Miguel Hidalgo
Don
Miguel Hidalgo, in full
Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla Mandarte Villaseñor y Lomelí (
8 May 1753 –
30 July 1811) also known as
Cura Hidalgo (Priest Hidalgo), was the chief instigator of
Mexico's war of independence against
Spain.
Don Miguel Hidalgo was a
criollo (Mexican of solely Spanish ancestry, that is no native or African ancestors), and the parish priest of Dolores, now called
Dolores Hidalgo, a small town in the modern-day central Mexican state of
Guanajuato. His father and mother were respectively Cristóbal Hidalgo y Costilla and Ana Maria Gallaga. Hidalgo was a keen reader of banned French literature and was an avid nonconformist. He learned several indigenous languages and openly defied many aspects of Catholic rule including that of sexual abstinence for the clergy. In the mining/farming region of central Mexico Miguel Hidalgo and other Creoles of high society started conspiring for a considerable uprising of
mestizos and indigenous
peasants.
Alerted by Doña
Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez ("La Corregidora") that his revolutionary plot had been discovered and that he would soon be arrested for his conspiring, he brought his plans forward and, with the
Grito de Dolores delivered in religious language and from the belfry of his defence against the usurpers of authority and the enemies of
Fernando VII. Doing this Hidalgo started the great revolt of 1810. His battle cry was: "Long live the
Virgin of Guadalupe, and Death to the Spaniards!"In less than a year he was at the gates of Mexico City, with an army big enough to capture it. For reasons that have puzzled historians, he retreated. Some analysts point out that he feared he could not control the mob once they have taken the city, which while ungarded, was to receive reinforcements soon. Nevertheless, his star diminished from then on and Hidalgo himself was captured some time later, forced publicly to repent, and then was executed for his crimes. Hidalgo is remembered even today as the great liberator of Mexico and the
Father of the Nation.
He was apprehended in a battle along with other leaders of the revolution, among them
Ignacio Allende,
José Mariano Jiménez and
Juan Aldama. The four leaders were executed in Chihuahua, three of them on
June 26,
1811 and Miguel Hidalgo on
July 30,
1811. Miguel Hidalgo was executed later because he was the main leader and because they had a bit of trouble executing a clergyman, so they had to excommunicate him first. Even then, there are accounts of his having been shot several times because of the firing squad missing or not injuring him enough to kill him outright. The four leaders were decapitated and their heads were put in the four corners of the
Alhóndiga de Granaditas in Guanajuato as a way to scare of the revolution.
An important fact thas has been actually in conflict was the real birthplace of this person. Because he born in the Corralejo Hacienda when this was asigned to the Zamora Michocacan district, so there was a conflict between Michoacan and Guanajuato to define which was the original birthplace.
No genuine portrait of him survives to this day. The available paintings of him are reconstructions hoe he looked like by people who knew him. He is said to have a twin brother, after whom some reproductions were made, but this is subject to speculation.
