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Miguel Hidalgo.

Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla Gallaga Mondarte Villaseñor (May 8, 1753 – July 30, 1811), also known as Cura Hidalgo ("Priest Hidalgo"), was a Mexican priest and revolutionary rebel leader. He is regarded as the founder of the Mexican War of Independence movement; who fought for independence against Spain in the early 19th century. The state of Hidalgo in Mexico is named after him.

Hidalgo was born to a criollo family (historically, any Mexican of unmixed Spanish ancestry). Growing up in an hacienda, where his father Cristóbal Hidalgo y Costilla was employed as a superintendent, Hidalgo developed an early sympathy for the unskilled Indian workers. He was reportedly a keen reader of banned French literature and an avid nonconformist. Though he trained as a priest, he retained an interest in political and social questions, which he carried with him to his first parish in the town of Dolores, now called Dolores Hidalgo, in the modern-day central Mexican state of Guanajuato. He learned several indigenous languages, wrote texts in the Aztec language and organized the local communities in Michoacan.

It is impossible to say exactly when Hidalgo turned his thoughts towards rebellion against the colonial power, but the break is thought to have come sometime after Joseph Bonaparte replaced Ferdinand VII on the throne of Spain. This was one of the decisive moments in Mexican history, breaking a political link that had united the country with Spain for three hundred years. Literary clubs began to emerge, expressing a whole range of radical views, united by a general discontent against the new political realities in the Spanish Empire. Hidalgo, a priest of unconventional views, attended one such provincial group in Guanajunto. It was there that educated criollos started conspiring for a large-scale uprising of mestizos and indigenous peasants.

Main article: Grito de Dolores

Statue of Miguel Hidalgo in front of his church at Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato.

By 1809 Hidalgo's sense of discontent was turning openly to revolutionary politics, and the possibility of a uprising against the vice-regal government of what was then New Spain. He was joined by Ignacio Allende, a young officer from the nearby town of San Miguel, also a Creole, frustrated by the inherent chauvinism in the colonial administration, which preferred to advance immigrant Spaniards, rather than people born in Mexico, no matter how "pure" their blood. The fall of Ferdinand created a vacuum which Allende and other ambitious Creoles were determined to fill.

Early on the morning of Sunday September 16, 1810 Hidalgo and Allende received from Doña Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez ("La Corregidora" from Querétaro) a warning that the authorities had intelligence of the planned insurgency. Hidalgo's parishioners had been coming in from the surrounding countryside, expecting to hear mass; instead they heard a call to arms (the Grito de Dolores). As well as invoking the name of King Ferdinand and the Virgin of Guadalupe, he denounced the Gauchupines, a derogatory term for the Spanish-born overlords, specifically designed to appeal to an Indian audience.

Main article: Mexican War of Independence

Lithograph of Miguel Hidalgo in his military uniform.

From Dolores, the rebel force moved on San Miguel, gathering support along the way like a rolling avalanche. In the process the movement began to be openly anti-Spanish rather than pro-Ferdinand, and Hidalgo dropped his own pretence to loyalism in favour of outright support for Mexican independence. So, what began as a conservative reaction turned into a popular, largely Indian, anti-colonial revolution. The army then moved on Guanajuato, the provincial capital, where Antonio Riano, the governor, attempted to organise a defense. But he was only able to assemble some 500 men, Creole and Spanish, against an Indian force now estimated at 20,000 strong. The town fell to onslaught on 28 September, during which many of the defenders were massacred.

The rebel army then moved south-east towards Mexico City, close to which General Felix Calleja had placed some 3000 cavalry and 600 infantry at the pass of Las Cruces. In the ensuing Battle of Las Cruces the tiny defending force faced 80,000 rebels. The Royalists managed to hold off the advance in two days of hard fighting, assisted by the fact that Hidalgo's men had scarcely any firearms. But in the end they were defeated by sheer weight of numbers, and 200 survivors of the battle fell back on Mexico City, now virtually defenceless. As he did not have confidence in the discipline of his newly recruited army and did not feel he could control looting or useless violence, Hidalgo did not press his advantage, and the rebels moved away from the capital, to the north-east in the direction of Valladolid, present-day Morelia, and from thence on to Guadalajara.

Calleja, with an enhanced Royal army, followed in close pursuit, finally forcing Hidalgo and Allende to make a stand on the banks of the Calderon River, where a battle was fought on the morning of January 16, 1811. Although numerically weaker, Calleja's force was far better armed. Hidalgo, moreover, had organised his own forces badly, ignoring the advice of the more experienced Allende. Under sustained attack by cavalry, infantry and artillery, the rebel army collapsed in panic when one of the Royalist shells struck an ammunition wagon. Calleja's victory was complete.

Miguel Hidalgo, 1937
by José Clemente Orozco
Jalisco Governmental Palace, Guadalajara, Mexico

Allende, who had grown increasingly frustrated with Hidalgo during the campaign, a mood that was compounded by the murderous indiscipline of the Indian army, promptly relieved his chief of command, and carried him northwards with his tiny remaining force, towards the American border, where he hoped to gain the help and support of President James Madison. However, on March 21, he was intercepted by Royalist forces, and the two leaders taken prisoner.

The four leaders of the revolution – Hidalgo, Allende, Jiménez and Aldama – were held in the Federal Palace of Chihuahua and executed by firing squad, three of them on June 26, 1811 and Miguel Hidalgo on July 30, 1811 at Chihuahua's Government Palace. Prior to his death, Hidalgo expressed regret for the bloodshed unleashed by the revolt, though he remained firm in his conviction that Mexico had to be free. The corpses of the four leaders were decapitated and their heads were put on the four corners of the Alhóndiga de Granaditas in Guanajuato, intended as a way to intimidate the insurgents.

Hidalgo and the other three leaders' heads were on display in the city until 1821, when Mexico finally won its independence. Hidalgo's decapitated body was disinterred from his burial place in the San Francisco Temple in Chihuahua and re-buried in Mexico City after independence had been won.

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Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

• Hamill, Hugh M. Jr. The Hidalgo Revolt: Prelude to Mexican Independence. University of Florida Press, 1966.
• The Birth of Modern Mexico, 1780-1824, ed by C. I. Archer. Scholarly Resources Inc., 2003.
• Hamnett, Brian. Concise History of Mexico. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.