The Father of Mexican Independence in Dolores Hidalgo

It wasn't to take place for another 25 days. That was the plan anyway. Something had happened. They weren't to take action until December 8^th but a spy came on the 13^th of September to inform them that they had been betrayed. Their hand was forced because the plan was uncovered. They had to act sooner than they though if not right now.

More bad news was that their co-conspirator, Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez, wife of the magistrate in the city of Querétaro, had been found out and locked up by her husband to keep her from alerting the rebels. It was Doña Josefa's home that served as a meeting place, in Querétaro, for the planning of the insurgency. She greatly sympathized with the plight of the indigenous people and those people of Spanish descent born in New Spain-the crillos-all of which were seen as second class citizens.

Alerting the rebels, Doña Josefa managed to do through fellow co-conspirator, Mayor Don Ignacio Pérez. This gave the planners of the Mexican War of Independence a chance to flee Querétaro and to the side of Miguel Hidalgo, one of the leading planners of the rebellion, in the city of Dolores.

Rebellion was nothing foreign to Miguel Hidalgo. He was a rebel in the church which ordained him as a priest. He not only cast doubts on some of the most precious and foundational doctrines of Christianity, he also thought it morally appropriate to father children out of wedlock and in spite of his priestly vow of chastity. He tended to regard his office of a church priest, according to some, as an office or position that requires little or no work and that usually provides an income. He was pragmatic if nothing else.

Being alerted at 5am on the morning of the 13^th of September, 1810, that the rebel's plans were known and his arrest was imminent, he accelerated his plans. On the 15^th of September, around mid-night, of that same year, Miguel Hidalgo rang the church bell, the church in which I am now sitting in front of, to gather his congregation to begin the war for Mexico's independence.

Hidalgo's army was really a band of thugs intent on revenge against the Spanish harsh and dreadfully cruel rule. He seemed to gather more for the cause as they went marching into towns. By the time they had entered San Miguel de Allende they were several hundred strong. When they captured Celaya they had about 6,000. When they went into Guanajuato to fight the battle at the Alhóndiga they had 20,000 at the leader's command. There were 50,000 of them when they took Valladolid, and 82,000 at Toluca.

The unfortunate mess resulting from the fact that Miguel Hidalgo was not only a bad priest but a bad military leader, was the murder of innocent citizens in these towns not responsible for atrocities against the indigenous and or the crillos. It was a slaughter and ransacking of the towns which brought a feud between Hidalgo and his co-commander, Allende.

Both would later be captured, executed, and beheaded. The heads of four of the rebels, presumably just the leaders, Miguel Hidalgo, Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama, and José Mariano Jiménez would hang on hooks outside Guanajuato's famous granary, The Alhóndiga, for ten years as a lesson to the rebels. It only served to keep the rebellion alive eventually resulting in the Independence of Mexico.

And, I was sitting in front of the church where the call to arms began trying to imagine which of the accounts were true. Did Hidalgo stand on the steps of the church or from its sanctuary's pulpit to utter the famous Grito de Dolores in the early hours of September 16, an event that signaled the start of the Mexican War of Independence. No matter which, this is where it began, the birth of this nation, and I cannot deny a chill or two has been running up and down my spine all morning sitting here trying to imagine what it was like to hear it.