Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

Miguel Hidalgo was a Catholic parish priest in the small town of Dolores whose call to arms on 16 September 1810 began the Mexican War of Independence. His vast peasant army came close to Mexico City before it was defeated, and within a year he had been captured and shot. Mexico honours him as the father of the nation, and the anniversary of his call is its independence day.

Hidalgo was born on 8 May 1753 at Pénjamo, in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, to a criollo family, that is, people of Spanish descent born in the Americas; his father managed a hacienda. He studied with the Jesuits in Valladolid, now Morelia, until their expulsion in 1767, then at the Colegio de San Nicolás and the university in Mexico City. Besides Latin he learned French and Italian and several indigenous languages, including Nahuatl and Purépecha, and his French gave him access to banned Enlightenment books. Ordained in 1778, he taught at San Nicolás and became its head in 1790, but was removed in 1792, both for his new teaching methods and over the handling of funds.

He lived far from the expected life of a priest. He questioned papal power and clerical celibacy, owned haciendas, and fathered several children with different women. He was investigated by the Inquisition, which did not convict him. In 1803 he took over the parish of Dolores in Guanajuato.

At Dolores he left most church duties to a vicar and set up workshops for bricks, pottery and leather, and promoted silk, beekeeping and vine-growing to give poor indigenous and mixed-race families a living. Colonial rules protecting Spanish producers led officials to order him to stop. Meanwhile Napoleon had forced King Charles IV of Spain and his son Ferdinand VII to abdicate, leaving the empire in turmoil. Hidalgo joined a circle of conspirators in Querétaro that included the officer Ignacio Allende.

Fearing arrest, Hidalgo acted first. On the morning of 16 September 1810 he called his parishioners to rise against the colonial government, still in the name of Ferdinand VII. Thousands joined him, mostly poor peasants and indigenous people with no training. Marching under a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, they took San Miguel and Celaya. On 28 September they stormed the granary of Guanajuato, where Spaniards and criollos had taken refuge, and killed an estimated 400 to 600 people. Such killings turned many criollos against the revolt and caused friction with Allende.

After defeating royalist troops at Monte de las Cruces on 30 October 1810, Hidalgo, by some counts at the head of about 100,000 insurgents, stood close to Mexico City but chose not to attack, perhaps fearing its trained garrison. His army melted away during the retreat and was beaten at Aculco in November. In Guadalajara he formed a government, decreed the abolition of slavery on 6 December 1810 and ended indigenous tribute, but royalist prisoners were also executed there. In January 1811, at the Calderón Bridge outside the city, a much smaller royalist army routed his huge but poorly armed forces.

Allende's officers took military command from him. Heading north to seek help from the United States, the leaders were betrayed and captured at the Wells of Baján on 21 March 1811. Taken to Chihuahua, Hidalgo was stripped of the priesthood, found guilty of treason and, by the most widely accepted account, shot by firing squad on 30 July 1811. His head and those of three other leaders were displayed on the granary at Guanajuato for ten years. The struggle continued under José María Morelos, and Mexico won independence in 1821.

Our 1800 map shows New Spain before the revolt; the 1815 map shows it still under Spanish rule during the war Hidalgo began.