Story about Mexican Independence

Story about Mexican Independence

A cry for freedom and independence

It was still early morning when priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, accompanied by the military Ignacio Allende and Juan Aldama, he climbed to the heights of the parish of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores and rang the bells to summon the parishioners.

It was September 16, 1810 and the message he had to give was no longer religious but political and social: Hidalgo was going to summon his people to rise up in arms against the government. of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, whom he accused of having betrayed Hispanic values ​​and responding to the orders of the French, who after invading Spain had removed Fernando from the throne VII. And at that moment, without Hidalgo himself knowing it, the long struggle for Mexican independence began.

This event, known today as “the cry of Dolores”, was nevertheless the tip of a revolutionary iceberg. In Santiago de Querétaro, that same year, at the home of the city's mayor, José Miguel Domínguez, a handful of conspirators: Ignacio Allende, Mariano Abasolo, José Mariano Michelena, José María García Obeso, Juan Aldama, the priest Miguel Hidalgo himself and Costilla, and other lawyers, merchants and soldiers unhappy with the events that took place in the European metropolis as a result of the Napoleonic invasions. His purpose, hidden behind the excuse of meeting to talk about

literatureIt was to form a Governing Board that would take power on behalf of Fernando VII, king deposed by the French, as was happening in different regions of Spain.

To achieve their plans, the protagonists of what later became known as "the Conspiracy of Querétaro" planned to take up arms during the coming month of October 1810 and depose government officials viceregal. To that end they accumulated swords, spears, and ammunition in the city, as well as in San Miguel el Grande and in the town of Dolores itself. But on September 12, they were discovered and denounced by the postal worker José Mariano Galván, and some of the conspirators, convinced that they were lost, voluntarily surrendered and asked clemency.

As the government raided many of their hiding places, the revolutionaries realized that they were between a rock and a hard place. There would be no time for second chances. Juan Aldama moved to Dolores, met with Allende and Hidalgo, and under the motto of "Long live America and die the bad government! ”, and others like it, lit the fuse of a war of independence that would last more than 10 years.

The outbreak of war and the Hidalgo campaign

The first of the independence fronts arose in the city of Dolores, where the volunteers of the populations neighbors, under the command of the priest Hidalgo himself. The number of troops in this initial army is unknown, but we do know that they marched under the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and that it was largely composed of of peasants, miners and merchants from the lower classes, poorly trained and poorly disciplined despite the fact that they were led by career military men, such as Allende and Aldama. This made the middle classes look at them with distrust and they were slow to join a struggle that, in the end, was also theirs.

Under the command of Hidalgo, proclaimed "Captain of America", the rebel army seized Salamanca, Irapuato and Silao and grew in strength and confidence. After Guanajuato, he defeated the viceregal troops that had taken refuge in the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, the The most resistant building in the city and a site that would have a special significance in the war of independence.

In response to these attacks, the viceroy offered a bounty on the insurgents' head, while the church excommunicated Hidalgo and accused the movement of being heretical, anti-monarchical, anti-Catholic.

But the army continued to grow until it reached 60,000 men and approached Valladolid, a city defended by Agustín Iturbide and a small military contingent. This soldier, whose role in independence would be decisive many years later, rejected the offer to join the rebellion and fled the city, leaving the rebel army to take it peacefully.

Named "Generalissimo of America" ​​and "Captain General", respectively, Hidalgo and Allende led their army to the Valley of Mexico and wanted to negotiate the surrender of the viceroy. But they received a refusal and were later attacked by Félix María Calleja in Aculco, on the outskirts of Mexico City, where they suffered the first of their defeats.

Then there was a critical division in the rebel ranks: while Hidalgo decided to return to Valladolid, Allende wanted to march to Guanajuato. The leaders had already had numerous disputes regarding the leadership of the troops, and the career soldiers were not very satisfied following a priest. This division brought with it numerous defections and marked a turning point in the campaign.

In Guanajuato, Allende was defeated and had to flee to San Luis Potosí, where he met with Aldama and later with Hidalgo. The latter, meanwhile, was trying to form an autonomous government in Guanajuato that abolished slavery and had Ignacio López Rayón as Minister of State. However, the royalist army, commanded by Calleja, was already marching in pursuit of the city, which it ended up capturing towards the end of 1810.

Hidalgo, Aldama, and Allende then decided that they should march north, to unite the northern provinces of the viceroyalty to the cause and to forge an alliance with the United States. The insurgent troops, now led by Ignacio López Rayón, left for Michoacán, where the second independence campaign would begin.

