. Another legacy that Iturbide left to Mexico was its modern flag, still used today. The three colors of red, white, and green originally represented the three guarantees of the Plan of Iguala: Freedom, Religion, and Union. In the place of the Spanish emblem for Mexico, he resurrected the old Tenochtitlan symbol for Mexico City, an eagle perched on a nopal cactus holding a snake in its beak. With it, he hoped to link the upcoming Mexican Empire with the old Aztec one.

Iturbide is also mentioned in the Himno Nacional Mexicano, the national anthem for the country. The stanza translates as follows: "If to battle against the foreign host, the warrior trumpet invokes us, Mexicans, the Sacred flag of Iturbide bravely follow. Let the conquered banners serve as a carpet to the brave steeds, may the laurels of triumph bring shade to the brow of the brave Captain."

Honours
 Knight Grand Cross of the National Order of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Gallery

See also
Declaration to the world
History of democracy in Mexico
List of heads of state of Mexico

References

Further reading

 Anna, Timothy E. The Mexican Empire of Iturbide. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1990.
 Anna, Timothy E. "The Role of Agustín de Iturbide: A Reappraisal." Journal of Latin American Studies 17 (1985), 79–110.

 Hamnett, Brian R. Roots of Insurgency: Mexican Regions 1750–1824. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986.
 Harvey, Robert. Liberators: Latin America's Struggle For Independence, 1810–1830. John Murray, London (2000).

 Robertson, William Spence. Iturbide of Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press 1952.
 Rodríguez O., Jaime. "Agustín de Iturbide" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 3, p. 303. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996.

 Tenenbaum, Barbara A. "Taxation and Tyranny: Public Finance during the Iturbide Regime, 1821–23," in The Independence of Mexico and the Creation of the New Nation, Jaime E. Rodríguez O. (1989)

External links
 Imperial House of Mexico
 Manifiesto o Memoria, handwritten document by Agustín de Iturbide, hosted by the Portal to Texas History.

1783 births
1824 deaths
19th-century executions by Mexico
19th-century Mexican people
Agustin 1
19th-century military personnel

Executed Mexican people
Executed monarchs
Flag designers
Agustin
Independent Mexico
Mexican emperors
Mexican people of Basque descent
Mexican people of Spanish descent
Mexican revolutionaries
Military personnel from Michoacán
Agustin de Iturbide
People executed by Mexico by firing squad
People executed for treason against Mexico
People of the Latin American wars of independence
Mexican independence activists
People from Morelia
People of New Spain
Politicians from Michoacán
Pretenders to the Mexican throne
Roman Catholic Freemasons
Mexican nobility
Dethroned monarchs
Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo alumni
Nobility of the Americas

