In May 1810, Abad y Queipo predicted a colonial revolt due to colonial grievances and the “electric” example of the French Revolution. He urged the Crown to appoint an enlightened military man as viceroy and that competent military officers, field cannons, cannon balls, and grapeshot also be sent to Mexico.27
This warning indicated Abad y Queipo’s prescience, since, unbeknownst to him, residents of the Bajio, northwest of Mexico City were plotting to free Mexico. The Bajio, a vast high plain in the state of Guanajuato, had become one of the most prosperous and densely populated areas in Mexico. The population of the Bajio, which contained few Spaniards or traditional Indian villages, was more socially mobile than the Mexican population as a whole. Its mixed economy, based on mining, herding, manufacturing, farming, and artisanal production, was the most developed in New Spain. Mining created a demand for both manufactured goods and agricultural products.28
Upon visiting the Bajio, Humboldt observed:
In Mexico the best cultivated fields, those which recall to the mind of the traveler the beautiful
Plains of France, are those which extend from Salamanca towards Silao, Guanaxuato, and the
Villa of Leon, and which surround the richest mines of the known world.29
The 1810 conspirators met regularly in Queretaro, 125 miles northwest of Mexico City, under the guise of attending a literary society. The most distinguished conspirator was Miguel Dominguez, from an elite local family, who served as the corregidor of Queretaro. Other conspirators included his wife, Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez (“La Corregidora”), and various lawyers, military officers, and commercial and religious figures. Neither members of the central elite nor the poor joined the Queretaro conspiracy. The conspirators hoped to strike a quick blow against the Spanish, that is, do to the Spanish what they had done to Iturrigaray. The planned uprising was initially set for December.30
Miguel Hidalgo, one of the conspirators, served as the priest of Dolores, a Bajio town of 15,000. Hidalgo, the son of a hacienda manager, read prohibited books and loved wine, dance, and other worldly pleasures. He served as a one-man community development project promoting tanning, carpentry, beekeeping, the weaving of wool, and the production of silk, pottery, tiles, and wine. In addition, he produced theater, sometimes his own translations of French works. In 1804, after the recall of Church loans, the Crown temporarily seized and rented out Hidalgo’s small hacienda to generate income to repay the 7,000 pesos he owed.31
Spanish authorities, who received a report concerning the 1810 plot, sent officials to arrest the conspirators. After arriving in Queretaro, they jailed La Corregidora to prevent information leaks. However, she managed to get word to her jailer, a fellow conspirator, who sent riders off, Paul Revere style, to warn other plotters.32
Upon learning that the Spanish were coming, Hidalgo decided to launch the rebellion immediately. Evidently he had not been a driving force behind the plot up to this point. Early on the morning of September 16, 1810, he issued his famous Grito de Dolores (Cry of Dolores), which set Mexico into rebellion. There are almost as many versions of what he said as there are historians. Some claim Hidalgo only attacked Spanish misrule; others saw his revolt as favoring Fernando VII against France; while still others saw it as a call for complete independence.33
The people of Dolores immediately rallied behind Hidalgo, who freed and armed the seventy prisoners in the town jail. He next ordered the newly freed prisoners to arrest and jail all Spaniards in the town. Hidalgo’s hastily gathered throng of urban and rural workers armed with lances, machetes, rakes, slings, and sticks then set out to liberate Mexico. This force first marched to San Miguel el Grande (today San Miguel de Allende), twenty-four miles away. On the way they passed Atotonilco, a frequent destination for religious pilgrimages. There they appropriated an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and mounted it on a pole, creating a standard. The Virgin became the symbol of the insurgency and a potent force for mobilizing support for the independence cause.34
Many working in the fields joined the insurgency as Hidalgo’s force passed. Their standard of living had fallen, and they were suffering from unaccustomed insecurity and famine. The participation of local leaders, such as Hidalgo, indicated splits in the elite that would open a role for the masses. The obvious enrichment of local landowners who produced cash crops added to the anger of the majority.35
Hidalgo’s force took San Miguel el Grande, the home of fellow conspirator Ignacio Allende, without firing a shot. There the contradictions within the movement became apparent. Indians and mestizos began looting the town despite the efforts of Hidalgo and Allende—a wealthy Creole who had served as the captain of a Spanish cavalry regiment—to stop them. The insurgents spent two days in San Miguel gaining additional recruits.
