Hidalgo, Miguel

Hidalgo (y Costilla), Miguel

(born May 8, 1753, near Pénjamo, Guanajuato, Mex.—died July 30, 1811, Chihuahua) Mexican priest, called the father of Mexican independence. Ordained in 1789, he had an uneventful early career. In the town of Dolores (now Dolores Hidalgo), he joined a group plotting independence from Spain in the light of Napoleon's invasion of that country. On Sept. 16, 1810, when his group was betrayed, he rang the church bell and addressed his parishioners with his Grito de Dolores (“Cry of Dolores”), calling them to revolution. Thousands of Indians and mestizos joined him, and he succeeded in capturing Guanajuato and other cities in the region before reaching Mexico City, where his hesitation led to their defeat and his execution. The martyred Hidalgo became a potent symbol of the independence movement that eventually succeeded, and each September 16—now celebrated as Mexico's Independence Day—the president shouts a version of the Grito de Dolores from the National Palace balcony.

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Hidalgo, Miguel 

(Hidalgo y Costilla). Born May 8, 1753, in Corralejos, in the state of Guanajuato; died July 30, 1811, in Chihuahua, in the state of Chihuahua. National hero of Mexico. Leader of the popular uprising of 1810–1811, which developed into a war for Mexican independence from Spain.

Hidalgo graduated from a seminary in Valladolid (now Mo-relia), where he subsequently was a teacher and, later, rector. Reduced to being a parish priest for disseminating the ideas of the French Encyclopedists, he continued to speak out for the country’s independence and for the improvement of the economic and legal position of the Indian population. On Sept. 16, 1810, in the city of Dolores, Hidalgo called on the people to rise up in a war of liberation (the grito de Dolores, “the cry of Dolores”), and at the head of a revolutionary army consisting primarily of Indian peasants, mine workers, and peons, he defied the Spanish. In November, a government headed by Hidalgo was created in the city of Guadalajara. It proclaimed the abolition of slavery and promulgated laws returning communal lands to the Indians and lowering taxes. The revolutionary army suffered defeat in January 1811. In March of that year, Hidalgo was taken prisoner, handed over to a court, and shot.

REFERENCES

Al’perovich, M. S. Voina za nezavisimost’ Meksiki (1810–1824). Moscow, 1964.
Mancisidor, J. Hidalgo, Morelos, Guerrero[2nd ed.]. Mexico City, 1970.

G. I. IVANOV