Texas as a new country. Mexican independence In 1821, Mexico gained independence from Spain after the brutal and destructive Mexican War for Independence. Its territory included much of the former New Spain, including Spanish Texas. The victorious rebels issued a provisional constitution, the Plan de Iguala. This plan reaffirmed many of the ideals of the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and granted equal citizenship rights to all races. Initially, there was disagreement over whether Mexico should be a federal republic or a monarchy. The first monarch, Agustín I, abdicated in March 1823. The following month the citizens of San Antonio de Bexar established a governing committee for the province of Texas consisting of seven representatives from San Antonio, one from La Bahia, and one from Nacogdoches. In July, a new national provisional government named Luciano Garcia as the political chief of Texas. On November 27, 1823, the people of Mexico elected congressional representatives and set out to create a new constitution. Texas was represented in congress by Erasmo Seguin. A new Mexican constitution was adopted on October 4, 1824, making the country a federal republic with nineteen states and four territories. The constitution was modelled on the constitution of the United States of America, but the Mexican constitution made Roman Catholicism the official, and only, religion of the country. Because it was sparsely populated, Texas was combined with Coahuila to create the state of Coahuila y Tejas. Texas had originally asked to become a territory if its statehood claim was denied, but after realizing that states controlled their own public lands, while as a territory public land would be controlled by the national government, Seguin chose not to request territorial status. The Congress did allow Texas the option of forming its own state "'as soon as it feels capable of doing so.'" The new state, the poorest in the Mexican federation, covered the boundaries of Spanish Texas but did not include the area around El Paso, which belonged to the state of Chihuahua and the area of Laredo, Texas, which became part of Tamaulipas. The capital of Texas moved from San Antonio to Monclova and then to Saltillo. Along with the states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León, Coahuila y Tejas was under a unified military organization. With the formation of a new state government, the Texas provincial governing committee was forced to disband. Many Tejanos were reluctant to give up their