Is the Mexican Independence Revolution a winning or a losing
revolution? Comparing the initial desires and the results.
José Antonio Sánchez González
Abstract
If we look into the texts about the past we can notice that historians have been inclined to think that all the political revolutions are either won or lost. We justify the
success or failure of revolutionary movements by two characteristics: the fulfillment of the objectives set by the leaders of a movement and the notion of a great
change in the social, political and cultural aspects of a society. However, if we look
deeper into the causes, the justifications and the consequences of a revolution, we
may find that in most cases the general objectives that the insurgents had, were not
fulfilled or were left incomplete. I can not deny that all wars bring changes, however, it is possible to bring a new question to the table: Can we consider a revolution as victorious even if the desired changes didn’t happened or were left incomplete?
This question does not appeal only to the facts or the events that happen during a
revolution but the way they are considered after they have concluded. This is why,
the objective of this work is to dispute whether what we consider as a successful
revolution, can be challenged when we consider the origins of such change and
what the people that shaped those initial movements wished to accomplish. This
proposal will use as an example the Mexican Independence Revolution ideas, by
pondering the characteristics of the change that Miguel Hidalgo and José María
Morelos (two of the leaders of this revolution) wanted and comparing these with
the results and the changes that this revolution brought. By doing this, we may
question the general idea that all political revolutions can only be won or lost and
instead we may start to notice the relevance the wishes have in the course of a
revolution.
Key Words: Mexican Independence Revolution, political history, winning/losing,
Miguel Hidalgo, José María Morelos, hopes and dreams.
*****
1. Reflections about wars and histories.
Let’s begin with a very basic question that is necessary to start talking about
this topic. What is a war? What are we referring to when we use the word war? As
a first answer we can say than a war is a conflict between two or more groups that
oppose each other. However, this definition is very broad and reduces many conflicts to simple explanations that do not consider the complexity of each process.
We should precise it a consider it a little bit more and look into other aspects that
Is the Mexican Independence Revolution a winning or a losing revolution? Comparing the initial desires and the results.
__________________________________________________________________
are connected with this concept. First, let’s take on account the type of war: it can
either be political, economic, social, religious or military, etc. Each has its own
characteristics and elements that define them, although in many cases a war can fit
in more than one type, depending on the specifics of that conflict. Second: the actors of a war. This means not just the people that are fighting each other, but at this
point we must consider the persons that are in the middle of the conflict. I must
admit that as we go further into the past, it is more complicated to analyze this
group of actors because we have very little information about them. Last, but not
least, is the problem of how we consider the wars once we agree that they are over.
What elements are used to talk about a conflict that is finished? There are many
elements that I can recall to answer this question, but I'll like to put our focus in
two of them: the historical events and the results.
When we talk about historical events, I am not referring to each event in the
past that has a direct or indirect relationship with a studied war. What I mean by an
historical event is the selection that researchers -in this case the historians- make of
events that they consider important for the creation of a history.i
Even as the selection of events changes according to the notions of each culture
and time, it is possible to find one element in common that all of them focus on:
the results.ii However, this emphasis focuses on the isolated observation of the
characters and their actions, without reflecting or comparing them with previous
events of the selected war. One of the intentions of this paper is to break with this
isolation of events and to try to look for elements that question the results than this
problematic has brought.
Here, it is necessary to make a precision about what we are going to question
along the paper. This study is not questioning what happened in the past, but what
we are questioning here is how we have interpreted the events in construction of
the history of some war, and the general models that we as researchers of the past
and the present use in our interpretations. One of these general models that -in my
opinion- we use indistinctly is the dichotomy: Victory/Defeat.
Normally, when we talk about a war one of the first questions we ask is 'who
won it?' This question and its answer set a tone on the way we look at a war, sometimes confirming and reinforcing a reduction of the historical processes, because
when we know the end of a story, we try to make all the elements in a story to be in
lineal relationship with the ending that we already know. This is a problem, because we do not consider that, at the early stages of a conflict, no one can be sure
of how a conflict is going to end, what better proof of this that today’s conflicts in
the Middle East, for example the Iraq war, that everybody in American politics and
media was assuring at the beginning that it was going to be a quick and efficient
war, but here we are, 11 years later with Obama’s intention to finish it, but with the
3
José Antonio Sánchez González.
__________________________________________________________________
threat of ISIL prolonging the conflict, or let's look at Mexico, since 2006 our government has been fighting a long war against the drug cartels. In 2012, the new
government arrived with the intention of finishing that conflict, however, recent
events have shown us that this conflict isn't nearly over, and Mexican pepole can
tell you that it's more complicated that the what foreign media is telling.
