ABSTRACT
On September 16, 1810, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a liberal parish priest from Dolores in the intendancy of Guanajuato, initiated Mexico’s earliest insurgency with his Grito—a cry for independence from the exploitation of colonial rule. Economic grievances and social discrimination prompted the masses to join Hidalgo’s movement, but these concerns varied widely from those of wealthier criollos, who sought principally to usurp the political and financial privileges over which peninsulares maintained a monopoly. Lucas Alaman, a criollo from a titled family, witnessed Miguel Hidalgo leading his army of the poor to sack Alaman’s native city of Guanajuato. As is further illuminated in “Mexico in Postwar Social Turmoil”, this statesman and historian would work throughout his life for a less radical road to Mexican independence. Miguel Hidalgo’s army was defeated, and he himself had been captured and beheaded by royalist forces.
