Mexican Independence
Mexican independence was completed on 27 September 1821, when Agustín de Iturbide entered Mexico City at the head of the Army of the Three Guarantees — having spent the previous decade fighting the independence movement he now led. The war had begun in September 1810, when the priest Miguel Hidalgo rang his church bell at Dolores and raised an army of indigenous and mestizo villagers under the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe. It was a social revolt as much as a national one, and its violence terrified the creole elite into supporting the crown. Hidalgo was executed in 1811, his successor José María Morelos in 1815, and by 1820 the insurgency was reduced to Vicente Guerrero's guerrillas in the southern mountains. What changed was Spain. The liberal revolution of 1820 forced Ferdinand VII to restore the 1812 constitution, with its anticlericalism and its restrictions on privilege — and the Mexican elite, which had backed Spain against Hidalgo, now concluded that independence was the safer option. Iturbide, sent to destroy Guerrero, negotiated with him instead. The Plan of Iguala of February 1821 offered three guarantees: independence, the supremacy of the Catholic religion, and equality between Spaniards and Americans. It united both sides, and the viceroy signed the Treaty of Córdoba in August. Iturbide had himself proclaimed emperor in 1822 and was overthrown within a year. The revolution that began as a rising of the poor ended as a settlement among the rich, and the land question stayed open until 1910. The country then lost half its territory to the United States within twenty-five years.
- Year: 1821 CE
- Category: Political
