Chronicle on the Independence of Mexico

Chronicle on the Independence of Mexico

The long struggle for Mexican independence

The news that came from Europe were alarming. Ferdinand VII had abdicated the throne, under pressure from the invading troops of Bonapartist France, and the insurrection of May 2 had spread throughout the metropolis. All this put Viceroy José de Iturrigaray, who was barely five years old in his office, in a bind. position, and prepared for the acts of swearing and proclamation of the sovereign of Spain and the Indies, as if nothing it will happen.

The viceroy walked on thin ice, and he knew it. The political and economic situation of the viceroyalty was not very good. The echo of the indigenous uprisings of the past decades still vibrated in the air, and the Bourbon reforms had led to the economy colonial to crisis. And now a crack was opening rapidly under their feet: on the one hand, the peninsular Spaniards and the Royal Audience of Mexico defended that everything remained unchanged, since the colony had to be faithful to the true king of Spain, Fernando VII, and not to the usurper placed on the throne by the French; and on the other side, the Creoles and the City Council of Mexico asked for an autonomous government, to alleviate the absence of His Majesty: a Governing Board that would be in effect until the throne returned to the hands of the dynasty Bourbon.

After conferring with his advisers, the viceroy opted for the City Council's plan: a governing board would allow them to discuss the situation between civilians, military and religious, so he summoned it for August 9 and extended the invitation to the municipalities of Xalapa, Puebla and Queretaro. And to his surprise, the Royal Audience of Mexico initially seconded his decision, until on July 28 the news of the general Spanish insurrection and of the formation in the metropolis of government boards in the name of Fernando VII. Then, the Royal Court changed its mind: it was not necessary to make its own decisions, it was enough to abide by what the Seville Board decided.

The meetings were held despite the pronouncements of the Mexican inquisition, which warned against the "heresy" of "the sovereignty of the people" and reminded the people of the divine character of the Kings. Finally the authority of the Junta de Sevilla was unknown and on September 15, 1808 the viceroy's enemies took up arms. The monarch was captured, accused of wanting to turn the viceroyalty into a kingdom of his own and shipped along with his family to Cádiz, where he was tried. In his replacement, Pedro de Garibay was appointed, who gave all power to the Royal Court of Mexico.

The crack turns into a scream

Those measures only bought time: the gulf between the peninsulars and New Hispanics was undeniable. The political situation was so unstable that between 1808 and 1810 there were three different viceroys, the last of whom was the Spanish military man Francisco Xavier Venegas. The latter had barely three days after arriving from Europe, when the so-called “Grito de Dolores” took place: in the town of Dolores, Guanajuato, the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla summoned his congregation and that of the neighboring towns, and harangued them to rise up against the "bad government" of those who wanted to hand over Spain to the French.

It was September 16, 1810, less than a week ago the Querétaro Conspiracy had been discovered, and the insurgents knew they were between a rock and a hard place. It was now or never. So they went to the town's bell tower to light the revolutionary fuse, and in the midst of cheers by Fernando VII and by America, gathered around 600 men who armed with spears and machetes. The War of Independence had begun.

Hidalgo's military campaign

The dimensions of the revolutionary army that, under the command of Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende, undertook the first military campaigns against the viceregal government are unknown. It is known that they had a lot of popular support, but not from the middle and upper classes, in part because Hidalgo had been excommunicated by the Catholic Church and the Viceroy had offered a reward for his head and that of the rest of the leaders insurgents.

The future pro-independence troops grew in number and power, and undertook a military campaign successful, taking cities such as Guadalajara, Guanajuato and Valladolid, before marching towards the Mexico. While his deed was imitated by other insurgent leaders in other regions of the viceroyalty, Hidalgo was named "Captain General of America ”and in Guadalajara he took the first steps towards an autonomous government: he appointed Ignacio López Rayón as Minister of State and José María Chico as Minister of Justice, abolished slavery and sent emissaries to the United States to promote a military alliance and economical.

However, the rebel leadership also had important differences. Allende, who was a career military man, felt that it was up to him, along with Juan Aldama, to lead the insurgent army and not to Hidalgo. In addition, he thought that Hidalgo had forgotten Fernando VII and had become obsessed with the wishes of the plebs, so they often disagreed with the military leadership and the measures of government.

The disaster in Puente de Calderón

On January 17, 1811, the royalist army had prevented the advance of the rebel troops in Guanajuato and was heading to Guadalajara to put an end to the uprising of Hidalgo. The insurgent army, of around 100,000 men, came out to meet the almost 7,000 royalist soldiers commanded by Félix María Calleja and Manuel de Flon, on the Calderón Bridge, about 30 kilometers from the city.

The battle lasted six hours in total, and what at first seemed like an independence victory, turned out to be a real disaster. A realistic grenade in the rebel munitions produced a large and unexpected explosion, and Hidalgo's army, disorganized, demoralized and dispersed, he was annihilated by the more disciplined and prepared royalist soldiers. the fight. The army could not be reorganized in time. The insurgent leaders fled to Aguascalientes and the royalists took the city of Guadalajara, ending the insurgent rule.

