Miguel Hidalgo

Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla Gallaga Mondarte Villaseñor (May 8, 1753 – July 30, 1811), also known as Cura Hidalgo ("Priest Hidalgo"), was a Mexican priest and revolutionary rebel leader. He is regarded as the founder of the Mexican War of Independence movement; who fought for independence against Spain in the early nineteenth century. The state of Hidalgo in Mexico is named after him. Hidalgo had a passionate commitment to freedom for his people but also for social justice, hoping that the post-independence society would be much more egalitarian than the colonial reality. He took practical steps to improve the economic conditions of the poor, turning his own house into a night school for local artisans. He started a pottery factory, ran a leather curing process, grew mulberry trees for the nourishment of silkworms, cultivated vineyards and olive groves, and established workshops for carpentry, harness making, blacksmithing and weaving wool. These activities themselves attracted the hostility of the Spanish authorities. He also worked to improve the conditions of Mexico's indigenous peoples, whose rights would hardly change at all after independence.

Unfortunately, the Revolution did not result in radical changes in the Mexican economy, which continued to be dominated by ten percent of the population and power would reside in the hands of an elite, not with the majority of the population. Although he saw himself more as a general than as a priest, and broke his vows of celibacy, he did not engage in violence for the sake of violence but for the sole purpose of throwing off tyranny. Indians and those of mixed descent were among his strongest supporters and as long as he was leading the revolt it represented a rising up of the underclass against the privileged and powerful. Sadly, he was caught and shot as a rebel.

Background

Hidalgo was born on the Corralejo hacienda near Pénjamo, Guanajuato, on May 8, 1753. He was born into a middle-class criollo family (historically, any Mexican of unmixed Spanish ancestry). Growing up in a hacienda, where his father Cristóbal Hidalgo y Costilla was employed as a superintendent, Hidalgo developed an early sympathy for the unskilled Indian workers. His mother, Ana María Gallaga y Villaseñor, married Cristóbal on August 5, 1750; Miguel was their second of five sons. Miguel was reportedly a keen reader of banned French literature and an avid nonconformist. Though he trained as a priest, he retained an interest in political and social questions, which he carried with him to his first parish in the town of Dolores, now called Dolores Hidalgo, in the modern-day central Mexican state of Guanajuato. He learned several indigenous languages, wrote texts in the Aztec language and organized the local communities in Michoacan.[1] Sent to the Colegio San Nicolás in Valladolid, Hidalgo received his bachelor's

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