Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla
Miguel Hidalgo began the Mexican war of independence with a shout from a parish pulpit and was shot ten months later. Born in Guanajuato in 1753 to a hacienda manager, he studied at a Jesuit college and took a degree in theology, taught at the College of San Nicolás and became its rector, and was investigated by the Inquisition for questioning clerical celibacy and papal authority. He was moved to the parish of Dolores in 1803, where he lived openly with a partner, had children, and organised the villagers in pottery, tanning, silk and viticulture — occupations Spanish law reserved to the peninsula. The occasion came from Europe. Napoleon deposed the Spanish king in 1808, and creole conspirators in Querétaro planned a rising in the name of Ferdinand VII. The plot was discovered. On the morning of 16 September 1810 Hidalgo rang the church bell at Dolores and addressed the crowd, calling for the overthrow of bad government. The Grito de Dolores is commemorated as the beginning of Mexican independence, and its exact words are not recorded. He raised a force that grew to perhaps eighty thousand, mostly indigenous and mestizo, carrying a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe. It was a mass rising rather than an army: the sack of Guanajuato, in which several hundred Spaniards were killed in a granary, alarmed the creole elite and cost him their support. He abolished slavery and tribute by decree. He declined to attack Mexico City with victory in reach, was defeated at Calderón Bridge, and was captured, defrocked and executed in July 1811.
- Lived: 1753 CE – 1811 CE
- Nationality: Mexican
- Roles: priest, rebel_leader, independence_leader