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StoriesLut Desert, and the Reminiscent of Monument Valley
Places,Nature
Lut Desert, and the Reminiscent of Monument Valley
Photo by Shahrouz Esmaeili | TasteIran
Dasht-e Lut, the Bermuda Triangle on Ground
At the vicinity of the ancient city of Shahdad which holds the world's oldest flag known as "Shahdad flag", locates the great desert of the Iranian plateau. Passing through the west of Lut to the east zones seems still impossible in the 20th century and natives call the lost travellers as "Luti".
At first glance, the Lut desert appears to the visitor's eyes like an amazing otherworldly land of rocks, sand, and salt. Strange castle-sand formations emerge from the ground next to sand dunes which can reach 300 meters high, and are among the tallest in the world. The Lut Desert also evokes "a confused mass of impassable tangled dunes" where life struggles to survive, as described in the book "Crossing Iran's Saharas" in the 1930s by Alfons Gabriel.
The Viennese explorer visited dozens of vast lands of deserts in the Middle East, but none has been as challenging and captivating as the second largest Iranian desert, where dust storm and mirages almost took his life. In the Persian language, Dasht-e Lut could be translated by "Emptiness Plain". That's what Alfons Gabriel, Sven Hedin, Swedish geographer who crossed this desert on camels, incorrectly believed it was: A huge hostile land, empty from life.
Lut desert appears to the visitor's eyes like an amazing otherworldly land of dunes, Alireza Amirkazemi
The hottest place on the Earth
Stepping into the Lut desert is experiencing an epic journey to a land which has more in common with Mars than the Earth. Located about 150 kilometres from the city of Kerman, sand dunes spread to the horizons over 170.000 km that is one tenth of Iran's area! No visitor can step foot on its hot sand alone, as once did those explorers, without risking to get lost in what is known as the hottest spot on the earth. The best time to visit the magic land of Lut is from April to May and fall.
During five years, this is indeed where a NASA satellite registered the highest temperature on the globe, reaching an unprecedented world record of 70.7 degrees Celsius (159.3 degrees Fahrenheit) in 2005. Black volcano lava which constitutes most of the desert's surface imprisons on the ground the heat coming from the rays of the sun.
Dasht- e Lut reached an unprecedented world record of 70.7 degrees Celsius, Naser Mizbani
The incredible hidden life of the desert
For centuries, explorers have assumed Dasht- e Lut to be deprived of life. Indeed, how could any creature survive in such a harsh environment? Yet in 2014, a team of international scientists has pierced the secret of life in Dasht- e Lut and found a vibrant ecosystem. Several insects and animals have been witnessed: reptiles, desert foxes, cheetah, and a species of falcons called "Balaban", which can reach 200km speed per hour in flight, and is thus known as the world's fastest bird!
What is the mystery of their survival, in a desert almost entirely devoid of plants? Scientists believe that it's the death of migrating birds, lost in the immensity of the desert that has provided a way to sustain other animals' lives. Surprisingly too, a "hidden sea" has been found lying under the hot surface of the sand, providing the water essential for life. Occasional rainfalls in spring can also drain water in some parts of Lut Desert, definitely a unique ecosystem throughout the world.
Lut desert has two seasonal lakes with salt and pure water, Alireza Amirkazemi
The sand-castles of the desert
What makes Lut Desert so enchanting to travellers is its unusual and marvellous Yardangs, the legendary earthy city called "Kaluts". These extraordinary protuberances have been caused by strong wind erosion over thousands of years, rising up to 150 meters above the ground, and creating colossal and dramatic shapes. At nightfall, these "Sand Castles" are enlightened by the pale lights of the moon, offering breathtaking scenery in the silence land of gravel.
Lut is considered one of Iran's most exciting adventure destinations, Shahrooz Esmaili | TasteIran
They are so large that they can easily be seen from space. That's why it has been considered by the UNESCO as the most spectacular examples of Aeolian yardang formations as the first natural world heritage of Iran. At the same time, it's an exceptional example of an ongoing geological process, as the strong winds will continue to sweep these landforms endlessly.
Nabkha or sand vases of Lut sometimes reach 10 meters in length, Alireza Amirkazemi
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text:
YOUR-VOICE
One-term Biden could prove unbeatable
RUTH MARCUS Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Could Joe Biden be the man for this season?
The vice president has been running for president since Hillary Clinton was first lady of Arkansas. His first campaign, in 1988, fizzled over allegations of plagiarism.
His second, in 2008, limped to a humiliating close with Biden winning less than 1 percent of voters in the Iowa caucuses. He received most attention for unwise comments about Indian-Americans ("You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts (in Delaware) unless you have a slight Indian accent") and Barack Obama ("articulate and bright and clean.")
But there is an argument that 2016 could be Biden's year — a moment that will reward, even celebrate, his loose-lipped authenticity and his from-the-gut middle-class politics. In Iowa the other day, Donald Trump received thunderous applause when he proposed outlawing teleprompters. In 2016, Biden's unscriptedness could be appealing.
Look at the latest polling. Matched up against Trump, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, Biden outperforms Clinton in the new Quinnipiac poll.
Sure, there are stumbling blocks, even leaving aside the still-dominant position of Clinton and the daunting mechanical challenges of instantly assembling the necessary staff and money.
His career is one obstacle: At a time when the public is sour on politicians, Biden has been in elective office for 45 years, since being elected to Delaware's New Castle County Council in 1970.
His age is another: At 74 on Inauguration Day, Biden would be the oldest president ever, including Ronald Reagan at his second term (just shy of 74).
But these are surmountable issues — capable, even, of being turned to some advantage. One person's career politician is another's devoted public servant: Biden has never spun through the revolving door to vacuum up six-figure speaking fees. A delicate topic, to be sure, but a comparison with a certain other candidate that others might make.
The matter of age prompts my broader theory of Biden's case: He should run as Biden Unbound. He can, pardon the phrase, trump concerns about age by announcing that he'll seek just a single term — and picking a strong, preferably female, running mate. (Elizabeth Warren would be a tempting choice, but probably not optimal. She'd be divisive in a general election and, at 66, reinforces the age issue.)
One-term Biden wouldn't have to worry about satisfying constituencies or winning re-election. One-term Biden, this argument would go, would be free to craft the kind of bipartisan deals that only a Senate veteran can pull off — although, in my view, Biden's chief deal-making claim to fame as vice president, the fiscal-cliff agreement, gave away too much to Republicans.
An alternative, or perhaps complementary, theory is that Biden could run to Clinton's left, seeking to seize on the base energy evoked by Warren and, in her stead, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
This approach makes less sense. Yes, on matters of foreign engagement, Biden can argue that he is more appropriately hesitant than Clinton to become embroiled in conflicts. (Of course, that argument can cut against him as well, especially in the case of Biden's thumbs-down on the successful raid on Osama bin Laden.)
But on domestic matters, Biden is no Warren. He (and Clinton) voted for the bankruptcy bill that she labored to defeat. He voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement. He authored the 1994 crime bill that has now become a symbol of over-criminalization. Yes, he championed the Violence Against Women Act, but a contest with Clinton could end up reviving debate on the handling of the Anita Hill hearings over which Biden presided, not to his credit.
Better for Biden to run as Biden: authentic, experienced, progressive but not too doctrinaire to cut a deal. If he has ideas for helping the middle class that are different from, or bolder than, Clinton's, let's hear them.
Biden seems truly undecided, in particular about whether, after his son Beau's death, he has the "emotional fuel" to run. The vice president doesn't want to suffer another embarrassment like 2008. Even more, he worries about his family, and the impact of a bruising race.
Then again, consider Biden's 1987 memoir, "Promises to Keep," which takes its name from the phrase in Robert Frost's celebrated poem. Biden opens with an epigraph from Frost: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have ... miles to go before I sleep."
Frost uses the line twice. It is easy to imagine Biden running a third time. And the campaign, at this point, would benefit from another voice, and a credible alternative.
Ruth Marcus writes for the Washington Post Writers Group. Send email to ruthmarcus@washpost.com.


