Full transcript
0:05“The Call of Dolores” and the Independence of Mexico
0:17To understand the importance of the "Call of Dolores" we must go many years before it,
0:23to the conditions that caused it.
0:26Hernán Cortés arrived to America in 1519,
0:3427 years after Christopher Columbus did it.
0:37Cortés was the leader of an expedition of 11 ships and 900 men.
0:44After two years of alliances, conspiracies and battles,
0:48in August the 13th of 1521, the capital of the Mexican Empire: Tenochtitlan, would fall.
0:56This would be the beginning of the spanish colonization and the birth of the so called New Spain,
1:02which would exist for the next 3 centuries.
1:07The mixture of these two cultures and races was divided into castes by the spanish monarchy.
1:14These castes were: the peninsular spaniard, the creole, the mixed breed, the indigenous and the black.
1:23The peninsular spaniards were those born in Spain, and although it was the smallest group,
1:29they had the greatest rights. Only they had access to the most important positions of government and church.
1:37The creoles, in turn, were descendants of spaniards but born in America, they had certain privileges,
1:45but they couldn't take the high positions of government or the church, usually they were priests, landlords, owners of mines or merchants.
1:56The mixed breed were the mixed sons of spaniards and indigenous, without special rights, they were generally engaged in mining and livestock farmers.
2:07And down to the castes were the natives indigenous and the black people,
2:12who were enslaved and incorporated into domestic service, mining, and plantations.
2:20Because of this caste system, the creoles
2:24and the mixed breeded lived upset by the visible presence of spanish immigrants who did not stop
2:30arriving and they had access to everything although they were not aristocrats nor educated but ambitious
2:36and greedy, this mixture only lacked an ingredient to explode and that ingredient was
2:42Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1808 Napoleon bursts into the history of
2:49Spanish Empire kidnapping the monarchy in Europe and leaving The New Spain without a head.
2:54Although the Viceroy of the New Spain, José de Iturrigaray wanted to remain faithful to the
2:59spanish crown, he didn't know how to proceed. Francisco Primo de Verdad,
3:06a creole who worked in the town hall of the capital, proposes to call the municipalities
3:12of the New Spain to form a temporary government, because according to the old spanish legislation
3:18"In the absence of a monarch, the sovereignty returns to the people".
3:23But this attempt fails when a group of peninsular Spaniards take the viceroy palace
3:27in September the 15th of 1808 arresting Iturrigaray and imposing Pedro Garibay
3:34as Viceroy. Francisco Primo de Verdad is imprisoned and
3:39was dead before a month. In this way ends the first attempt to become independent from
3:46the european decisions, but it wouldn't be the last. Two years later, in 1810, another creole
3:54would write his name in blood and fire in our national history.
3:58His full name was: Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla Gallaga Mandarte Villaseñor.
4:06As a child, his family who was a landowner
4:10was victim of the “consolidation of the royal vouchers”, which were taxes that
4:15the spanish monarchy applied to fund their wars in Europe, taxes that caused
4:21the ruin of his family, but also the madness and premature death of one of his older brothers.
4:28Miguel Hidalgo became a person of the social and intellectual elite of the New Spain,
4:32because he received the best education that was possible at the time.
4:37he could read and translate from french, but he also learned Otomí, Nahuatl and Purépecha,
4:45for it was what the natives of the region spoke.
4:49Hidalgo was a sensitive man to social problems, he was in charge of doing works,
4:53not for charity but economic development, such as the creation of a textile workshop to
4:59make clothes and a pottery workshop. He would often be heard saying that:
5:07“You can’t talk about theology to an empty belly". Hidalgo was an intellectually restless and informed man
5:13and his activities made him a well-known character not only in
5:19the town of Dolores, but in the whole region. He frequented an influential circle of friends,
5:26which included the mayor of Guanajuato: Juan Antonio Riaño, the Aldama brothers
5:32and Captain Ignacio Allende. In these groups they talked about culture but
5:37also of politics, talks where they exposed their discomfort by the policies of Spain.
5:43so in that way began the conspiracies of Valladolid, today named Morelia, Querétaro and San Miguel.
5:52The conspirators of Querétaro met
5:54in Judge’s José Miguel Domínguez house, this group had planned to raise in arms
6:00in December 1810, but they were discovered in September.
6:05Before being arrested, Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez (the judge’s wife) had time to send a messenger
6:11to alert the conspirators of San Miguel and Dolores, the messenger arrived at dawn
6:17of September the 16th to inform Aldama, Allende and Hidalgo.
6:21Would they end their lives in the dungeons as Primo de Verdad?
6:27After talking for a while, Hidalgo would say: "I've thought it through, I see we're lost
6:33and there is no way left that to go and fight the spaniards, if everything is lost, anything is possible”
7:03After a lightning and bloody triumphal campaign
7:06taking dozens of cities of the states of Guanajuato, Michoacán,
7:11Zacatecas and Jalisco, the troops of Hidalgo already had in sight Mexico City
7:16but he ordered retreat, this caused strong conflicts between him and Allende.
7:22In March of 1811 they were defeated in the Bridge of Calderón's Battle and fled to the north
7:28seeking reinforcements but they were arrested and transferred to Chihuahua where they were condemned
7:34to die by a shot squad on July the 30rd in 1811, but the flame that had been fired by the priest Hidalgo,
7:42wouldn't die with his death, for other brave men and women would rise
7:47to continue the fight: José María Morelos y Pavón,
7:54Nicolás Bravo, Vicente Guerrero,
7:59Leona Vicario, Guadalupe Victoria,
8:02Agustín de Iturbide y many more. Finally, on September the 27th, in 1821,
8:1311 years and 11 days after "The Call of Dolores", the rebel triangular army leaded by Agustín
8:19de Iturbide enters Mexico City, concluding this way the War of Independence.
8:30The next day, on September 28, the Supreme Provisional Governing Board was installed
8:37in the National Palace and writted the Act of Independence of a new nation: Mexico.