This defeat ended up fracturing the rebel command. The rest of the army was under the exclusive command of Allende, who led him north to meet with the forces of José Mariano Jiménez, victorious in the battle of Aguanueva that took place on 7 January. There, in Saltillo, Ignacio López Rayón was appointed the new head of the insurgency and, together with José María Liceaga, led the army to Michoacán to organize a new offensive. Four months after its beginning, the first independence military campaign had come to an end.

Allende, Hidalgo, Aldama and Jiménez marched towards Texas, but were captured by the royalist forces in Coahuila and later taken to Chihuahua. In this city he shot them and their severed heads were sent to the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, in Guanajuato, to serve as a warning to the population.

The second chapter of the war of independence

Under the command of Ignacio López Rayón, the rebellion would not only have to organize militarily, but also provide itself with laws, structure and ideology: the independence forces aspired to build a new society, and that desire was reflected in the composition of his troops: along with creoles, mestizo peasants, black slaves, and even indigenous peoples of different peoples.

However, as time passed, the middle classes were sympathizing with the revolutionary ideas, heirs of European illustration and promoted by intellectuals such as Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi or Carlos María de Bustamante.

Ignacio López Rayón marched south in April 1811, commanding some 3,500 men, heading for Michoacán. Along the way, he defeated the royalists at Puerto Piñones and Zacatecas, but was eventually cornered by the enemy. His attempts to convene a Junta or a Congress of government in the name of Fernando VII, like those of 1808, were rejected by the royalist commander, Félix Calleja, who offered him a pardon in exchange if he resigned from command rebel. López Rayón rejected the offer and escaped to start a guerrilla war.

Meanwhile, the royalist forces faced numerous uprisings in San Luis de Potosí, Colima, Jalisco and other regions, especially in the south of the country. There, the priest José María Morelos, commissioned in 1810 by Hidalgo himself to urge the insurgency in the region, had organized a army of about 6,000 men, highly disciplined and equipped, and had scored important victories against the royalists in different populations of the state of Guerrero.

The feat of Morelos

Morelos also participated, along with López Rayón, in the convocation of the Junta de Zitácuaro, also called the Supreme National American Board, on August 19, 1811. This was a new attempt to form a Mexican government independent of the metropolis, although at the beginning of 1812 the The royalist army took the city of Zitácuaro, in Michoacán, forcing the Junta to relocate to Sultepec, State of Mexico. There she survived until 1813, when she was replaced by the Congress of Anáhuac, summoned by Morelos in Chilpancingo.

At the beginning of 1812, there was also the Siege of Cuautla, in the current Mexican state of Morelos, where Félix Calleja besieged the Morelos forces for 73 days. The battle culminated in the escape of the independentistas in the middle of the morning. Morelos led his forces to the east of the country to reorganize and at the end of the year they were in combat again: on November 25 they successfully took the city of Oaxaca and constituted an insurgent government that lasted until 1814; and in 1813, they captured Acapulco, adding an important port to the independence cause.

That same year, in the city of Chilpancingo, Morelos summoned the rebel leaders to the Congress of Anahuac to try to put an end to the disputes and discrepancies in command. López Rayón, José Sixto Verduzco, José María Liceaga, Andrés Quintana Roo, Carlos María de Busdamente and Morelos himself, among others, attended as deputies. There, the independence of the nation, popular sovereignty and the foundations of a new State were declared for the first time, by command of whose military forces was Morelos himself, generalissimo of the insurgent forces and holder of power Executive.

The return to the throne of Fernando VII

At the beginning of 1814, Ferdinand VII returned to the throne of Spain, in the midst of a climate of absolutist restoration, that is, suddenly undoing the changes and new rules that the Cortes of Cádiz had established in Spain in his absence. This also brought changes in New Spain, whose new viceroy was Felix Calleja himself. The Inquisition was also restored and contempt for royal mandates was punished with severe penalties.

The independence leaders, faced with this new panorama, committed themselves more than ever to the armed struggle, and in October 1814 the Congress of Anáhuac proclaimed the Constitution of Apatzingán, which established an order republican. The executive power would be held by Morelos, Liceaga and José María Cos, while the leadership of the army, in its new campaign to recover Oaxaca, was given to Vicente Guerrero. At the same time, the independentistas hoped to have the recognition and help of the United States.

The royalist forces also had a new push. In 1815 the military chief Agustín de Iturbide and Ciriaco del Llano joined forces to end the Congress of Anahuac, using the military reinforcements sent from Spain. The Congress of Anahuac, then, facing numerous internal tensions, undertook the move to the city ​​of Tehuacán, but on the way they were intercepted by the enemy, leading to the battle of Temalaca.

The congressmen managed to escape, but Morelos was not so lucky: he was captured and taken to Mexico City, where the Inquisition declared him "negative formal heretic, author of heretics, persecutor and disturber of the holy sacraments, schismatic, lewd, hypocritical, irreconcilable enemy of Christianity, traitor to God, the King and the Pope 'before he was shot in Ecatepec.