OUKITEL is a relative new brand from China, offering a low price product with well balanced specs. OUKITEL U8 Universe Tap is their Quad Core powered Phone targeting at Mid-range market. The U8 uses a 1.3GHz MT6735 quad core processor, equipped with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage, running on the latest Android 5.1 Lollipop OS.
Other Specifications include: 5.5 Inch HD 5 points touch screen display in resolution of 1280*720 with curved edges, 5MP Front and 13MP Back cameras with dual flash, metal frame made design, Fingerprint scanner ID function, internal none detachable 2850 mAh battery.
MTK6735 1.0GHz Quad Core CPU.
Screen: 5.5 Inch H.D Screen (1280*720 Pixel).
Cameras: 13 MP Back Camera + 5 MP Front Camera.
1x OUKITEL Universe Tap U8 Phone.
1 x Eject Tool (SIM/SD Card Tray Opener).
Because the phone a non detectable battery, Opening the Micro SIM Card / TF-Card Tray is done with a special extraction tool provided with the package. In the photo listed below you can see the arrangement.
From first impression The U8 is relative slim phone with a solid build design that does feel or look cheap for a 130-140 USD Smartphone.The metal frame does tend to give it some weight, But for me I didn't find it over exaggerated and general feeling was great, like holding a high cost Smartphone.
The U8 comes with Android 5.1 Lollipop OS, Pre-installed with few basic apps, such as twitter, Whatsapp and Facebook. The system was fast and smooth including touch screen responsiveness from the second you click on Apps icons.. No complaints here about performance, including user experience.
Preformed well producing good quality stills photos.
Great Performance for a low cost phone. The U8 Rear 13MP Camera really produced beautiful sharp photos, without blurring or noisy artifacts, what you can find sometimes in low cost Chinese phones. Shutter response from the second you click on the shot button was super fast with minimum delay.
The U8 is equipped with an HD (1280×720 pixels) Touch IPS Screen with great viewing angles, brightness and sharp picture including under direct sunlight.You can't actually know the difference between it to a Full HD Screen. Because Screen is HD type Battery work time is an excellent do to lower power consumption. Switching between UI screens and surfing websites was very smooth for me.. Again, OUKITEL did a really nice job in optimizing Android OS and choosing a great Screen that doesn't fall down in quality or performance.
Testing Apps : HERE Maps (By Nokia) + GPS Test.
Navigation Mode: Walk (Offline Mode).
Accurate level : 10-14 feet.
The Phone Speaker was loud enough, but didn't sound richer with bass effect.In this area OUKITEL Company could have done a slightly a better job. Installing a sound enhancement App may greatly improve sound quality and needs further checking or a newer ROM update.
U8 internal built-in 2850 mAh can operate the phone for about a half a day, or more with a moderate operation that includes WiFi (Surfing the web), Taking still photos, etc..
Great low budget Smartphone with nice features and high build quality. In my opinion the main highlights of the product are are definitely the 13MP back camera, fingerprint sensor and the 2850 mAh high capacity battery. You can get it for 132 USD retail price including shipping.
Excellent Build design & Quality.
High Quality 13MP Back Camera.
Speaker Sound quality could be more richer.