This consideration takes us to the topic of this paper: Comparing the inicial desires with the results. At this point, it is necessary to tell you that I’m not comparing the desires of every single person that was important during the 11 years that
the Mexican Independence Revolution lasted. I’m focusing on the two persons that
the historiography –official or not– has put as the indispensable leaders for this
movement: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and José María Morelos.
Before we enter into the proper analysis of these two personalities I must answer a single, but very important, question, what am I understanding as a desire?
For me, it’s a hope or a dream that a person has and that guides his actions. Here I
must admit that finding sources that give us a record of such hopes and dreams is
difficult, but not impossible. It is possible that in some personal documents and in
documents that recover direct answers of a person, reflect this desires that motivate
a person to do something, in this case to take the arms and start an armed revolution.iii This definition must not be confused with the word objective because the
the desire that the hope or the dream represent are not necessary linked to political,
economical or social objectives that a person or a group may have as reason to call
for a change. In this same perspective a desire can only be presented individually
in opposition to an objective that can be shared with other persons.
2. The Mexican Independence Revolution and its results.
Now we begin our journey into the past by traveling to this conflict that started
in 1810 and ended in 1821. Since its first two historical studies there is a tendency
to divide this conflict into four stages considering one principal character for each
stage, namely Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla for the start of the conflict, José María
Morelos for the consolidation of the insurgency, Vicente Guerrero for the resistance and crisis of the revolution, and Agustín de Iturbide for the conclusion and
victory of the revolution.iv This practical division helps us establish Agustín de
Iturbide as the character that corresponds to the results stage of this conflict, later I
will return and talk about Hidalgo and Morelos respectively but first I would like to
talk about the principal events that put an end to this revolutionary war.
One can’t deny that the principal consequence and result of this war is the creation of a new State that was called Mexico, but this was the last result of a series of
events that started with Iturbide’s betrayal to the Spanish peninsular government in
1821 by making a pact with Vicente Guerrero, founding of the Army of the Three
Is the Mexican Independence Revolution a winning or a losing revolution? Comparing the initial desires and the results.
__________________________________________________________________
Guarantees, and the proclaiming the Plan de Iguala. This document states: ‘Americans, under which name not only I understand as those born in America, but Europeans, Africans and Asians who live there have the goodness to hear me.’v This
initial phrase tells us that the principal intention of this proclamation is to unify all
of the people that lived in New Spain no matter their origin or social status. This
included, as the alliance with Guerrero represented, a union between the two
groups in conflict: the realists and the insurgency. The army that emerged from this
document was called ‘of the Three Guarantees’ because:
… take under its protection first, the preservation of the Catholic
religion, cooperating of all means at their disposal to have no
mixture, and promptly attack the enemies that could damage; independence under the manifest system –a constitutional monarchy–; thirdly, the intimate union of Americans and Europeans ...vi
These were the ideas that concluded this war: religion, independence and union.
However if we look beyond this point and we analyze the ideas that started this war
and that consolidated the insurgency we can find a very different history.
3. The desires and the regrets.
We can say with certainty that both Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos
did not live to see the end of a conflict that they created and consolidated. They
were both executed by the colonial government, Hidalgo in 1811 and Morelos in
1815, and their bodies were publicly displayed as a form of punishment. But it is
their desires and ideals what started a political, military and social movement that
ended up forming with a new country.
In the first place, Hidalgo had a very particular story during his participation in
the conflict, we can find two sets of desires that were expressed in different moments of his insurgent life: at the campaign and at the prison. The Hidalgo that
comes up at the campaign is a person that believes in the insurgent movement, in a
letter to the mayor Juan Antonio Riaño he expresses his desires hopes that provoke
him rise in arms;
I, at the head of this number – three thousand people – and following his will, wish to be independent of Spain and govern ourselves … Therefore have your lordship that my intention is no
other, but Europeans to exit the country. They will be in custody
until shipment, without any violence. Their interests will be in
charge of their families or any attorney of their trust...vii
5
José Antonio Sánchez González.
__________________________________________________________________
At this moment we find a person who wishes independence but not for unity, he
desires an independent America and also the expulsion of the Spanish people that
live in New Spain. Here is necessary to bring forward a very long and unsettled
question: What he means by independence? Traditionally the historiography views
this as a complete separation of Spain and New Spain, eliminating completely the
presence of the Spanish royal family in the maters of the new country, but it is also
know that up until the Chilpancingo’s Congress the insurgent movement had defended the figure of Ferdinand VII of Spain as the king of New Spain, and if you
keep that in mind, the conclusion is not a complete separation between the two
political entities, but a quest for more autonomy from the metropolis but without
eliminating the figure of the king.