Instead, the rebel leaders marched on Coahuila and were captured there on March 21, 1811. They were taken to Chihuahua and there they were shot, their heads separated from the body and sent to Guanajuato, where they were hung as a reminder in the Granaditas alhóndiga. Hidalgo's campaign had this tragic outcome.

The second campaign and the site of Cuautla

But not all is lost. Under the command of López Rayón, the independence army marched south, to meet other insurgent fronts that had sprung up spontaneously. The main one was the rebel army led by José María Morelos, who at the beginning of 1811 undertook the liberation campaign in southern Mexico. But we'll talk about him later.

López Rayón had not only inherited from the priest Hidalgo the remnant of the independence army (barely 3,500 men and forced to wage guerrilla warfare) but the commitment to form a new Condition. During 1811 he devoted important efforts to founding a Governing Board. His first success was on August 19, with the Junta de Zitácuaro, a Supreme American National Junta that had to organize the rebels and spread their ideas through the newspaper. The American Illustrator.

The problem was that, throughout 1811 and the first days of 1812, the royalist forces commanded by Calleja They tirelessly besieged the rebels and eventually expelled the members of the Junta de Government. That was a costly defeat for the independence army.

But in the south, the picture was different. Morelos had successfully completed his first campaign, conquering Tlapa, Izúcar, Cuautla and Chiautla, and although not He had been able to attend the Zitácuaro Board in person, had sent delegates and had expressed his support for López Rayon.

When the Government Junta fell in Zitácuaro, he escaped to Toluca and then again to Tenancingo, and Morelos was summoned to defend her, which he did despite having just recovered from the tuberculosis. In the latter town he defeated the royalists, then regrouped his forces in Cuernavaca and established his base of operations in Cuautla.

While Morelos was thinking about how to take Mexico City, Calleja again undertook the offensive. The rebel troops withstood a first attack in Cuautla on February 9, 1812, but were prey to a long and cruel siege in the city, surrounded by enemy troops who cut off their access to water and the food. When the situation became completely untenable, in one of the first days of May, the Morelos troops left Cuautla at dawn and left it in Calleja's possession.

Back then, the royalist army seemed unstoppable. Calleja was received with honors in Mexico City and offered the general command of the city. Although he did not know it at the time, some years later he would become viceroy.

The third and fourth campaigns, and the Congress of Anáhuac

Morelos regrouped his army and began the march to the south of the viceroyalty, while the Supreme American National Board tried to establish a lasting order between the different pro-independence factions, with López Rayón in the center of the territory (settled in Michoacán), José María Liceaga in the north (San Luis Potosí) and Morelos in the south (in charge of the current Guerrero, Oaxaca, Morelos, Puebla).

In November 1812, the Morelos troops had succeeded in capturing Oaxaca, where the Junta Nacional Gubernativa was sworn in. and after a month and a half of stay, he set out on the road to Acapulco, a city that he had failed to capture during his first Bell. His siege to Castillo de San Diego began in April 1813 and lasted four months.

That same year, in the midst of a climate of tension and little understanding among the rebel leaders, Morelos took command of the independence forces and It was proposed to reform the National Board, thus opening the way to the Congress of Anahuac, which was held on September 13, 1813 in the city of Chilpancingo.

This was a central point in the independence history. The Congress of Anáhuac not only brought together the independence forces and formalized the command of Morelos under the self-imposed title of "Servant of the Nation", but also declared the 6th November the independence of North America and began the drafting of its own constitution, inspired by that of Cádiz, that of the United States and the French of 1791. Once the congress was over, the independence forces once again prepared for war, but this time with a different spirit. They could already consider themselves an independent nation.

The last campaign of Morelos

The fifth independence campaign began with the attack on Valladolid, where a realistic army, recently reformulated by now Viceroy Calleja and led by Iturbide, managed to repel the attack and capture one of Morelos's lieutenants, Mariano Matamoros.

The Battle of the Lomas de Santa María culminated in defeat for Morelos and marked the beginning of the end of his military leadership. In addition, his disagreements with López Rayón had not ceased, but had an echo among the other leaders revolutionaries, and there were even clashes between López Rayón and Juan Nepomuceno Rosáins, the second command of Morelos.