The rebels then marched south, took Celaya, and turned back north toward Guanajuato. As Alaman commented, “In each village, Father Hidalgo needed only to appear in order to recruit the
”36
Masses.
On September 28, the insurgents, 20,000 strong, arrived at Guanajuato, a mining center of
60,000. For six days, Juan Antonio Riano, the city’s Spanish intendant, had trained militia forces and organized the digging of defensive trenches. However, at the last minute he lost his nerve and ordered wealthy Spaniards and Creoles to take refuge in La Alhondiga, a fortress-like granary. An observer noted that those taking refuge in the granary brought with them “money, silver bars, precious jewels, the most valuable goods from their chests, trunks of clothes, gold and diamond jewelry, and other valuables from their homes.”37
Miners and prisoners freed from the local jail joined the rebels. Riano’s decision to take refuge in La Alhondiga intensified the class nature of the struggle, since he allowed only the wealthy inside the granary. Five hours after the insurgents attacked, they broke through the doors, killing men, women, and children and making off with clothing, bullion, and jewelry. Hidalgo’s men killed at least 300 Spaniards in the granary and during the subsequent looting of the city. For Hidalgo, this was a Pyrrhic victory, since the looting and brutality ended any chance of his gaining widespread Creole support.38
Hidalgo’s 70,000-man force then marched to Valladolid (today Morelia), took it on October 17 without firing a shot, and looted it. The disorderly crowd that formed Hidalgo’s army filed through the streets shouting, “Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe,” and “Death to the Spaniards.” The officers, many of whom had defected from the royalist army, commanded poorly armed and poorly dressed peasants. At this stage of the rebellion, the insurgency had the festive air of a pilgrimage.39
Until this point, the independence movement had been in the hands of Creoles, who wanted only to replace the Spaniard with the Creole, leaving the social and economic structure unchanged. However, the Indians and mestizos had other ideas. Alaman described what happened as Hidalgo’s force passed haciendas:
The Indians would fan out into the cornfields and take the corn. They broke open granaries. The grain inside soon vanished. The shops, found on most haciendas, were stripped down to the beams. Killing all the oxen was de rigueur. If there happened to be an Indian village nearby, even the hacienda buildings were destroyed, so the beams and doors could be taken to the village.40
On October 29, the insurgents occupied Toluca. Hidalgo’s force of some 80,000, the largest army assembled in Mexico since Aztec times, continued east. As the insurgents approached Mexico City, they met their first major resistance from royalist forces in the Battle of Monte de Las Cruces. A force of 2,500 well disciplined royalists with artillery almost held Hidalgo’s force off. Finally after heavy losses on both sides, the insurgents surrounded the royalists. The royalists then fought their way out of the encirclement, and their badly mauled force retreated to Mexico City.41
Instead of proceeding on to take Mexico City, Hidalgo paused at the battle site for three days and then ordered his army back to the west. This decision remains one of the most controversial in Mexican history and probably resulted from the insurgents’ lack of ammunition, the strength of Mexico City’s royalist garrison, the approach of royalist reinforcements from the north, and the weakness of Hidalgo’s own poorly trained army. Hidalgo may also have feared his army would loot Mexico City.42
The failure of Indians living in the area to support the insurgency may also have deterred Hidalgo. In central Mexico, outside the Valley of Mexico, strong paternalistic ties remained between Indian laborers and hacendados who employed them. They considered hacendados as benefactors, not exploiters. Villages there, which retained substantial amounts of land, continued to accept the status quo.43
Hidalgo also failed to attract Mexico City’s artisans, since after the looting of Guanajuato, they correctly judged him to be the leader of a peasant-based movement favoring rural interests. Since half of his 80,000-man force had either been killed at the Battle of Monte de Las Cruces or had deserted, Hidalgo desperately needed new recruits.44
Despite massive military spending after 1762, the viceroy had virtually no forces he could mobilize against the rebels. On October 2, Brigadier Felix Calleja, the royalist commander in San Luis Potosi, wrote the intendant of Puebla: “My troops are short in numbers and of the same quality as yours. I lack artillery, infantry officers, and I am in a country so undermined by sedition that I cannot abandon it without exposing it.”45
Rather than wringing his hands, Calleja energetically began forming units, collecting arms, and requisitioning provisions. Only on October 24 did he march south with 3,000 cavalry, 600 infantry, and four cannons founded during the weeks after the rebellion began. Calleja mainly drew his men from the cattle estates of San Luis Potosi. Since these estates offered secure employment, employees there remained loyal to landowners and the Crown.46
On November 7, soon after the insurgents turned west, their 40,000-man army met Calleja’s force at Aculco. When confronted by the royalist force, the rebels panicked and fled the battlefield, abandoning most of their artillery and supplies. The royalists at Aculco were not seasoned troops, just better disciplined and better armed than Hidalgo’s.
