“Grito de Dolores!” (Cry of Dolores)
- Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla
I did not know how significant this beautiful little town is to the history of Mexico. If this were America, I am standing at the field where the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. It was here that the rebellion Mexicans fought against their Spanish overlords started.
The story goes - “San Miguel’s favorite son, Ignacio Allende, was born here in 1779. He became a fervent believer in the need for Mexican independence and was a leader of a Querétaro-based conspiracy that set December 8, 1810, as the date for an armed uprising. When the plan was discovered by the authorities in Querétaro on September 13, a messenger rushed to San Miguel and gave the news to Juan de Aldama, another conspirator. Aldama sped north to Dolores where, in the early hours of September 16, he found Allende at the house of the priest Miguel Hidalgo, also one of the coterie.”
In the early morning of September 16, 1810 at the church in a small town just north of here called Dolores, the village priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla ordered the church bells to ring. He then told his congregation on the steps in front of the church to take up arms against the Spanish.
He would be joined in his cause by Ignacio Allende. By that time he was a Spanish soldier who switched sides. A priest and a soldier fought along with many others and led the rebellion.
The Latin Times writes, “The Siege of Guanajuato, the first major engagement of the
insurgency, occurred 4 days later. Mexico's independence would not be effectively declared from Spain in the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire until September 28, 1821, after a decade of war.”
Both Hidalgo and Allende would never see the outcome of what they started. They were captured by the Spanish in 1811. Both were hung alive in cages outside a granary in Guanajuato. There they would remain until the war ended, nine years later, when their bodies would at last be taken down and buried.
On March 8, 1826 the government of the new state of Mexico wanted to honor these men. The town of Dolores was renamed to Dolores Hildalgo and San Miguel became San Miguel de Allende.
So amid these beautiful colonial buildings and charming cobblestone streets lies something that we share with our Mexican neighbors. A bloody history and the great cost that is paid for freedom. We both share a desire to govern ourselves and chart our own destinies.
Again and again we find on our travels that we are much more alike with the rest of the world than we care to admit.
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