The Mexican War of Independence (Spanish: Guerra de Independencia de México, 16 September 1810 – 27 September 1821) was an armed conflict and political movement that eventually resulted in Mexico's independence from the Spanish Empire. It was not a single, coherent event, but local and regional struggles that occurred within the same period, and can be considered a revolutionary civil war. It culminated with the drafting of the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire in Mexico City on September 28, 1821, following the collapse of royal government and the military triumph of forces for independence.
Mexican independence from Spain was not an inevitable outcome of the relationship between the Spanish Empire and its Mexican Criollos, but events in Spain had a direct impact on the outbreak of the armed insurgency in 1810 and the course of warfare through the end of the conflict. Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Spain in 1808 touched off a crisis of legitimacy of Spanish crown rule, since Napoleon had forcefully placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne after the abdication of the Spanish king Charles IV. In Spain and many of its overseas possessions, the local response was to set up juntas, ruling in the name of the Bourbon monarchy. Delegates in Spain and overseas territories met in Cádiz—as the Cortes of Cádiz, and drafted the Spanish Constitution of 1812. That constitution sought to create a new governing framework in the absence of the legitimate Spanish monarch. It tried to accommodate the aspirations of American-born Spaniards (criollos) for more local control and equal standing among side with Peninsular-born Spaniards (Peninsulares). This political process had far-reaching impacts throughout the New Spain colony during the independence war and beyond. Pre-existing cultural, religious, and racial divides in Mexico played a major role in not only the development of the independence movement but also the development of the conflict as it progressed.
The conflict had several phases. The first uprising for independence was originally led by Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, who issued the Cry of Dolores on 16 September 1810. The revolt was massive and not well organized. Hidalgo was captured by Mexican royalist forces, defrocked from the priesthood, and executed in July 1811. The second phase of the Mexican patriot insurgency was led by Father José María Morelos, who was captured by Mexican royalist forces and executed as well, in December 1815. The insurgency had then devolved into a guerrilla warfare, with Vicente Guerrero emerging as its leader. Neither royalists nor patriot insurgents gained the upper hand, with military stalemate continuing until 1821, when former royalist commander Agustín de Iturbide made an alliance with Guerrero under the Plan of Iguala in 1821. They formed a unified military force rapidly bringing about the collapse of royal government and the establishment of independent Mexico. The unexpected turn of events in Mexico was prompted by events in Spain. When Spanish liberals overthrew the autocratic rule of king Ferdinand VII in 1820, Mexican conservatives in New Spain saw political independence as a way to maintain their position. The unified military force entered Mexico City in triumph in September 1821 and the Spanish viceroy Juan O'Donojú signed the Treaty of Córdoba, ending Spanish colonial rule.
American Indian resistance in Mexico predates the War of Independence, including the 1761 Peasant Revolt in Puebla in response to Spanish colonial policies. Though suppressed, these movements had sustained opposition traditions. Besides, Afro-Mexicans like Vicente Guerrero and José María Morelos also played crucial roles in Mexico's independence movement in the early 19th century.
Following independence, the mainland of New Spain was officially organized into the First Mexican Empire, led by Emperor Agustín de Iturbide. This ephemeral constitutional monarchy was overthrown and a federal republic was declared in 1823 and codified in the Constitution of 1824. After some Spanish reconquest attempts, including the expedition of Isidro Barradas in 1829, Spain eventually came under the rule of queen Isabella II, who had recognized the independence of Mexico in 1836.
Prior challenges to crown rule
There is evidence that even from an early period in post-conquest Mexican history, some began articulating the idea of a separate Mexican identity, though at the time this would have occurred only among elite Creole circles. Despite these murmurings of independence, serious challenges to Spanish imperial power before 1810 were rare and relatively isolated.
One early challenge to Spanish crown authority came after the introduction of the New Laws in 1542 by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Under these laws, the grants of the encomenderos were to be ended following the deaths of the current grant holders. The encomenderos' conspiracy included Don Martín Cortés, son of Hernán Cortés, who was exiled, with other conspirators executed.