The defeat at Aculco forced Hidalgo to the west. His force paused briefly in Valladolid. While there, the rebels marched small groups of Spaniards out of the city daily to be executed. The rebels then continued west to Guadalajara, which had already been taken by the rebel leader Jose Torres.47
Hidalgo remained in Guadalajara from November 26, 1810, to January 14, 1811. While there, the insurgents established a rudimentary government, murdered many of the Spanish who fell into their hands, and rebuilt their army. The insurgents again found an ample supply of recruits. The hinterland surrounding Guadalajara had been subject to the same sudden commercial pressure that the Bajio had. After 1750, many villages had lost their access to land, which the elite used to grow cash crops for the Guadalajara market. This market demanded ever more produce to feed the city’s mushrooming population.48
After Aculco, Calleja also turned west, taking San Miguel, Dolores, and Guanajuato. In retaliation for the rebels killing so many Spaniards in Guanajuato, Calleja ordered the execution of sixty-nine Mexicans for having collaborated with the rebels. Calleja soon found that counterinsurgency presented far more of a challenge than simply reoccupying cities. He commented, “The insurrection is far from calm, it returns like the hydra, in proportion to the number of times its head is cut off.”49
In zones supporting the rebels, royalist commanders stripped villages, haciendas, and ranches of horses, arms, and weapons, including small kitchen knives. They rounded up all blacksmiths and destroyed forges, which could be used to make lance points and other weapons. Royalists shot individuals apprehended with arms who could not produce proper documents or who acted suspiciously. Their bodies were displayed at the point of execution. Such tactics terrorized some people into compliance, while others became even more implacable foes of the regime.50
When he learned of Calleja’s approach, Hidalgo ordered his army out to meet the royalists. The insurgents had 80 cannons, 3,500 soldiers, 2,000 mounted ranch hands armed with lances, and 50,000 Indians on foot with lances, slings, and bows and arrows. Calleja commanded 6,000 men, mostly cavalry, and had ten cannons. The battle near the Puente de Calderon (Calderon Bridge) lasted all day, January 11, 1811, and involved hard fighting on both sides. The royalists finally managed to fight their way up onto the high ground occupied by the insurgents, at which point Hidalgo’s force fled. Historian Christon Archer remarked, concerning both Aculco and Calderon: “The insurgent commanders committed the tragic error of believing that they could engage in conventional battle with the royalist army. They lacked the arms, leaders, and discipline.” This defeat ended the threat to the Crown posed by Hidalgo.51
With their force in disarray, Hidalgo and Allende retreated north through Aguascalientes and Saltillo. Feeling Hidalgo had bungled the military campaign, the rebels stripped him of his military command, but kept him as a figurehead. This reflected the conflict between Hidalgo and Allende, who, as a military officer, had consistently advocated the use of a smaller, more disciplined force. Subsequent observers have seconded Allende’s judgment, noting that Hidalgo lacked an overall military strategy and did not carry out tactical maneuvers in battle. His inexperienced generals had neither seen combat nor studied military tactics.52
While the initial leaders of the movement fled north, many others, inspired by Hidalgo’s example, continued to fight. They did not attempt to confront the royalist forces directly, but carried out fragmented, regionalized campaigns. Rebels so intimidated the Spanish in Zacatecas that many of them, including the intendant, simply fled.53
On March 21, 1811, north of Saltillo, royalists captured the remnants of the insurgent army as its leaders attempted to reach the United States and obtain sanctuary and support. A former rebel officer, who had been angered by his failure to receive a promotion, facilitated the capture.54
Royalists shot several hundred of the captured rebels and condemned others to presidios or assigned them to labor in haciendas and mines. Royalists took Hidalgo to Chihuahua, where a court composed of four Spaniards and five Creoles tried him. Members of the court unanimously voted to execute him. Authorities placed his head, Allende’s head, and those of two other executed rebels in metal cages on the granary in Guanajuato as a warning to potential rebels.55
