The Mexican War of Independence (, 16 September 1810 – 27 September 1821) was an armed conflict and political process resulting 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.Altman, Ida et al. The Early History of Greater Mexico. Prentice Hall 2003, pp. 341–358. 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 most valuable overseas possession, 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 crown rule, since he had placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne after forcing the abdication of the Spanish monarch 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—a small corner of the Iberian Peninsula still under Spanish control—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 with Peninsular-born Spaniards, known locally as peninsulares. This political process had far-reaching impacts in New Spain 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 led by parish 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 royalist forces, defrocked from the priesthood, and executed in July 1811. The second phase of the insurgency was led by Father José María Morelos, who was captured by royalist forces and executed in 1815. The insurgency devolved into guerrilla warfare, with Vicente Guerrero emerging as a leader. Neither royalists nor 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 Ferdinand VII in 1820, 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 rule.Archer, Christon I. "Wars of Independence" in Encyclopedia of Mexico. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn 1997, pp. 1595–1601.
Indigenous resistance in Mexico predates the War of Independence, including the 1761 Peasant Revolt in Puebla in response to colonial policies. Though suppressed, these movements 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 organized as the First Mexican Empire, led by Agustín de Iturbide.Mexico independiente, 1821–1851 , Monografias, 1996; accessed 21 December 2018. 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 under the rule of Isabella II recognized the independence of Mexico in 1836.http://pares.mcu.es/Bicentenarios/portal/reconocimientoEspana.html accessed 21 December 2018.
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.Brading, D. A. The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991. Despite these murmurings of independence, serious challenges to Spanish imperial power before 1810 were rare and relatively isolated.
One early challenge to 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.John Charles Chasteen. Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America. New York: Norton, 2001.
Another challenge to 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.Altman, Ida, Sarah Cline, and Javier Pescador, The Early History of Greater Mexico. Prentice Hall 2003, pp. 246–247.Jonathan I. Israel. Race, Class, and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 1610–1670. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1975. 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.Altman, et al., The Early History of Greater Mexico, p. 247.
In 1642, there was a brief conspiracy to unite American-born Spaniards, Blacks, 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 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?"quoted in Altman et al., The Early History of Greater Mexico, p. 248. 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 challenged the Pax Hispanica."Altman et al., The Early History of Greater Mexico, p. 249.
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 indigenous 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".Van Young, Eric The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810–1821. Stanford: Stanford University Press 2001.
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.Sánchez Gómez, Dolores del Mar. "El Virrey Miguel José de Azanza y la conspiración de los machetes¿ primer intento de independencia mexicana?." Una crisis atlántica: España, América, y los acontecimientos de 1808 (1808): 29–38.
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 and the American Revolution successfully gained their independence in 1783, with the help of both the Spanish Empire and Louis XVI's French monarchy. Louis XVI was toppled in the French Revolution of 1789, with the aristocrats and the king himself losing his head in revolutionary violence. The rise of military strongman 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 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.Langley, Lester D. The Americas in the Age of Revolution, 1750–1850. New Haven: Yale University Press 1996, pp. 147–152. 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.