Originally formed in 1953 but formally established in 1954, the Toronto Saracens have been instrumental in putting Toronto Rugby on the map. As original investors in the "Home of Ontario Rugby" Fletchers' Fields, the Toronto Saracens have grown over the past several years leading to the requirement for an official sponsorship partner.
Neil Drew, Director at Winchesters, has been with the club for close to 10 years, leading to his desire to sponsor the organization. Founded in 2014, Winchesters is a fast-growing Canadian Recruitment Consultancy with 2 core divisions – Procurement & Finance and Accounting.
An exciting team this year, the Toronto Saracens have added a lot of young players who have come up through the youth development league to play in the 1st and 2nd teams. Winchesters is proud to sponsor the Toronto Saracens for their 2016 season.


"The Heads of State or Government unanimously accepted the recommendation of the Fourth Meeting of Foreign Ministers on the emblem of SAARC."
From: The Dhaka Declaration of the Heads of State or Government of the Member Countries of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation issued on 8th December 1985.
The emblem can be seen in detail on SAARC's homepage: www.saarc-sec.org.
The logo or emblem of SAARC can also be seen on one of two Bangladeshi stamps commemorating this organization, SG 567, issued in 1995 in honor of the 10th Anniversary of SAARC.
The flag is somewhat more clearly visible in several photos in a PDF available for download from the SAARC website. The flag is white with the logo in gold. The same PDF contains a vectorial SAARC logo, though a quite terribly rendered one. Heavily cleaned, it yielded the attached the above image.