While a prisoner, Hidalgo signed a highly controversial repentance, which included the following:
I see the desolation of these lands which I have caused, the destruction of property, the many orphans which I have left, and the blood which has flowed with such profusion and temerity. The souls of many of those who followed me dwell in the abyss.56
While he did sign the statement of repentance, possibly under duress, Hidalgo never stated he regretted having furthered the cause of independence, only the means used to reach that goal. As has since been argued, these means might have done more harm than good for the independence cause.57
The lack of written manifestos makes it difficult to know exactly what sort of society Hidalgo and his associates envisioned. To further confuse matters, leaders of the movement attempted to conceal their intentions. Allende provides an example of such deceit. He wrote Hidalgo on August 31, 1810:
We decided to work with our intentions carefully concealed, since if the movement was openly revolutionary, it would not be supported by the general mass of the people. . . . Since Indians are indifferent to the word “liberty,” it is necessary to make them believe the uprising is being carried out only on behalf of Fernando VII.58
It is also difficult for modern readers to interpret the insurgents’ declarations since “Mexico” is a post-independence construct. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the area now forming Mexico was a conglomeration of cities, towns, and Indian villages with no clearly defined northern or southern boundary. Similarly the term “independence” is ambiguous, since some used it to refer to Mexican independence from Spain, while others used it to refer to the Spanish empire’s independence from France and Great Britain. At the time, “independence” was also used to refer to “autonomy.”59
Hidalgo and his close allies had hoped for a Creole coup, but failed to attract sufficient military support for that. Hidalgo praised Fernando VII and condemned Spaniards and the French, declaring them to be enemies of God and humanity. Religion would serve as the major justification of the revolution, not Enlightenment ideals.60
Hidalgo issued several reformist decrees, which increased his lower-class following. On October 19, 1810, he decreed the abolition of slavery and threatened those not emancipating slaves with the death penalty. The next month, he decreed an end to the tribute paid by Indians and mulattos and abolished the monopoly on tobacco and gunpowder production. In December, he abrogated existing agreements for the rental of Indian land, since renters often used such agreements to usurp Indian holdings. Hidalgo never controlled sufficient territory to implement these policies. Nor did he ever issue decrees dealing with such basic issues as wages and land ownership.61
Hidalgo relied on a mass-based movement that he could not or would not discipline. He and his subordinates had no way of anticipating that his rebellion against Spanish rule would become a
Figure 6.2
Jose Marfa Morelos
Source: Reproduced courtesy of the Benson Latin American Collection, the University of Texas at Austin
Race war that threatened both the Creoles and others who aspired to replace the Spanish. Arousing Indians to revolt and placing all property and established social relations in jeopardy drove Spaniards and Creoles alike into the royalist camp. Hidalgo condoned pillaging by his forces and the murder of numerous Spanish prisoners as a legitimate means to attract new peasant recruits and retain his followers.62
Had Hidalgo concentrated solely on independence and guaranteed the lives and property of Creoles and Spaniards, he would doubtlessly have won. Calleja, who later served as viceroy, commented:
This vast kingdom weighs too heavily upon an insubstantial metropolis; its natives and even the Europeans themselves are convinced of the advantages that would result from an independent government; and if the absurd insurrection of Hidalgo had been built upon this base, it seems to me as I now look at it, that it would have met with little opposition.63
Hidalgo presents historians with sharply conflicting images, just as the slave-owning Thomas Jefferson as an advocate of democracy does. Historians on both sides of the Rio Grande have criticized Hidalgo. For example, Mexican historian and politician Lorenzo de Zavala (1788—1836) wrote: “He operated without a plan, a system, or a fixed objective. Viva la Senora de Guadalupe was the only basis of his campaign; the national flag on which her image was printed, his code of law and institutions.”64
World History
