Both modern Mexico and current “popular” foreign sources have a hard time figuring out who the instigator of Mexico’s great War of Independence, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, was. This is not a new problem, but one worsened by a lack of present-day historically well-tuned analysis. The “dusty” pueblo of Dolores (in the intendency of Guanajuato), where the 50-year-old priest was assigned in 1803, has been said by one Hidalgo aficionado to be a “coveted parish.” It brought in a handsome sum – eight-to-nine thousand pesos a year, he contended. Yet the majority of its parishioners were described by contemporary Mexican sources as “illiterate, poor indios,” a description that included the mestizo population also. Hidalgo’s constant efforts to create, and train his parishioners to manage numerous small enterprises were aimed, by all evidence, at improving thin family economies. These included a pottery business, the forbidden production of grapes to produce forbidden wine, planting and nourishing forbidden olive trees to produce forbidden olive oil, beekeeping, a tannery and a silk-making industry, among others.
Contradictions of course are one of the things that have long nourished curiosity in Mexico’s complex and captivating history and culture. But those manifested by Hidalgo have stirred fierce controversy because of his fame as the “Father of Mexico.” To deflect serious research, some scholars, historians, journalists and politicians, seemingly have joined in blurring Hidalgo’s notable inner flaws.
A friend – and sometime mentor – of Hidalgo’s, Manuel Abad y Queipo, the bishop-elect of Michoacan, “one of the most fascinating intellectual personalities of the Enlightenment in New Spain,” applauded Hidalgo’s imaginative, industrious concepts to improve his parishioners’ welfare and skills. Abad, among others, tended to ignore Hidalgo’s rough comments about the church, as they did his liaisons with women, which produced two daughters.Hidalgo read widely, enjoyed verbally exploring the hurdling paths new ideas revealed. But his reading did not center on the secular texts favored by people such as Abad – Adam Smith, the Physiocrats, Spanish neoclassical statesman and philosopher Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (1744-1811). He ignored Rousseau, Voltaire, the French Encyclopedists. He was more keen about the 17th century than the 18th. He translated Moliere and Racine, read La Fontaine, played Rameau on his violin. He was familiar, from his seminary days with the declaration of the Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617): “(S)overeignty lies essentially with people ... kings exercise it by consent of the people and within the understanding and indispensable condition that it should be exercised for the benefit and utility of the people ... in the event of its abuse, kings can be deposed and war may even be declared on them, because peoples are superior to kings.”
Hidalgo’s work teaching needy parishioners crafts and trades tended to disguise a “reverse” side of his nature. He possessed a restless, spendthrift and disorganized side that prompted more recent researchers to offer the belief that “within Hidalgo there were many Hidalgos,” all of them eccentric. This is a familiar explanation: The great man with so many “good” interests that they distract him from disciplining destructive – indeed, self-destructive – impulses. As Hidalgo grew beyond his “brilliant young man” role, he became an irrepressible squanderer almost always in debt, a model of the too well-known licentious, socially nimble cleric whose interests were provocative, yet flighty. In Hidalgo’s case, his intellect and his skill in creating new practical vocations for his flock veiled often fickle decision-making. His appetite for gambling and his inner disorganization led friends such as Abad to grow wary of his unreflectiveness.
Much before that, his “eccentric ways” prompted his superiors to transfer him from one modest diocese to another, finally to Dolores. It was there that he encountered the leader of the “Literary Club of Queretaro,” Captain Ignacio Allende, of the Queen’s Cavalry Regiment in Guanajuato. Like Hidalgo, Allende was a criollo – a Spaniard born in Mexico – and like most criollos, he resented being barred from New Spain’s elite, the peninsulares – those Spaniards born in metropolitan Spain, and known pejoratively as gauchupines (spur-wearers). Gachupines claimed limpieza de sangre (pure blood), and questioned the racial pureness of those Spaniards born in New Spain. To them, anyone born away from “home” was inferior. Thus, the most salubrious positions in government and commerce were occupied by an oligarchical minority, the peninsulares. Criollos bitterly resented them, Meztizos and Indios hated them.
Many of the popular criollo “literary clubs” that sprang up in this environment tended to discuss not merely literature and philosophy, but New Spain’s “class problem.” Hidalgo was recruited to join Allende’s club. His jaundiced view of both civil and Church authority recommended him.
As one Mexican historian said, “Criollo dreams of power were not newsworthy.” But now, by the beginning of 1800s, the Criollos, much to their own surprise, began to realize they no longer needed a Spanish monarchy now being divided by Napoleon’s invasion and the usurpation the Spanish throne. by his brother.
Though Allende, Hidalgo and Juan Aldama, also a militia captain, lead the Queretero conspiracy, some 3,000 others joined in their plot against the Spaniards. Authorities easily learned of the conspiracy and went after its leaders. But the conspirators were hastily warned. On the night of September 15-16, 1810, Allende and Aldama rode through the darkness to warn Hidalgo. Allende’s original plan was to suborn criollo army officers, recruiting them to fight royal troops. With that plan destroyed, the two officers intended to go into hiding. Hidalgo, a priest, calmly said that there was only one course of action: To go “hunting gachupines.” Without Hidalgo, most Mexican historians believe there would have been no uprising. He ordered Dolores’ church bells be rung long and loud to hurry parishioners to what they believed was an early Sunday mass. What he was to tell them is lost in myth, both stirring and improbable. There are long improbable speeches to a “multitude” that elementary history strips of credulity. For two centuries myth has contended that Hidalgo said something that included the words, “Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe! Viva la independencia! Viva Mexico!” That’s the least cluttered version of the grito. But Hidalgo hadn’t yet thought to incorporate La Guadalupana into his crusade, so there was no mention of her. He himself said that his audience would not have understood what independence might mean. As for Viva Mexico!, that would have been useless, for the concept of a Mexican state had not been envisioned by anyone. Most knowledgeable historians agree that he said, “Death to the Gachupines” – the most accurate battle cry of Hidalgo’s brief War of Independence.
The other great puzzle, one that some argue issues from Hidalgo’s lack of habitual intellectual and emotional discipline, is that at the moment when Mexico City was within his grasp, instead of attacking as Allende and other officers urged, Hidalgo turned away. While there are many theories about this, the one that may make the most sense is that he believed General Felix Calleja was approaching from his army’s rear – though he had no word how close those royal forces were. Calleja was a general to be feared – a fine strategist, a cagey, disciplined and relentless officer who tended to win his battles.
Slowly, Hidalgo’s army turned away, shedding disillusioned insurgents by the hundreds. With his troops numbering only 40,000 poorly armed men, Hidalgo ran into Calleja at Aculco, just north of Toluca. He was defeated November 7. Desertions continued, and he arrived at Guadalajara November 26 with an army of some 7,000. He was able to reconstitute his forces, but was defeated by Calleja again at Calderon Bridge just east of Guadalajara. That for all practical purposes was the end of the Revolution for Independence, only brutal trials and executions were left.