Another challenge to Spanish crown authority occurred in 1624 when elites ousted the reformist Viceroy Diego Carrillo de Mendoza, 1st Marquess of Gelves, who sought to break up crime rackets from which the elites profited and curtail opulent displays of clerical power. The viceroy was removed following an urban religious riot of Mexico City commoners in 1624 stirred up by the elites. The crowd, which was mostly Catholic, was reported to have shouted, "Long live the King! Long live Christ! Death to bad government! Death to the heretic Lutheran [Viceroy Gelves]! Arrest the viceroy!" The attack was specifically against Gelves, seen as a bad representative of the crown, rather than against the monarchy or colonial rule itself.
In 1642, there was a brief conspiracy to unite American-born Spaniards, Black Africans, American Indians and castas against the Spanish crown and proclaim Mexican independence. The man seeking to bring about independence called himself Don Guillén Lampart y Guzmán, an Irishman originally with the birthname William Lamport. Lamport's conspiracy was discovered, and he was arrested by the Inquisition in 1642 and executed fifteen years later for sedition. Today, there is a statue of Lamport in the mausoleum at the base of the Angel of Independence in Mexico City.
In 1692, there was a major riot in Mexico City, where a plebeian mob attempted to burn down the viceroy's palace and the archbishop's residence. A painting by Cristóbal de Villalpando shows the damage of the tumulto. Unlike the riot in 1624, in which elites were involved and the viceroy ousted with no repercussions against the instigators, the 1692 riot was instigated by plebeians alone and had an additional racial component. The rioters attacked key symbols of Spanish power and shouted political slogans, such as, "Kill the [American-born] Spaniards and the Gachupines [Iberian-born Spaniards] who eat our corn! We go to war happily! God wants us to finish off the Spaniards! We do not care if we die without confession! Is this not our land?" The viceroy attempted to address the cause of the riot, a hike in maize prices that affected the urban poor. But the 1692 riot "represented class warfare that put Spanish authority at risk. Punishment was swift and brutal, and no further riots in the capital had challenged the Pax Hispanica."
Food shortages almost a century later, due to a growing population and severe droughts, led to two food riots in 1785 and 1808. The first riot was more severe, but both culminated in violence and anger at officials of the colonial regime. However, there is no direct link between these riots and the independence movement of 1810, although the 1808–1809 food shortage may have been a contributory factor for popular resentment at the political regime.
Various American Indian rebellions in the colonial era occurred but were generally local in nature, attempting to redress perceived wrongs of immediate authorities rather than throw off crown rule more broadly. They were not a broad independence movement as such. However, during the War of Independence, issues at the local level in these rural areas were so widespread as to constitute what some historians have called "the other rebellion".
Finally, before the events of 1808 upended the political situation in New Spain, there was an isolated and abortive 1799 event called the Conspiracy of the Machetes, perpetrated by a small group in Mexico City seeking independence.
Age of Revolution, Spain and New Spain
In the early 19th century, the Age of Revolution was already underway when the 1808 Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula destabilized not only Spain but also Spain's overseas possessions. In 1776, the Anglo-American Thirteen Colonies through the American Revolution successfully gained their independence in 1783, with the help of both the Spanish Empire led by King Charles III and French colonial Empire led by king Louis XVI. Louis XVI was toppled in the French Revolution of 1789, with the aristocrats and the king himself losing his head because of French Revolutionaries. The rise of military leader Napoleon Bonaparte brought some order within France, but the turmoil there set the stage for the black slave revolt in the French sugar colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) in 1791. The Haitian Revolution obliterated the slavocracy, white Haitian population and gained independence for Haiti in 1804.
Political and economic instability
Tensions in New Spain were growing after the mid-eighteenth-century Bourbon Reforms. With the reforms the crown sought to increase the power of the Spanish state, decrease the power of the Catholic church, rationalize and tighten control over the royal bureaucracy by placing peninsular-born officials rather than American-born, and increase revenues to the crown by a series of measures that undermined the economic position of American-born elites. The reforms were an attempt to revive the political and economic fortunes of the Spanish empire, but many historians see the reforms as accelerating the breakdown of its unity. This involved often removing large quantities of wealth that had been obtained in Mexico, before exporting to other parts of the empire to fund the many wars the Spanish were fighting.
