The following is a timeline of the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821), its antecedents and its aftermath. The war pitted the royalists, supporting the continued adherence of Mexico to Spain, versus the insurgents advocating Mexican independence from Spain. After of struggle of more than 10 years the insurgents prevailed.
Mexican War of Independence | |||||||||
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Part of the Spanish American wars of independence | |||||||||
Miguel Hidalgo waving a banner bearing the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico. | |||||||||
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The Mexican War of Independence was an attempt, ultimately successful, led by Mexican-born Spaniards, called "criollos", to shake off the rule of Spain and the political and social dominance in Mexico of a small number of Spanish-born people living in Mexico, called "peninsulares" or derisively "gachupines." The war began in 1810, led by a small group of criollos in the Bajio region who were supported by a large number of mixed-blood mestizos and indigenous people.
In 1810, a tax official calculated that New Spain (Mexico plus California, the American Southwest, and Texas) had a population of 6.1 million people, of which 18 percent or 1,097,928 were Spaniards. Of the Spanish only about 15,000 had been born in Spain and, thus, were peninsulares. The remainder on the Spaniards, the criollos, had been born in Mexico. The greatest concentration of peninsulares was in the capital of Mexico City.[1] The non-Spanish 82 percent of the population consisted of 22 percent mestizo (people with descent from both indigenous peoples and Spaniards) and other mixed-blood peoples, and 60 percent members of one of many indigenous (American Indian) groups.[2]
The rigid casta system in Spanish colonies is important for understanding the origins of the independence movements in Mexico and other Latin American colonies.