On June 15, 1814, the Congress of Anahuac completed the drafting of the Constitutional Decree for the Freedom of America Latina, better known as the Constitution of Apatzingán, and the executive power fell into the hands of Morelos, Liceaga and José Maria Cos. Vicente Guerrero was also elected to resume the campaign in Oaxaca, but the resistance to authority in many cases was such that many pro-independence leaders did not recognize their replacements, or shot them with some excuse to remain in command, and the climate of internal conflict was constant. The men-at-arms and the men of the law could not understand each other.

The royalists, for their part, received reinforcements from the Spanish metropolis, since Ferdinand VII had returned to the throne in Europe and absolutism had been reinstated. His military leaders, Iturbide and Ciriaco del Llano, joined forces to hunt down the Congress of Anahuac, in Michoacán. The latter, recognizing the danger in which he found himself, decided to move to Tehuacán.

On the way he was intercepted by the royalists and had to be defended in the Battle of Temalaca by the troops under the command of José María Lobato, congressional escort, and by Morelos themselves and his son Nicolás Bravo. The congressmen managed to flee, but Morelos was captured by the royalists and taken to Mexico City. On December 22, 1815, he was shot in Ecatepec.

The tiger of the south

Between 1815 and 1820, the independence forces fought a dispersed, uncoordinated guerrilla war in crushing conditions of numerical inferiority to the royalists. The dispersion of the Congress of Anahuac had left power in the hands of a Subaltern Board of Government, which was established in Taretan, and this was succeeded by the Junta de Jaujilla, which did not even have the full recognition of the forces independentists. Sovereignty seemed more distant than ever.

In 1816 the last of the Spanish viceroys was named: Juan José Ruiz de Apocada, who replaced the ferocity of the fight de Callejas for a more lax policy and willing to forgive, which offered the insurgents forgiveness if they renounced the weapons. Many of them, frustrated after 6 years of endless struggle, accepted this promise and abandoned the independence project.

Among them was not Vicente Guerrero, who had served under the command of Morelos since 1811 and preferred to remain on the fighting foot. But in 1818, there were not many independence bodies that could recognize his leadership: the Junta de Jaujilla fell to the forces royalists in March of that year and, although its surviving members created the Junta de Zárate with the intention of keeping the Constitution of Apatzingán, did not have the full recognition of the independence army and on June 10 it was captured and dissolved by the realists.

Guerrero welcomed the remains of the Governing Board at the Las Balsas ranch, and there a new foundation arose: the Superior Republican Government was born. One of his first measures was to grant Guerrero the maximum authority of the independence troops, under the title of General in Chief of the Army of the South. And with that new authority, and with the endorsement of his years of struggle, Guerrero set out to reorganize the army and turn the tables.

An unexpected pact and finally independence

The year 1820 began in the midst of new counterinsurgent campaigns against Vicente Guerrero. The war promised to last a thousand more years. However, in Spain the winds of change were blowing stronger: opposition to absolutism had been such that Ferdinand VII had to submit to the authority of a liberal constitution. A news that was not well received by the royalist forces in Mexico.

Thus was born the Conspiracy of La Profesa, with the aim of preventing the viceroy from complying with the liberal reforms and the new Spanish Constitution. A wave of changes swept through Mexico City, and previously imprisoned insurgents, such as Nicolás Bravo or Ignacio López Rayón, were put into action. Liberty in August 1820, and in November of the same year, Iturbide was appointed as José Gabriel Armijo's replacement in command of the forces that were pursuing Guerrero. The plan, however, was no longer to end the insurgency, but to join it for a new common cause.

Iturbide then addressed Guerrero through a set of letters, trying to get him to accept the pardon offered by the viceroy. And in the face of Guerrero's refusal, and contrary to what anyone would have expected, Iturbide proposed a different plan and asked him to meet face to face to talk about it. On an uncertain date the meeting took place: under the protection of their armies, the leaders greeted each other with a hug, since they had already agreed on what was to come.

On February 24, 1821, Iturbide announced the Plan of Iguala. Guerrero's forces came under his command and under the guarantees of union, religion and independence, two military rivals of yesteryear undertook a new common goal: to defeat the viceroy and establish a free, sovereign homeland, although faithful to the monarch Fernando VII.

Thus was born the Trigarante Army, under the command of Iturbide himself, which was soon joined by the other pro-independence factions, and even the leaders who had laid down their arms. And without there being a military force at the level of this new independence army, on August 24, 1821, the forces royalists signed the Treaties of Córdoba, recognizing the sovereignty of a new independent state: the First Empire Mexican.

Independence, at last, was a fait accompli.

References:

• "Narration" in Wikipedia.
• "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.

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