By Francisco Peyret
In the history of Mexico, there are four particularly noteworthy moments that have helped shape our nation: Mexico’s Independence from Spain, La Reforma (The Reform), the Mexican Revolution, and the nationalization of oil. Ironically, these Mexican history milestones occurred in parallel with important historical events being experienced by Mexico’s oppressors—difficult moments that provoked what occurred in our own history and led to the emergence of our national heroes.
With regard to Mexico’s Independence, events in Spain had a direct impact on the outbreak of Mexico’s armed insurgency, originating after Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808, which touched off a crisis of legitimacy of crown rule when he placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne as King Joseph II after forcing the abdication of the Spanish monarch Charles IV and his successor King Ferdinand VII.
With La Reforma, we could place the germ of the Mexican War of Reform (1858-1861) in the American intervention of 1846, when the American army managed to defeat Mexico in a series of decisive battles that resulted in the loss of 55 percent of the national territory. This, in turn, dramatically increased political tensions in the country. As events unfolded into civil war, liberals defeated conservatives, and Benito Juarez ultimately became president of Mexico, but because the U.S. was experiencing its own civil war, Juarez could not count it its help, and a war with France continued until 1867, when, at long last, a liberal victory in the War of Reform led to profound social and political changes in the structure of Mexico.
Today, history is becoming increasingly more fascinating and complex. Thanks to information that now reaches us through numerous Internet sources, we are recovering and rewriting our own history. For many decades the federal government was in charge of telling the official story—sometimes fictitiously, always one-dimensional and boring.
If we had stuck with the official history, the roles and impacts of characters like Ignacio Allende and Agustín de Iturbide would be underappreciated by Mexicans. In the past, Allende was portrayed as secondary to Miguel Hidalgo in historical significance, but thanks to historians like Dr. Guadalupe Jiménez, who have continued to find new manuscripts, we are discovering a history of Mexico that’s more coherent and closer to what really happened.
A new, more-informed history tells us that on September 15, 1808, a coup d’état took place in New Spain, carried out mainly by the merchants of Mexico City and resulting in the removal of Viceroy José de Iturrigaray. This event, which happened barely two months after the French invasion of Spain began, set a precedent for the emergence of the possible idea of the autonomy of New Spain, which later took shape as the struggle for independence.
It seems that the goal of the first insurgents, like Hidalgo and Allende, was never to go against the Spanish Crown, but rather to create a territorial, autonomous government that had authority to make decisions and was not so dependent on the Crown, which, with the arrival of Charles IV (1788) as king of Spain, had burdened New Spain with excessive taxation measures.
Initially, the insurgents anticipated the arrival of the French army and began to prepare for this, but as Peninsular Spain was weakened by the French invasion, these same conspirators saw more clearly the opportunity to become autonomous.
To fight against the French, the Spaniards of the provinces organized themselves as guerrilla armies called juntas, which was the organizational principle promoted by Ignacio Allende himself. Allende had a junta of some 60 insurgent members who went from city to city to promote news about the independence movement. Dr. Guadalupe Jiménez says that the man who put together the strategy—who established the command organization and who was responsible for convincing everyone—was Allende. Everything indicates that the place that Mexican history owes to Don Ignacio Allende should be even greater.
A couple of years passed before José María Morelos dictated the Sentimientos de la Nación (Feelings of the Nation) (November 1812-February 1813), a document that already spoke of a country with its own laws.
In 1814, the war between Spain and France ended, Ferdinand VII was installed, and he repealed the Constitution of Cadiz (1812), which aimed at consolidating a constitutional monarchy and the separation of powers, both for the governments of Spain and Latin America. That repeal brought back to America experienced military officers who had been in the war against France.
From this moment on, the independence movement, not only in Mexico, but in almost all of Latin America, became a battle between more prepared armies, where some were looking for a constitution headed by the Crown, while others were already thinking of a republic: royalists vs. insurgents. And so, the story goes!
It was in 1821 when, after the victory of the Trigarante Army, the first government of independent Mexico—the Provisional Governing Board, formed by Vicente Guerrero, Guadalupe Victoria, and Agustín de Iturbide—declared September 16 as a national holiday. As president of Mexico, Guadalupe Victoria decreed and institutionalized Independence Day in 1825, with a full-fledged celebration.
I remember that in my childhood, all families celebrated Mexican Independence Day with a dinner on September 15 before the traditional El Grito (the shout). This dinner was no less elaborate than Christmas dinner in quantity and quality. Today the tradition is different; everyone looks for symbolic places within the country to go drink and then give the grito.
Whatever the history and tradition, in San Miguel we should be proud of the prodigal son of our beloved municipality. Let’s enjoy these national holidays with the awareness that Allende, according to what historians say, now has a more significant place in the history of Mexico.