Nicole Zuckerman | dancer, reader, feminist, soul fangirl, and lover of all things cheese.
We've been working on our final projects for a couple of weeks now. At first my project seemed a cool, though insurmountably large, task. Christian assured me that he believed I could do it, and complete enough of it to have something to show at our Demo Day/Career Day/Speed Dating Day (when we will have a chance to talk about our projects a bit with representatives of companies who could potentially hire us). I was incredibly skeptical that I'd have anything to show at that point, but I was going to try anyway.
Christian suggested just picking one that seemed to make the most sense, that was the easiest, to start with, saying I could optimize later. OK. Ultimately, after a few days of toying with some ideas, I picked one to start with; vectors between points, angles between vectors, and selecting only the non-trivial angles as the points where I'd count a 'letter'. I will deal later with double-letters and with letters crossed over in the path from one turning point to the next. For this, I had to brush up on vector math, which fortunately came back to me fairly quickly. Christian thought I'd need to get the rate of change of the angles(between vectors between points), but I didn't think that extra step was entirely necessary… so I just tried it my way. Just to see.
It worked better than I'd hoped it would- and I'd picked an arbitrary angle threshhold on a whim!
It seemed, up until this point, that my project was very difficult, and I wasn't sure if I was up to the task. The moment I tested my method on an actual swipe input was a watershed moment; after that, everything seemed eminently doable. I had a produced a result. It wasn't perfect, I was capturing more letter-moments than were strictly necessary, but I could adjust the angle threshhold, I could write a function that would filter out the unnecessary duplicates, I could implement a spell checker, I could address the intentional double-letters and the missed letters en route from one corner to another… and I could pick any one of those to do and execute, independent of the others. Now that I had something to show, everything else was an exciting bonus puzzle I could add on in whatever I wanted. It was a really heady feeling, one I wouldn't mind getting used to.
It was also at this point that I realized exactly how much larger the scope of our final projects is than any of the projects we'd done before. In the course of collecting the swipe data, interpreting it, and beginning to implement a spell checker, I've done, as a matter of course and in 20 minutes of work, tasks that would have been an entire day-long project, earlier in the course. Tasks that I would have had a walk-through to follow, tasks that seemed bafflingly large themselves, too. One such task entailed collecting a list of all the words in a text file (comprised of 10 or so of my favorite books that are in public domain, thanks to Project Gutenberg), stripping them of extraneous punctuation characters, and listing frequency of occurance for each word in descending order. This took a whole day, a month ago. Now, it took 20 minutes. I could make it better, sure, and I plan to- but it was as doable as writing in english. How far we've come!
I feel like my project is coming together, and that I will have something to show for my efforts in a week. I feel, increasingly, that I can do this; that I can contribute meaningfully to a code-base at a job, with a little bit of ramp-up time. I am still really nervous about interviewing, networking, and finding that next job, but it's wonderful to feel like maybe, someday soon, I won't be an imposter when I put "engineer" on my resume. I'm still hoping someone else will put that on my resume for me, though; as comfortable as I'm becoming with coding, I don't think I'll ever be comfortable writing my own resume.
A week and a couple of days ago, we were finally introduced to the wonder that is List Comprehensions. I think I'm in love.
I promise I won't forgo for-loops entirely from here on out, but the world just got a whole light brighter for me! INFINITE COSMIC POWER… Itty bitty coding space!
Other than my new-found affair with list comprehensions, a lot has gone on in the last 2 weeks. I've entertained and discarded a half dozen final project ideas, and arrived at an ultimate project plan. I've had days where I was convinced my project was going to be a total failure, and days where I felt entirely awesome and talented, and a few points in between the two extremes. I've started a list of future projects I want to accomplish, bounced ideas off at least 10 people, and gotten really excited about the post-Hackbright possibilities. It feels like a whole lot to have going on in a week and change.
Christian, and one of the students from the previous graduating class, assured me that no one programs in a vaccuum, and that using resources like stack overflow and mentors/colleagues. I still am not entirely comfortable with it; I feel like it's kin to plagiarizing, but I guess as long as I know exactly how everything works, and I adapt it to suit my needs, it's all open source and I'll give credit where credit is due. I'm still not entirely comfortable with it, though.
OK, I so very much enjoyed this exercise Charles wrote on identifying functions, I just had to give it its own post. I'm positively geeking at the mouth about it. I already love puzzles, so I was hooked from the start.
Each function does a specific thing, but what it does isn't clear from the function name, comments, or variable names. We just had to figure it out for ourselves. I adored this exercise for so many reasons, some being the inclusion of math patterns I love, functions we've written before in different ways, and functions I know exist but didn't know how to write. However, the most exciting part was the moment of epiphany when I suddenly knew what the function did, not because I looked variable by variable, and line by line, at what happened in the function, but because I understood a block of code at a glance.
It reminded me of when I was learning italian in college and finally started to think in italian, rather than translate from english to italian in my head. What a heady feeling that is, to feel for a moment like you're a native in that language! I was flying so high on this feeling, I was positively bouncing in my chair for the rest of the day.
Even when some of the mystery functions frustrated me (cough, cough, recursive functions, cough), when I ultimately figured out how it worked, I was over the moon. Most of the functions were ones I'd never seen before. Many of them, I probably couldn't exactly recreate right now, but I remember how they work, which is a decent first step, I think!