However when he gets into prison and his judicial processes begin we find a
radical change in his thoughts and his desires. In his testimonies from May 6th and
18th, 1811, he admits his ‘inclination to independence’,viii but he regrets his actions
during the war. In one of the last questions, when he is asked to justify his actions
with the catholic teachings, part of his answer is:
…that [he] recognizes and confesses in good faith that his campaign was as unjust as impolitic, and that it has brought incalculable evils to religion, customs and the State in general, and particularly to this America; such that the wisest and vigilant government cannot fix them in many years. And it he acknowledges
himself as responsible for all these evils…ix
This reflects that his ideal of religion doesn’t accept a violent component, that,
even if he has a desire of independence, the actions that he and his army took are
punishable by the catholic teachings and that this mustn’t repeat because of the
consequences that it has on the ‘religion, customs and the State’, to be more specific, on the lives of the people.
In contrast, Morelos does not show this change that characterizes Hidalgo, both
in what is consider his most important text, Los Sentimientos de la Nación, and in
his declarations during his judicial processes, keep a constant vision about what
were his desires that moved him to rise in arms and fight against the colonial government.
In the first document he states ‘That the America is independent and free from
Spain and every other nation, government, monarchy, and thus giving the world its
reasons’.x This clearly reflects that he shares the ideals of independence that Iturbide later stated in the Plan de Iguala, but that he disagrees with Hidalgo, who –in
one of the hypothesis– only was looking for autonomy.
During his interrogation in the judicial processes he shows that he is aware of
the state of the insurgency after his capture and says:
Is the Mexican Independence Revolution a winning or a losing revolution? Comparing the initial desires and the results.
__________________________________________________________________
[He] believes positively than its [the insurgency] pacification is
going to be achieved by offering pardon to the leaders, and pursuing those who do not admit it, which will surely be few by the
layout, as he states they have been warned and because the violence in which towns are, [because of the] lacking [of] what is
necessary for subsistence.xi
He proposes something to the colonial government that not only reflects his
views of the independence movement as a failed one, but he also expresses his own
desire of unity through pardon, ergo, the unity of the American and Spanish people
by ending the conflict with a document that assures the insurgents that they will not
be prosecuted if the deposed the arms.
4. Comparing the desires and the results and some questions that rise from
this analysis.
Until now, I have made emphasis in the way the tree desires that were fundamental in the conclusion of the Mexican Independence Revolution –religion, independence and union– had developed in each of the characters alone. But it is necessary to compare the three characters’ desires to understand the complications that
may emerge from the analysis of a war.
Firstly, it is possible to find the common religious desire to keep the catholic
faith as the principal religion of the territory. Hidalgo shows this when he admits
that his actions had causes huge damages to the religion, holding it as the highest
standard that he will be judge upon. Another moment when he states that the catholic religion must prevail and guide this conflict is when, after the initial uprising, he
takes from Atotonilco’s church a banner with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe
–a very important symbol for the Americans– to lead the insurgent march.
Morelos in ‘Los Sentimimientos de la Nación’ expressed as a second point that
‘Catholic Religion be the only one, with no tolerance of other’xii holding the same
desire to keep the catholic religion as the true one, prohibiting the practice of others. This was taken by Iturbide, who went one step further and used it as an argument to establish an army that as we said earlier had the objective to defend the
religion against any threat.
However, regarding the desires of independence and unity our three characters
weren’t always in agreement. Hidalgo wanted ‘independence’ from the metropolis,
but he also desire to put the Spanish people in exile letting them keep their processions but administering them through an American member of their family or a
trusted American friend. Morelos, in the other hand, wanted to get rid of all things
European, this meant a total independence from Spain, severing all the bonds that
New Spain had with the metropolis including taking the Spanish people posses-
7
José Antonio Sánchez González.
__________________________________________________________________
sions. The unity that he desire was limited only to the Americans, excluding completely all other people that didn’t came from this territory. This two desires of independence and unity are very different from the one that ended the war. Iturbide
proposes an independence where the unity is meant for all the people that live in
New Spain, including the metropolis’ people that had properties and that had stablished in the colony.
This discrepancy between the desires and the consideration– even in today’s
popular and official historiography – that these three characters are seen as part of
the winner side of this conflict makes me formulate the next set of questions: First
–as I wrote in the title– Is the Mexican Independence Revolution a winning or a
losing revolution? I can now say that this is a complicated question to answer because it does not refer directly to the historical facts of this conflict, if we just stick
to this level we could just say that up to the arrival of Iturbide it was a losing revolution, as admitted by Morelos during his judicial interrogation. However if we
look into how we think about it – and how we write it’s history – the presence of
differences in the desires of the historical characters can make even impossible to
give a unanimous answer, because the end of this conflict is very different from
those desires that the initial people had.