The Viceroyalty Strikes Back

Deprived of the command of Morelos, the independence forces fought a scattered, uncoordinated war of resistance. The Congress of Anahuac had been dissolved in 1814 and the royalist forces enjoyed an advantage in the conflict, despite the help and incorporation to the independence side of numerous Spanish troops opposed to the absolutism of Fernando VII, such as those of Francisco Xavier Mena.

For their part, the royalist forces received a new Viceroy appointed by Fernando VII: Juan José Ruiz de Apodaca, who proposed to pacify the viceroyalty to through more humanitarian means, such as the granting of pardons, the prohibition of the execution of captured insurgents and a climate of greater benevolence politics. Several independence leaders, such as José María Vargas and Fermín Urtiz, took advantage of these benefits and handed over their troops and positions to the royalists.

In 1816 the independentistas tried to form two new Government Boards: the Board of Jaujilla and the Board of Urapán, neither with much success. and in 1818 a third attempt under the protection of Vicente Guerrero in the Hacienda de las Balsas: the Junta del Balsas, or Superior Republican Government. This body appointed Guerrero as the new head of the insurgent military forces, which allowed them sufficient authority to recruit and reorganize his forces, with which he was able to defeat the royalist general Gabriel de Armijo in the battle of El Tamo and undertake the reconquest of the region of Tierra Caliente.

The fourth stage and the Iguala Plan

Ten years of struggle in New Spain in 1820 cost almost a million people their lives, one sixth of the total population of the old viceroyalty. The Spanish State was bankrupt and was trying to get afloat by squeezing its colonies more strongly remaining Americans, since the war of independence had been cruel and extensive throughout the continent American.

In this context, an anti-absolutist Revolution took place in Spain, which led to the so-called “Liberal Triennium” and to the restoration of the Constitution of Cádiz. This was translated into new measures of change in the viceroyalty, which affected the interests of the conservative elites and aroused in them, paradoxically, a desire for sovereignty. Thus was born, around the figure of the military Agustín de Iturbide, the Conspiracy of the Profesa, an attempt to return to Fernando VII his absolutist role.

And since the fighting in the south was far from over, Iturbide marched to confront Vicente Guerrero and other insurgent military leaders. It soon became clear to him that beating them on his turf was going to be a long and bloody job, so Iturbide changed his strategy: he wrote to Guerrero wrote a letter on January 10, 1821, to offer him a pardon, and explained that the independentistas captured in Mexico City had been put in Liberty and that many of the aspirations of the revolutionary troops were being politically requested in Spain, by New Spain deputies. Finally, he invited her to sign a peace pact and seek common ground.

The caudillos met on February 10, 1821 in Acatempan and, according to what is said, they talked, negotiated and hugged each other. Guerrero's troops were placed under the command of Iturbide himself, who announced, on the following February 24, his "Plan of Iguala": a document in which he declared an independent, sovereign New Spain, at the head of which would be Fernando VII or one of the members of the Spanish crown, and in which guaranteed the religion, independence and the union of social classes.

Iturbide sent letters to Spain and to Viceroy Apodaca himself, hoping to have help for the construction of the new State through a Governing Board, but the answer he received was very different from what was expected: the viceroy opposed the Plan of Iguala, declared Iturbide outside the protection of the law and ordered the formation of the Army of the South of 5,000 men to march in his against.

The last stage of the Mexican War of Independence, then, had as rivals the Trigarante Army of Iturbide and the Army of the South of the royalists. The new flag of the Plan of Iguala unified numerous insurgents under the same national project and thus, throughout the year 1821, the independence troops assaulted the cities under control one by one realistic.

At the beginning of April, the independence forces liberated Guanajuato and, by order of Anastasio Bustamante, The skulls of Hidalgo, Allende, Aldama and Jiménez were taken down from the alhóndiga de Granaditas, to give them due grave.

By August 3, all of New Spain (except for Mexico City, Veracruz, Durango, Chihuahua, Acapulco, and the San Carlos de Perote Fortress) had been liberated from Spanish rule. And on August 24, in the city of Córdoba, Veracruz, the viceroyalty was declared lost. Iturbide signed the Treaties of Córdoba with the superior political leader of the Province of New Spain, Juan O'Donojú, agreeing on Mexican independence and the withdrawal of Spanish troops. This document was not recognized by Spain until 1836.

On September 5, Iturbide's army surrounded Mexico City and had its headquarters in Azcapotzalco. On the 28th of the same month, the Provisional Government Board swore in the Plan of Iguala and the Treaties of Córdoba, and signed the act of independence from the Mexican Empire. After ten long years of struggle, Mexico was beginning the first chapter of its independent history.

References:

• "Independence of Mexico" in Wikipedia.
• "209 anniversary of the beginning of the Independence of Mexico" in the Government of Mexico.
• "Mexico's independence. The most relevant of the struggle that began on September 16, 1810 ”in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
• "Mexican War of Independence begins" in History.com.
• "Mexico" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

What is a chronicle?

A chronicle it's a kind of narrative text in which real or fictional events are addressed from a chronological perspective. They are often narrated by eyewitnesses, through a personal language that uses literary resources. Usually considered as a hybrid genre between journalism, history and the literature, the chronicle may cover types of narration very different, such as the travel chronicle, the chronicle of events, the gastronomic chronicle, and so on.

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