Miguel Hidalgo, known as the father of independent Mexico, survived less than a year after calling for a popular uprising with the famed Grito de Independencia at the dawn of September 16, 1810. Final chapters of his life are based on significant events that took place in and near Guadalajara.

Hidalgo and his rag-tag insurgent troops marched into Guadalajara on November 26, 1810, arriving after skirting Lake Chapala’s shores at Ocotlán and camping out at the nearby Hacienda de Atequiza. Promptly after occupying the city, he established an alternate national government, naming himself as its head.

On December 6 he issued a decree abolishing slavery, putting the nascent Mexico on the world map as a leader in human rights issues. He also backed the publication of El Despertador Americano (The American Awakener), a trend-setter in independent journalism and liberal thought.

Hidalgo’s pivotal role in the Independence movement was cut short on January 16, 1811, when royalist forces led by General Felix Calljas routed the insurgents in the Battle of Calderon Bridge at Zapotlanejo. Hidalgo fled to the north, where his was stripped of military command, eventually captured and finally executed by firing squad on July 30.

By then the seeds rebellion had taken root in the Lake Chapala region, inspiring lesser known heroes of the era. Among them were Marcos Castellanos, a creole born in the south shore town of La Palma, Michoacan who grew up to become a Catholic priest officiating in Ocotlán and Sahuayo, José Encarnacion Rosas, a fisherman from the village of Tlachichilco and Mezcala native José Santana.

The three man banded together to lead battle against the royalist soldiers who had unleashed a series of brutal attacks against lakeshore communities, massacring hundreds of impoverished and unarmed civilians in a fruitless effort to quell the insurgency.

Rosas, one their prime targets, was on the verge of being captured near Mezcala when enraged villagers armed with clubs and stones fiercely stood in his defense. By the end of the fight, 60 Spanish soldiers were dead and the remainder in retreat. Knowing that violent reprisals would soon follow, the rebels took refuge on Mezcala Island.

Over the next four years as many as 1,000 men, along with their women and children, hunkered down on the rocky island, building it up into a strong fortress to keep the enemy at bay.  Time and again, the royalists failed in attempts to storm the island. Their superior vessels and weaponry proved no match for the fierce natives empowered by determination and cunning guerilla tactics.

It was a typhoid epidemic that eventually forced the rebels to surrender on November 25, 1816, but not before Santana negotiated favorable conditions to rebuild their ravished communities.
Padre Castellanos was granted the curacy of Ajijic where lived out his last days in abject poverty, his passionate patriotic spirit still intact. Following his death in February, 1826, he was buried in the atrium of Jocotepec’s church. Rosas apparently died sometime during the early in Mezcala stand-off. The fate of Santana remains uncertain. They are simply memorialized in the local streets and schools that bear their names.