If you are anything like me and love puzzles, check them out. I hope you enjoy them even half as much as I did.
I've had some great teachers in my life who have helped me grow as a person and as a student. This is the first time, however, that I've had a mentor outside of academia.
I don't know quite what to do with myself, with all these resources! Everyone around me is highly skilled and fantastically helpful, and so interested in seeing me succeed. It's so gratifying, and so invigorating. It amplifies my geeking out, 10-fold.
A mentor, though, seems like such a special role- someone who not only doesn't mind if I pester them with questions, but welcomes it! It doesn't hurt that my mentor is really approachable and friendly, already. I must remember to regularly thank (Hackbright co-founder) David Phillips for pairing us up; I think he did an excellent job.
He also insisted (in the kindest possible way) on looking at the task list I'd created last week (there's version 1 and version 2), since I'd mentioned how ugly my partner and I had made it look (for fun). Even though I knew I'd done it purposely, and that I was just fooling around in the css, and it was also our first web app, I was already terribly embarrassed about it. Also, terribly embarrassed about the fact that I didn't have ANYTHING installed on my computer yet; sqlite3, flask, or git. Really, Nicole? For shame.
But my mentor was really nice about it, and totally willing to help when I couldn't figure out why the flask install wasn't working, and was appropriately amused by the photo of a cat rolling around in 20 dollar bills that we'd put on our task list main page. Who knew there were SO MANY hilarious cat photos on the internet?
Periodically throughout the afternoon I felt odd, felt like I was imposing on my mentor's time when he could be doing so many more productive things than explaining how running ipython was different from just running python from command line. I will need to continue to work on being OK with other people investing time in me. It feels like such a luxury, to have someone who does what I want to do, who wants to help like this! I want to simultaneously take the most advantage of this opportunity and also not waste his time at all. I guess it's up to me, then, to put our time to good use.
Coming out of the afternoon, I felt like I had a little more direction (a jquery tutorial and a book to read on collective intelligence and machine learning) and a few more things figured out. I learned some things, and gorged myself on babybel cheeses. I know there's still a lot of work ahead of me, a ton of stuff to learn, but with so many people rooting for me, I'll surely get through it alright.
I think this is afternoon going to become a habit, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I'm now 4 weeks in to this great learning adventure, and am increasingly daunted by the breadth of tools I need to be comfortable with now that my work is no longer contained to a couple of .py files.
"Why the sudden shift in perspective, from heady exhuberance to such trepidation and insecurity" you ask, if not in so many words.
We're finally starting to pull the pieces of this crazy world together, and that's the hard part. Like recalcitrant cats, the languages are just a lot to keep in mind at one time, never mind integrate with each other seamlessly.
This week we used all of the above to create a Task list, in a couple of different ways. The exercise itself was great; we went through everything the 'hard' way, function by function, with lots of duplicate code and redundancy. We customized it as we went, adding features we thought would be useful. The walkthrough Christian wrote for us explained why we were doing what we were doing, and gave us the opportunity to 'push' ourselves by not relying on the spoilers he provided. Sometimes, we could use the spoilers to just confirm we'd done things the same way as Christian. Other times, I frankly had no idea how to go about what he was suggesting we could do… though once I checked the spoilers, I could definitely understand what was going on.
Once we'd built the thing once, start to finish, we went back through and cleared out a bunch of the duplicate code by making sub-routines of the really boilerplate stuff. Then, we finally introduced some structure into the spiderwebbed mass of functions we'd built. I'd never felt so happy to be doing housekeeping. Things made SO much more sense when moved into related classes; functions relating to user attributes and actions moved into a User class, and things relating to tasks themselves became part of the Task class. The organization made the whole file a lot more comprehensible.
May I always be self-aware enough to write comprehensible code.
Ultimately, the SQLite table-building we did by hand was also thrown out the window; thank you, oh brilliant developers, for making tools to take care of that for us! I'm glad we went through everything the hard way, to really get a handle on how the database is set up, but I hope I don't have to do it by hand too often in my life.
Keeping the model file consistent, as we made these changes in structure, was complicated enough, considering how many functions referenced each other. Keeping the css, html, and python files all in order, referencing the most up to date names, was a real stretch for me. As we changed how we handled each function, each database query, it was really easy to get confused about what was going where. Ultimately, through the help of some syntax errors and friends, we had a functional task list with some (purposely, humorously) awful CSS. At least we got to include some ridiculous cat pictures.
I found the exercise really helpful, but ultimately, I'm still worried about being able to put all the pieces together, myself, without training wheels. Christian assures me that it will come together in the end, and I'll be able to do it on my own. He's not been wrong so far, so I'm reluctantly withholding judgement on my ability to grasp everything in the 6 short weeks remaining. Everything I'm learning is still fun, and fascinating, and enriching, and I wouldn't be anywhere else for the world. I do hope I'm up to the challenge, though.
This morning I learned regular expressions. Around 2 hrs into the exercises a had a sudden moment, looking at some expression that consisted of a line of seemingly random characters. There were letters, numbers, slashes, brackets, braces, and parentheses making friends with one another, and I could READ it. I knew what it said! Two hours beforehand, I would have been utterly lost. It would have looked like gibberish. Now, it makes sense; this is a remarkable thing, to me. How rewarding! Check out this tutorial; I thought it was great.
