| History - El grito de Hidalgo - The story behind the story |
"After 300 years of brutal Spanish colonial rule, of personal humiliation, exploitation and class repression, Hidalgo had pulled the trigger of class war."
History - El grito de Hidalgo - The story behind the story
By Gregg Thompson
Mexico´s 11-year struggle for freedom from Spanish rule began on a particularly confusing note, given that the man who started it all, a Catholic priest named Miguel Hidalgo, later regretted the whole thing and repented before the firing squad.
Hidalgo was a marvel of contradictions, but that hasn´t kept him out of Mexico´s political hall of fame. Every year in town centers and village squares across Mexico millions celebrate his memory on September 16th, the anniversary of the rebel priest´s 1810 "grito," or call to action, that set Mexico´s independence movement in motion.
Beyond the established historical image of Hidalgo as righteous patriot lies a fascinating and even bizarre character. Coming from a comfortable and secure family background, Hidalgo grew up to be a determined idealist with a chip on his shoulder. Non-conformity was his strongest suit. He thrived on taking unorthodox intellectual positions and sparring with established authority. Immensely self-willed, his words and deeds frequently excited great irritation in those around him. When the law forbade the cultivation of grapes and the making of wine, Hidalgo grew grapes and made wine. When the Spanish viceroy imposed restrictions on silk production, Hidalgo planted more mulberry bushes to feed his thriving silk worm project. A lover of literature, his favorite books were those discouraged by convention or forbidden by law.
For the Catholic Church that ordained him, Miguel Hidalgo proved to be a real burr under the saddle. But that didn´t mean he wasn´t a committed priest - he loved his church and was devoted to its core beliefs. But he enthusiastically derided Church values (like chastity) that didn't appeal to him.
A highly-trained academic of great intellect, and a kindly man, his impassioned hatred of Spanish colonial rule and his advocacy of rights for the poor and disenfranchised led him down the path to merciless violence and cruel anarchy. Although steeped in the humanist values of 18th-century liberalism, Hidalgo was no anxious handwringer when it came to the use of force. "Liberty," he said, " ...will be sustained by the letting of rivers of blood, if necessary."
Hidalgo´s bitter attitude towards Spain and his unorthodox teachings cost him his job as rector at prestigious St. Nicholas College. Piqued by his behavior and suspecting heresy, Hidalgo in 1802 was subjected to an investigation by the Holy Office (Inquisition) of the Catholic Church. For lack of evidence the case was dismissed. Having stared down this confrontation with authority, the 57-year-old parish priest returned to his illicit vineyard and his library of non-conformist books. And he met a man named Allende.
Ignacio Allende (the town of San Miguel de Allende carries his name) was an army captain based at Querétaro, not far from Hidalgo´s parish at Dolores. When not on duty Allende presided over meetings of the Literary and Social Club, a clandestine organization which met regularly to discuss, among other themes, the ideas of the French Revolution and how they might be applied to an independent Mexico. Merchants, property owners, professionals and clergy attended the meetings. Here Hidalgo and Allende met and became close political associates. All members of the "club" shared two things in common: they were Creoles and they wanted Spain out of Mexico.
Creoles - those of Spanish ancestry born in Mexico - were second-class citizens in the land of their birth. Their social, business and professional aspirations were stymied by the dominant peninsulares, or gachupines, as their Spanish colonial masters were called.
Now, in 1810, the Iberian peninsula was in chaos. Napoleon had kidnapped the Spanish king and occupied Spain; his brother Joseph Bonaparte sat on the Spanish throne. With the king removed, the position of the Spanish viceroy in Mexico was weak, the legitimacy of his role uncertain. Hidalgo and Allende saw that the political power vacuum in the country invited bold and opportune action. It was time to strike for a free Mexico.
Hidalgo , Allende and others hatched a plot to declare independence on October 2, 1810. But the plan was exposed by a fellow-conspirator, who on his deathbed confessed to his role in the uprising. Learning of the betrayal, Allende and Hidalgo hurriedly decided to push ahead with the rebellion, although planning remained incomplete. In the early morning hours of September 16th, 1810, Hidalgo began ringing the bell of the church at Dolores, summoning his parishioners to mass. By next morning several thousand Indians, mestizo peasants and workers had assembled.
