Pancho Peyo T
Every September, the echo of the “Cry of Dolores” reverberates through town squares and collective memory, reinforcing a foundational narrative: the early morning of September 16, 1810, as the sole starting point of Mexico’s Independence. But history, like a complex mosaic, holds hidden pieces. What if that cry was not the beginning, but the radicalization of a process that started earlier? What if the consummation in 1821 was not the end, but merely the endorsement of a struggle that would prolong for decades? Historians like Guadalupe Jiménez Codinach invite us to reexamine the canonical dates to discover a longer, richer, and less convenient history.
1808: The Spark Hidden in an Imperial Crisis
To find the true germ of independence, we must go back two years before the Cry of Dolores, to the tumultuous year of 1808. Napoleon Bonaparte invades Spain, forces the abdication of King Ferdinand VII, and triggers an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy within the empire. In New Spain, the news acted as an intellectual detonator.
The question that resonated in the halls of New Spain’s power was simple yet revolutionary: who should rule in the absence of the legitimate king? It was then that enlightened criollos (American-born Spaniards), like the friar Melchor de Talamantes, proposed from the Mexico City Town Council the formation of an autonomous governing junta, loyal to Ferdinand VII but independent from the Junta of Seville governing in the monarch’s name. This movement, although crushed by the viceregal authorities, was the first serious political act that put the idea of self-sovereignty on the table. Independence, therefore, was not born as a war cry, but as a legal and political debate in response to a European crisis.
1810: The Radical Cry and the Forgotten Strategist
This autonomist impulse remained latent and materialized in the Conspiracy of Querétaro. Here is where revisionist historiography demands justice for a crucial figure: Ignacio Allende. The original plan, devised by criollo military officers like Allende and Juan Aldama, was to execute an orderly uprising in December 1810. Their goal was not immediate separation, but to force the creation of a governing junta that would defend the kingdom from any French or Napoleonic influence.
Allende was the military brain, the strategist who conceived of a revolution controlled by the criollo elite. The discovery of the conspiracy thwarted those meticulous plans and forced their hand. Miguel Hidalgo, in an act of desperate audacity, chose to call upon the people on September 16. Hidalgo’s decision was a turning point: it transformed a criollo political coup into a massive, unstoppable, and often bloody social rebellion. The tensions between Allende, horrified by the loss of control, and Hidalgo, represent the duality of a movement that, from its outbreak, carried two souls: one political and orderly, and the other popular and revolutionary.
1821: A Negotiated Independence, An Unfinished Revolution
The entry of the Army of the Three Guarantees into Mexico City in September 1821 is celebrated as the “consummation” of Independence. However, the Plan of Iguala and the Embrace of Acatempan were, above all, a shrewd political negotiation. Iturbide struck a deal with the criollo and peninsular elites to guarantee three things: the Catholic religion, the union between social groups, and independence itself. It was a conservative agreement designed to preserve the status quo, avoiding the radical social changes that had frightened the powerful during the insurgency of Hidalgo and Morelos.
Did the revolutionary process end there? Absolutely not. The real struggle—to define the project of a nation—had only just begun. The eleven years of war had achieved separation from Spain, but had not resolved the fundamental questions: republic or monarchy? Federal or central government? A nation for the elites or for the people?
The decades that followed—the failed Empire of Iturbide, the War of Reform, the French Intervention, and even the Revolution of 1910—were the inevitable continuation of that struggle to complete an independence that had been left unfinished in 1821. They were the subsequent chapters of the same revolutionary cycle destined to define Mexico’s sovereignty, justice, and identity.
Next time we hear the peal of the Dolores bell, let us remember that we commemorate not a single day, but the start of a long and tortuous path. A process that began in the juntas of 1808, was radicalized in 1810, and whose promise of true liberation would take a century, or more, to attempt to fulfill. Independence, in the end, is not a date on the calendar, but a task in constant construction.
