In his long and spectacular career in Mexican politics, Santa Anna experienced many peaks and many troughs. Probably the most humiliating of the latter occurred in the first week of December 1844, when his carefully and long constructed personality cult came literally crashing to the ground. The remains of his amputated leg were disinterred from the tomb in which he had had them reverently buried. An angry and hostile mob dragged them through the streets of Mexico City for the amusement and ridicule of the populace. A recently built theatre bearing his name was forcibly entered and his statue smashed to pieces. Pictures and portraits were torn down. He was stripped of the office of president, the Congress voted to arraign him and his ministers and a sequence of events began which led to his ignominious defeat and exile.

Santa Anna's dramatic fall from grace was partly the result of his conduct in power during the two years following his closure of the 1842 Congress. In Bancroft's words, his government had been characterized by ‘despotic, dishonest and extravagant measures …, seizure and illegal sale of national or corporation property …, outrageous contracts, suspended salaries and payments …, embezzlement of funds’.