Before dawn, Father Miguel Hidalgo gathered his parishioners in the small town of Dolores and delivered a fiery speech denouncing Spanish colonial rule, urging his listeners to fight for land and liberty. The improvised uprising, later called the Grito de Dolores, spread rapidly across the countryside and marked the opening act of an eleven-year war that ended with Mexican independence in 1821. September 16 is now celebrated as Mexico's Independence Day.
Hidalgo was an unlikely revolutionary: a 57-year-old parish priest with a taste for French Enlightenment literature, illegitimate children, and a habit of running afoul of church superiors for his unorthodox views. When Spanish authorities discovered a conspiracy among criollo intellectuals in Querétaro, Hidalgo decided to act immediately rather than wait for a more organized rising.
He rang the bells of his church to summon the townspeople, then delivered an impassioned address that historians have never recorded verbatim — no transcript survives, and later versions were likely embellished for patriotic effect. What is certain is that within hours a ragtag army of indigenous peasants and mestizo farmers, armed largely with machetes, slings, and farm tools, marched behind a banner bearing the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Hidalgo himself would be captured and executed within a year, shot by firing squad in Chihuahua in July 1811. But the revolt he lit could not be extinguished, and every September 16, the President of Mexico reenacts his cry from the balcony of the National Palace, ringing the very same bell Hidalgo used, transported to Mexico City in 1896.
Key people: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla