Pedro Sainz de Baranda y Borreiro

Abstract is: Pedro Sáinz de Baranda y Borreiro (13 March 1787 – 16 December 1845) was a naval officer, industrialist and liberal politician who served in the Spanish Navy and, having fought in the Mexican War of Independence, is credited with founding the Mexican Navy. During 1835, he served on two occasions as Governor of Yucatán. As an entrepreneur, he founded the first completely mechanized textile factory to use steam-power successfully in Mexico; he is widely regarded as having introduced the Industrial Revolution to the country. A member of the Sáinz de Baranda family, which had a distinguished participation in liberal politics between the 18th and 20th centuries both in Spain and in Mexico, Sáinz de Baranda was the father both of Joaquín Baranda, a long-serving and influential Cabinet Minister, Senator and Governor of Campeche, and Pedro Baranda, a general who fought in the liberal cause during the Second French Intervention in Mexico and was one of the drafters of the 1857 Federal Constitution, later serving as Governor of Tabasco and as the first Governor of Morelos. His great-grandson, José María Pino Suárez, served as the first democratically-elected Vice-President of Mexico between 1911 and his assassination in 1913. Born in San Francisco de Campeche, then part of the Captaincy General of Yucatán, he was the son of Pedro Sáinz de Baranda y Cano (1753–1840), a Spanish Colonial administrator and Hidalgo who had arrived in the New World to serve as Minister of the Royal Treasury. The Sainz de Baranda family belonged to the lower Spanish nobility. Aged eleven, Sáinz de Baranda was sent by his parents to Spain to train as a cadet in the Spanish Navy. As a young Spanish naval officer, he fought in the Anglo-Spanish War (1796–1808), participating with distinction in the Battle of Trafalgar (1805). Fighting aboard the Santa Ana, a Spanish Ship-of-the-Line under the command of Admiral Ignacio Maria de Alava, he received three serious injuries after the fierce engagement held against HMS Royal Sovereign, the British Ship-of-the-Line then under the command of Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood. Due to his bravery in combat, Sáinz de Baranda was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant (Alférez de Navío), aged eighteen. During the Mexican War of Independence, he founded the Mexican Navy, leading it to victory against the Spanish during the Siege of San Juan de Ulúa. By 1825, the Castle of San Juan de Ulúa in Veracruz was the last part of Mexican territory still in Spanish hands and the Mexican government feared that it would be used strategically by the Spanish to reconquer their former Colony. They ordered a Mexican army, under General Miguel Barragán to lay siege to the Fort, under the command of General José María Coppinger. The incipient Mexican Navy, under the command of Captain Pedro Sainz de Baranda and Borreiro, faced off an invading Spanish convoy, cutting off the arrival of food and reinforcements for the Spanish troops occupying San Juan de Ulúa. The siege lasted between August and November 1825; by the time General Coppinger surrendered the Fort, his troops were already dying of scurvy. The capture of the Castle of San Juan de Ulúa is recognized as the culmination of Mexican independence. In 1834, he opened Aurora Yucateca, the first completely mechanized textile factory to use steam power successfully in Mexico; he is widely regarded as having introduced industralization to the country.