172 CHAPTER 8 THE INDEPENDENCE OF LATIN AMERICA
raising troops, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a priest in
the town of Dolores and one-time rector of the co-
legio of San Nicolás at Valladolid, was inspired by a
genuine sympathy with the natives. The scholarly
Hidalgo had already called the attention of Spanish
authorities to himself by his freethinking ideas; he
was also known for his scientifi c interests and his
efforts to develop new industries in his parish.
Informed that their plot had been denounced
to Spanish offi cials, the conspirators held an urgent
council and decided to launch their revolt even
though arrangements were incomplete. On Sun-
day, September 16, 1810, Hidalgo called on the
people of his parish who had assembled for Mass to
rise against their Spanish rulers. Here, as elsewhere
in Spanish America, the “mask of Ferdinand” came
into play; Hidalgo claimed to be leading an insur-
rection in support of a beloved king treacherously
captured and deposed by godless Frenchmen. In
less than two weeks, the insurgent leaders had
assembled thousands of rebels and had begun a
march on the industrial and mining center of Gua-
najuato. On the march Hidalgo secured a banner
bearing the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and
proclaimed her the patron of his movement, thus
appealing to the religious devotion of his followers.
All along the route the established elites held back
from joining the revolt. They watched with dismay
as the rebels looted stores and seized the crops pro-
vided by the bountiful harvest of 1810, after two
years of drought and famine. The capture of Gua-
najuato on September 28 was accomplished with
the aid of several thousand mineworkers, who
joined in storming the massive municipal granary
in which Spanish offi cials, militia, and local elites
attempted to hold out. It was followed by the kill-
ing of hundreds of Spaniards in the granary and
the city. The massacre and sack of Guanajuato was
a turning point in the rebellion, for it brought into
the open the confl ict between the basic objective of
Hidalgo and his allies—creole domination of an au-
tonomous or independent Mexico—and the thirst
for revenge and social justice of their lower-class
followers. Learning of the events at Guanajuato,
the great majority of the creole elite recoiled in hor-
ror before the elemental violence of a movement
that Hidalgo was unable to control.
After his fi rst victories, Hidalgo issued decrees
that abolished slavery and tribute, the yearly head
tax paid by indígenas and mulattos. Three months
later, from his headquarters at Guadalajara, in his
fi rst and only reference to the land problem, he or-
dered that indigenous communal lands in the vicin-
ity of the city that had been rented to Spaniards be
returned to the pueblos; it was his wish that “only
the Indians in their respective pueblos should en-
joy the use of those lands.” Moderate though they
were, these reforms gave the Mexican struggle a
popular character that had been absent from the
movement for independence in South America
but further alienated many creoles who may have
desired autonomy or independence, but not so-José Clemente Orozco, one of Mexico’s famous
muralists, produced this defi ant image of the Mexi-
can liberator, Miguel Hidalgo, with fl aming torch in
hand, leading the Mexican crusade against political
oppression and social injustice. [The Granger Collection,
New York]