It was meant to have been a gentlemen´s affair, a "salon" revolution long on smoke and mirrors but short on blood and fire. Allende held that independence could be achieved simply by changing elites at the top -- Spaniards out, Creoles in. A classic coup d état would begin and end by subverting those segments of the Royalist army whose loyalty to Spain was doubtful. Hidalgo´s vision was different. He insisted that only the masses of rural Mexico could provide the muscle to oust Spain from Mexico and effect needed social change. His revolution would come from the bottom up. This divergence of view on the means and ends of the revolt had not been resolved when the rebellion was betrayed and Hidalgo issued his hasty "grito."
Exactly what Hidalgo told the crowd that morning in Dolores isn´t known; no precise record exists. Certainly Hidalgo was a gifted preacher who knew his congregation well. He knew the feudal conditions under which his parishioners lived and he understood the risks they would take to change their lives. Hidalgo didn´t speak of high political principles or in abstract concepts his followers couldn´t understand. His words touched the crowd at the depths of its soul, his oratory provoking and inciting the very roots of the hatred felt by slaves for their masters. The dispossessed, he said, had every right to reclaim what was theirs - land and justice!
Historian T.R. Fehrenbach suggests Hidalgo "spoke apocalyptically, (he) surrounded himself with almost apostolic sanctity, and told a Big Lie, whose very simplicity and whose source made it believable to the ignorant."
Hidalgo offered his followers the sweet wine of Revenge; in return he got his armed host, an instant army. Canon fodder. After 300 years of brutal Spanish colonial rule, of personal humiliation, exploitation and class repression, Hidalgo had pulled the trigger of class war. The "mass" ended with shouts of "Death, death, death to the gachupines!"
Revolution launched, Hidalgo´s "army" -- carrying picks, sticks and machetes -- marched on Guanajuato, where the Spanish garrison was overrun and the town sacked in an orgy of thievery and violence. Few prisoners were taken; Spanish civilians were massacred.
This established a pattern for what was to ensue in the following weeks, as town after town fell to the insurgent army -- now 80,000-strong -- as it advanced on Mexico City. The bloodletting was rampant, as Hidalgo had foreseen, and the looting incessant. Allende, appalled at the anarchy around him, demanded that Hidalgo relinquish command of the rebel force to himself, a trained officer. Hidalgo, who knew nothing of soldiering but who had taken to calling himself "Captain-General of America," refused. As Hidalgo´s treasury grew with every hacienda looted, Allende saw his plans for an Creole-led coup d´état go up in the flames of a peasant revolt now out of control.
Hidalgo´s mob reached the outskirts of Mexico City where, curiously, it halted. The reasons for this are obscure, but it is probable that after witnessing what "freedom" meant to his army, Hidalgo could not bear the moral responsibility for the impending rape of the nation´s capital. After three days waiting, his cold and hungry force began to drift away. Hidalgo retreated with his indifferent and undisciplined army, soon defeated in several engagements against numerically inferior Royalist forces. Towns which had earlier declared for the rebel priest now backed the Crown. The Creole class, looking to the future and seeing the bloody chaos of the past weeks, forgot about "freedom" and embraced the rule of law as represented by the Spanish viceroy.
Hidalgo, Allende and a 1000-man force struck out for sanctuary in the US. All were captured while watering their horses at a well in the northern state of Coahuila. Allende and his junior officers were soon court-martialed and shot through the back as traitors. Hidalgo, being a priest, could only be tried by an ecclesiastical court, which unfrocked and condemned the cleric after a four-month trial. He was handed over to civil authorities and shot on July 30, 1811.
The rebel priest´s fight for freedom had been a political, military and personal disaster, and Hidalgo knew it. Before his execution he wrote:
"Have pity, have pity on me. I see the destruction of the soil that I have wrought, the ruins of the fortunes that have been lost, the infinity of orphans that I have made and...the multitudes of souls that dwell in the abyss because they followed me! I desire and beg that my death...be a convincing plea for the instant cessation of the insurrection."
History touches up the images of all national heroes and Hidalgo has received his share of work. Schoolbook accounts of his role in Mexico´s war of independence stop at the ringing of the bell and the issuing of his grito. Left out are the details of his tragically impetuous and careless leadership, and Hidalgo´s own acknowledgement of failure.
Hidalgo´s plea for an end to the insurrection didn´t work either. Another parish priest named Morelos picked up the pieces of Hidalgo´s war and supplied the sound leadership the campaign desperately needed. A weary Spain finally granted Mexico independence in 1821, a decade after the death of the repentant priest who started it all, Miguel Hidalgo, whose grito sparked a patriotic flame that burns in Mexico still.
October 2001
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