I've experienced this wonder on so many levels, lately. Every day I learn something new; today, regular expressions and the basics of SQL. Two days ago, it was Python classes. I can't believe that I'm learning so much so quickly. It's a heady feeling, and I love waking up in the morning wanting more.
This evening, we started a new Hackbright tradition: a Mentor Mixer. Each mentee was paired with a mentor who is a developer in the area; David matched us each with someone who he and Christian thought we would pair well with, taking into account where we live, what we're interested in doing, and what companies we're interested in. We'll touch base fairly regularly with these mentors throughout the rest of the program.
Socially awkward as I am, I viewed this with trepidation and excitement. Who would be my mentor? What kind of things do they work on? Would I be able to hold a conversation with my mentor and not feel like an idiot? The answers, in order, are: A really nice and approachable guy named Chris, a travel search site I already use on a pretty much daily basis, and YES. Well, I only mildly felt like an idiot, but that's a pretty good day, for me. I'm already really excited about what I'm learning, but getting to talk about it with people who already do what I want to do just energized me all the more. This is an amazing positive feedback loop I'm experiencing!
We spent around a day and a half on it, cramming as many cool plot devices and game elements as possible. This was an interesting exercise for me, as I'm usually concerned about getting things right and making them perfect. Instead, we just had to do what we could in the time we had, and we ultimately decided to try as many things as we could in order to get used to doing them. I'm proud of what we did, though I would like to someday clean it up and expand it. Look at me, 2 weeks in and accruing technical debt like a pro!
I am so excited about where everything is going.
For someone who has always been in love with the written word, and a consumate consumer of narrative, it's surprisingly hard to contribute even a single post to the ocean of text already out there in the great wide world, whether on the printed page or stored on a server somewhere.
I've recently begun a new step in the Nicole recipe, though, and I think it'll be important to document my progress through it. Important for me, that is, when I look back and read about how dumb I was when I started, so I hopefully keep some sympathy for those who are just starting, some humility, and some mile-markers for the progress I'll have made by that point. Maybe this will help others, too, going through a similar path, or help someone going through an entirely different awakening or change, who somehow sees some parallel. Mostly, though, I want to be able to remind myself, when I'm panicking, that I've actually accomplished a lot, and bolster my confidence again (however temporarily).
I also (accidentally) read an post encouraging people to write more, as a way to not only contribute toward the sum of knowledge out there, but to increase general curiosity, amplify focus on the world, and just overall pay more attention. Here's that post, if you feel like being galvanized toward committing pen to paper or keys to sensors.
Two weeks ago I started learning Python (among other things) in the company of a group of women under the auspices of Hackbright Academy. This is both a complete right turn from where I'd been before and also feels like a return to a path I should have been on the whole time. I love logic, puzzles, and languages. What was I THINKING waiting so long to get into this?
I'm actually not entirely sure how to answer my own question. It may just have been the conviction that a 25 year old girl with no CS classes in her history has no chance of learning enough to make a contribution as a developer. I want to smack 25 year old me for such thinking.
So now I'm two weeks into the program, and I've learned so much, it's already hard to think back before I knew what a for-loop was (I kept thinking people were saying "four-loop") or the difference between the 1st element in a list and the element at index 1. I know that, as with any learning experience, I've picking the low-hanging fruit. I know that each successive lesson will most likely be harder, more abstract, more complicated, than the one before it. Such is the nature of learning, though, so I vow to try not to get discouraged when subsequent successes are fewer and farther between.
I will not fall into the pit of dispair that yawns beneath my feet whenever something is not easy to understand, conceptually, and cannot be instantly implemented. Well, I will try not to.
This past week, one of our challenges for class was to create a Markov text generator; taking a sample text by some person (Dr Seuss, Jane Austen, JK Rowling) and creating psuedo-text in the style of their writing. We created a dictionary mapping n-grams (bi-grams, in this case- chunklets consisting of all the two-word combinations used in the sample text) to all the potential next-word options in that book.
I can't even tell you how fun this was for me. Frustrating, at times, when I say what I needed, in English, but couldn't figure out how to make it happen in Python… but ultimately, so satisfying to complete a function and have it work as expected. Gratifying to pass the completed program a chunk of Dr Seuss writing and to have the generated sentence yield "I do not like green eggs and ham." It was most thrilling, though, to feel like I'd made something. From scratch. What a heady feeling that was!
Then writing a script to connect to twitter and tweeting the generated text to all my millions (tens, really) of followers… that felt real. Like something I could be asked to do in the future. I tweeted more in that day than in any other day ever, I think. Not that that's saying much.
I know that, when I'm in the workplace again, I almost certainly will not be asked to create a Markov text generator again. I know there will be aspects of coding that I'm not thrilled about, and tasks that aren't so fundamentally exciting. But I am so glad to be learning about all the things I can do in Python, and I hope I'll always have more puzzles to solve to keep me excited.
Maybe knowing that these words are live on the open information network will keep me honest, keep me feeling accountable for the site in general, and for reflecting and contributing content regularly, too. I hope so.


