Hugh M. Hamill

Royalist Propaganda and “La Porción Humilde Del Pueblo” During Mexican Independence *

The Alhondiga of Guanajuato fell to the irregular army of Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende on September 28, 1810, in one of the most celebrated events in Mexican independence history. With the collapse of the economic and political capital of the Bajio, control over a major province of New Spain was wrenched from traditional authority. The rebellion in Tierradentro, as it was called in the City of Mexico, had been watched nervously for a fortnight by an Establishment sensitized to previous domestic tumultos and to social revolution of the most frightening sort in Haiti. The Hidalgo revolt was quickly and accurately perceived as a major threat to a well ordered way of life. There was, moreover, an acute awareness that the drought years of 1808 and 1809 and the soaring price of maize in 1810 had contributed to volatile social conditions which would surely exacerbate any uprising. Now the worst fears had been realized with the sack of Guanajuato.