This end point should allow us to bring new questions that go even deeper into
our understandings of wars. Personally, the questions that come to mind are: Can
we always consider that a revolution necessarily has to have a winner and a loser?
or, is it possible to exit this dichotomy of Victory/Defeat and to start understanding
in a new way our notions about wars and conflicts? These questions don't only
appeal to historical knowledge and I leave them open so it can be discussed not just
from my perspective but as an interdisciplinary quest that allow us to understand
better the human nature.
Notes
Is the Mexican Independence Revolution a winning or a losing revolution? Comparing the initial desires and the results.
__________________________________________________________________
9
José Antonio Sánchez González.
__________________________________________________________________
i
In this case is worth to be noted that I'm using the word 'history" to refer to its
definition of story. See: Javier Rico Moreno. "Analisis y critica en la historiografia." In La experiencia historiografica. VIII Coloquio de analisis historiografico
(Mexico: UNAM - Instituto de Investigaciones Historicas, 2009), 201-202.
ii
When I refer to ‘results’ I'm not talking about the broad spectrum of consequences
that a war has on a society or a culture. In this paper the word 'results' means the
events that conclude a war.
iii
Specifically I’m referring to personal letters and to interrogations that the authority conducts after they capture and process the characters trough the judicial system.
iv
The two historiographical works that I’m referring here are ‘Cuadro Histórico de
la Revolución Mexicana’, by Carlos Maria de Bustamante, and ‘Historia de México’, by Lucas Alaman.
v
Agustín de Iturbide. "El Plan de Iguala, documento que se encuentra en el Archivo General de la Nación." Mexico Maxico. March 4, 2013.
http://www.mexicomaxico.org/zocalo/zocaloPlanIguala.htm (accessed August 28,
2014), 1
vi
Iturbide, "El Plan de Iguala…” Mexico Maxico., 2.
vii
Patricia Galeana and Miguel Ángel Fernández Delgado. Los Sentimientos de la
Nación de José María Morelos. Antología Documental (México, Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de las Revoluciones de México - Secretaria de Educación Pública, 2013), 38-39.
viii
Raúl González Lezama. Voces Insurgentes. Declaraciones de los caudillos de
la independencia., (México, Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de las Revoluciones de México, 2010.), 23.
ix
González Lezama, Voces Insurgentes. 39-40
x
Galeana and Fernández Delgado. Los Sentimientos de la Nación. 114
xi
González Lezama, Voces Insurgentes. 250
xii
José María Morelos, Los Sentimientos de la Nación, 2012,
http://www.ordenjuridico.gob.mx/Constitucion/1813.pdf, (accessed August 15,
2014), 1
Is the Mexican Independence Revolution a winning or a losing revolution? Comparing the initial desires and the results.
__________________________________________________________________
Bibliography.
Alaman, Lucas. Historia de Mejico. Segunda. V vols. Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1968.
Bustamante, Carlos Maria de. Cuadro histórico de la Revolución Mexicana. VIII
vols. Mexico: Instituto Helenico - Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1985.
Galeana, Patricia, y Miguel Ángel Fernandez Delgado. Los Sentimientos de la
Nacion de José María Morelos. Antologia Documental. Mexico: Instituto
Nacional de Estudios Historicos de las Revoluciones de Mexico - Secretaria de Educacion Publica, 2013.
Gonzalez Lezama, Raul. Voces Insurgentes. Declaraciones de los caudillos de la
independencia. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Historicos de las
Revoluciones de Mexico, 2010.
Iturbide, Agustin de. "El Plan de Iguala, documento que se encuentra en el Archivo
General de la Nacion." Mexico Maxico. Marzo 4, 2013.
http://www.mexicomaxico.org/zocalo/zocaloPlanIguala.htm
(accessed
August 28, 2014).
Morelos, Jose Maria. "Los sentimientos de la nacion." Orden Juridico Nacional.
2012. http://www.ordenjuridico.gob.mx/Constitucion/1813.pdf (accessed
August 15, 2014).
Rico Moreno, Javier. "Analisis y critica en la historiografia." In La experiencia
historiografica. VIII Coloquio de analisis historiografico, edited by Rosa
Camelo and Miguel Pastrana Flores, 199-212. Mexico: UNAM - Instituto
de Investigaciones Historicas, 2009.