RIESTER shines with Gold and Silver in Graphis International Advertising Annual.
When the 2019 Graphis Advertising Annual is published, RIESTER will have two campaigns featured. The Text 2 Quit Poster Series for Arizona Department of Health Services won Gold. And the EoS Fitness Brand Poster Series won Silver.
Maximizing consumer insights is central to keeping customers engaged and the bottom line of businesses performing.
RIESTER's Chief Creative Officer Tom Ortega discusses the best and worst of 2016 Super Bowl ads with NBC Today's anchor Matt Mauro.
From QBs to KPIs: What's Your Style?


text:
Q: How do I get attachment_id? This is trivial, but I can't really find an answer, I've seen some hints like search in database etc., but this is madness.
Basically, I have a metabox with upload button that allows you to upload or pick existing image from Media Library, that's how I get the URL of this image:
$my_image = get_post_meta($post->ID, '_my_image_metabox', true);

Of course I do want exact size of this image to be displayed so I need to use:
wp_get_attachment_image_src($attachment_id, 'desired-size');

The question is how do I get attachment_id of _my_image_metabox? I've been searching literally everywhere and there are no sane answers, how is wp_get_attachment_image_src() supposed to work if there's not a single line on getting $attachment_id in Codex whatsoever? :)
[updated]
var_dump($my_image) returns:
array(1) { [0]=> string(86) "http://localhost/theme/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/my_image.jpg" }

Saving the data is pretty complicated as I use my own metabox generating class, something like this: https://github.com/nyordanov/SmartMetaBox/blob/master/SmartMetaBox.php
How do I inject the proper attachment_id to my_image then? I'd add I have multiple (10) fields like this one and would like every single one to have separate, unique attachment_id.

A: I am too late to answer this question but it will worked.
$attachment_id = get_post_thumbnail_id( $post->ID );
$url = wp_get_attachment_image_src($attachment_id, 'desired-size');

A: Ok, all those hipercomplex functions can be reduced to one simple command: attachment_url_to_postid
You only need to parse the image url to retrieve the attachment id:
<?php

   $attachment_id = attachment_url_to_postid( $image_url );
   echo $attachment_id;

?>

That's all you need.

A: I had the same problem while I was using CMB plugin, I solved adding a custom function to functions.php to get the image ID using the image url:
functions.php
function cmb_get_image_id($image_src) {
    global $wpdb;
    $image = $wpdb->get_col($wpdb->prepare("SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE guid='%s';", $image_src ));
    return $image[0]; //return the image ID
}

In your theme:
$my_image = get_post_meta($post->ID, '_my_image_metabox', false);
$attachment_id = cmb_get_image_id($my_image);
wp_get_attachment_image_src($attachment_id, 'desired-size');

A: What I do in such cases in that save the id in a hidden input along with the URL.
function meta_image_upload() {
    global $post;
    $my_image = get_post_meta($post->ID, '_my_image_metabox', true);
    $my_image_id = get_post_meta($post->ID, '_my_image_id_metabox', true);

    $out = '<input id="my_image" type="text" name="my_uploaded_image" value="'. $my_image .'">';
    $out .= '<input id="my_image_id" type="hidden" name="my_uploaded_image_id" value="'. $my_image_id .'">';
    $out .= '<button id="my_image_upload">Upload Image</button>';

    echo $out;
}

On the upload handler script:
attachment = custom_uploader.state().get('selection').first().toJSON();
    $('#my_image').val(attachment.url);
    $('#my_image_id').val(attachment.id); // Just add this line

Then at other callbacks :
global $post;
$my_image_id = get_post_meta($post->ID, '_my_image_id_metabox', true);
wp_get_attachment_image_src($my_image_id, 'desired-size');

That's just my solution and someone might come up with a better one. However, I found it faster than querying database to fetch the associated attachment id.

A: All the post meta you're saving is being attached to a post of type attachment, so You can consider  $post->ID is the attachment ID.

A: Try with this:
$attachment_id = $wpdb->get_var(
    $wpdb->prepare(
        "SELECT wposts.ID
            FROM $wpdb->posts wposts, $wpdb->postmeta wpostmeta
            WHERE wposts.ID = wpostmeta.post_id
            AND wpostmeta.meta_key = '_wp_attached_file'
            AND wpostmeta.meta_value = '%s'
            AND wposts.post_type = 'attachment'",
        $url
    )
);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


WASHINGTON, D.C. - In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), The Werner Ladder Company in conjunction with the Kentucky Ladder Company is recalling about 400 Space Master sliding attic ladders. When in use, the ladder can slide down from the attic and then slide back up for storage. The ladder has a simple metal hook to lock the ladder in the stored position. On some ladders, the hook/lock was attached upside down, which could result in the ladder not being properly secured in the storage position. The ladder could become dislodged, slide down, and injure someone.
CPSC and Werner are not aware of any injuries involving the ladders. This recall is being conducted to prevent the possibility of injury.
All of the ladders have been marketed under the Werner "Space Master" brand and designated as Model WS2308.
Major home center department stores sold the ladder nationwide from January 1997 through May 1997 for about $75.
Consumers should stop using the ladders immediately and call Werner toll-free at (888) 523-3372 for instructions on how to inspect and repair the ladder or write to Werner at 93 Werner Road, Greenville, PA 16125.