commander in the state. In the southern state of Guerrero, strongman Juan Álvarez organized resistance to Santa Anna and a political plan to oust him. The Plan of Ayutla resulted in uprisings in southern Mexico and were then joined by many in northern Mexico. The revolution of Ayutla then gained the necessary speed it needed when it was joined by Santos Degollado and Manuel Doblado. Vidaurri supported the Revolution of Ayutla and had already seized the opportunity to create his own area of political control in northern Mexico. The northern supporters of the Revolution of Ayutla were important to its success; without such support it might well have been a southern regional rebellion penned in and suffering a war of attrition. In this period Vidaurri's reputation as a liberal was solidified. "Vidaurri had become one of the champions of Mexican liberalism during the first years of his cacicazgo [political area of control] over the northeast, especially its most radical faction, the puros. Historian Brian Hamnett argues that, following Mexican independence, the support for federalism for which many Liberals advocated was a kind of institutionalized centrifugalism. Santa Anna's attempts to centralize power met resistance from areas that had exercised a level of autonomy, such as Guerrero under Álvarez and northeast Mexico under Vidaurri. Vidaurri had overthrown the governor of Nuevo León and annexed Coahuila, eliminating any opposition. The forced merger of Coahuila and Nuevo León in April 1856 was opposed by President Ignacio Comonfort, with Vidaurri appealing to the federal congress for support. The central government was too weak to counter his defiance, and it acquiesced to the situation out of necessity. With the ratification of the liberal Constitution of 1857, which had federalist principles of a weak central state and strong states' rights, Vidaurri, as leader of Coahuila-Nuevo León, was de facto head of a sovereign nation. He had an army, collected customs revenues, and was free of central government interference. He was powerful and potentially dangerous, given the size and location of the territory he controlled in northern Mexico. In Nuevo León-Coahuila, he had dealings with one of the elite families of the region, the Sánchez Navarros, the largest landowners in Mexico. At various points, Vidaurri attempted to force the family to sell him an hacienda, shook them down for a 10,000 pesos "contribution" to shore up the Vidaurri administration when it was short of funds, and sacked a