The crown removed privileges (fuero eclesiástico) from ecclesiastics that had a disproportionate impact on American-born priests, who filled the ranks of the lower clergy in New Spain. A number of parish priests, most famously Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos, subsequently became involved in the insurgency for independence. When the crown expelled the Jesuits from Spain and the overseas empire in 1767, it had a major impact on elites in New Spain, whose Jesuit sons were sent into exile, and cultural institutions, especially universities and colleges where they taught were affected. In New Spain there were riots in protest of their expulsion.
Colonial rule was not based on outright coercion, until the early nineteenth century, since the crown did not have sufficient personnel and firepower to enforce its rule. Rather, the crown's hegemony and legitimacy to rule was accepted and ruled through institutions acting as mediators between competing groups, many organized as corporate entities. These were ecclesiastics, mining entrepreneurs, elite merchants, as well as indigenous communities. The crown's creation of a standing military in the 1780s began to shift the political calculus since the crown could now use an armed force to impose rule. To aid building a standing military, the crown created set of corporate privileges (fuero) for the military. For the first time, mixed-race castas and blacks had access to corporate privileges, usually reserved for white elites.
Silver entrepreneurs and large-scale merchants also had access to special privileges. Lucrative overseas trade was in the hands of family firms based in Spain with ties to New Spain. Silver mining was the motor of the economy of New Spain, but also fueled the economies of Spain and the entire Atlantic world. That industry was in the hands of peninsula-born mine owners and their elite merchant investors. The crown imposed new regulations to boost their revenues from their overseas territories, particularly the consolidation of loans held by the Catholic Church. The 1804 Act of Consolidation called for borrowers to immediately repay the entire principal of the loan rather than stretch payments over decades. Borrowers were criollo land owners who could in no way repay large loans on short notice. The impact threatened the financial stability of elite Americans. The crown's forced extraction of funds is considered by some a key factor in Creoles considering political independence.
Religious, racial, and cultural tensions
Within the Spanish Empire there was an unofficial yet apparent racial hierarchy which affected the social mobility of those not at the top of society. White, Spanish-born Peninsulares were at the top where many occupied the highest levels of government. This was followed by Mexican-born pure Spanish descendants, who also occupied most government positions, and Creoles. Below this were indigenous groups, African Mexicans and mixed race Mexicans. Many Creole elites deeply resented the lack of social mobility this brought as only Peninsular-born Spaniards could occupy the highest levels of government. This contributed to their reasoning behind backing the move for independence, to achieve power. They did not wish to overthrow the status quo entirely, as this would threaten their lucrative position in Mexican society. Instead, they wished to move up the social ladder, unable to under the unspoken racial hierarchy of the regime.
Religious tension is arguably one of the biggest contributions to tension before the French invasion of Spain in 1808. Many Creoles, Mexican Spaniards and the majority of indigenous, mixed and African groups in Mexico practiced Mexican Catholicism while the ruling Peninsulares preferred Modern Catholicism. Mexican or traditional Catholicism often worshiped through the use of relics, symbols and artifacts where they believe the Holy Spirit existed in the physical form of the artifact, and was a mix of traditional indigenous forms of worship and Catholicism. This contrasted with the view of modern Catholicism that many Peninsulares shared, where God was worshiped through divine artifacts and relics, but there was no religious presence within the physical artifact. Laws prohibiting Lay preachers, a major part of Mexican Catholicism, from preaching and restrictions on villagers to engage in processions around communal land to protect from unwanted spirits caused much outcry and prompted a multitude of legal battles between indigenous groups and the colonial regime through the separate indigenous courts. Not only this, but new laws essentially forcing indigenous groups to learn Spanish in schools and the taxation of Cofradias or Confraternities negatively affected the literacy and living standards in villages.
The ruling white Spanish elite and the majority of the country had very different views not only in culture and religion but on the role of government and social relations, with many elites viewing the government as a tool for progressing their own power, while indigenous groups saw the government as a communal vessel.
Leading up to the crisis in 1808, both Creole and Mexican-born Spaniards and indigenous and mixed groups had come to dislike the colonial regime for different reasons.