Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla Gallaga send Villaseñor (Hacienda de Corralejo near Pénjamo today Guanajuato , May 8 of 1753 - Chihuahua , Chihuahua , July 30 of 1811 ) was a military priest and said in the first stage of the War of Independence of Mexico , which began with an act known in historiography as Mexican Grito de Dolores . He directed the first part of the independence movement, but after a series of defeats was captured on March 21 , 1811 and taken prisoner to the city of Chihuahua, where he was tried and executed on July 30.
In June of 1765 Miguel Hidalgo and his brother Jose Joaquin went on to study at Colegio de San Nicolás Obispo , located in Valladolid , capital of the province of Michoacan . The school had been founded in 1547 by Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco , the first viceroy of New Spain , who gave the university and the building that housed members of the Society of Jesus , who instituted chairs of Latin , law and priestly studies. It was in this house where the brothers Hidalgo studied until 1767 .
On June 25th of 1767 the Jesuits were expelled from the territories of the Spanish Empire on the orders of Spain's King Carlos III , and his minister, the Conde de Floridablanca . The school was closed a few months and in December resumed classes.
In this institution, Hidalgo studied Latin letters, he read classical authors like Cicero and Ovid , and others like St. Jerome and Virgil . At seventeen years old and was a teacher in philosophy and theology , so his friends and fellow students earned the nickname "El Zorro", showing the shrewdness in intellectual games. He learned the French language and read Molière , author who years later represented at the conference that he organized theatrical being parish priest of Dolores . Thanks to the contact he had with his farm workers in its infancy, most of them indigenous, Hidalgo learned many of the indigenous languages spoken in New Spain , principally Otomi , Nahuatl and Purépecha , as the area was one of the Pénjamo regions with the greatest diversity of indigenous groups and contact between the native world and Spanish. All this knowledge allowed Miguel Hidalgo teach Latin and philosophy while continuing their studies. Once completed, he worked at his alma mater from 1782 to 1792 , often as treasurer, others as a teacher and since 1788 as rector.
The French invasion of Spain , in 1808 , produced in the viceroyalty the 1808 political crisis in Mexico , characterized by the overthrow of Iturrigaray at the hands of the Spanish, followed by the capture and execution of policy related to the ideas of independence, as Primo Francisco Truth and Ramos and the friar Peruvian Melchor de Talamantes . Instead he became a military Iturrigaray Alcala , Pedro de Garibay , who in May of 1809 was replaced by the Archbishop of Mexico , Francisco Xavier de Lizana y Beaumont . In December of that same year he discovered the Conspiracy of Valladolid , conspiracy whose sole purpose was to create a board to govern the viceroyalty in the absence of Ferdinand VII , prisoner in Bayonne . The culprits were arrested and sentenced to death, but the Archbishop Viceroy spared them lifers, why Lizana was dismissed in April of 1810 by the Board of Sevilla . As a new viceroy was appointed a military participant in the Battle of Bailen , Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Xavier Venegas de Saavedra .
When Andalusia fell into French hands in the spring of 1810 all over Spain and was in the hands of Napoleon's army. The Archdiocese of Zaragoza , in charge of religious affairs across the metropolis, he ordered the priests of the whole empire to preach against Napoleon. Hidalgo followed this order. Meanwhile, in Querétaro was brewing a conspiracy organized by the Mayor Miguel Dominguez and his wife Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez , and also involved the military Ignacio Allende , Juan Aldama and Mariano Abasolo . Allende was commissioned to convince Hill to join his movement, the priest of Dolores was friendly with influential figures around the Bajio and even the New Spain, Juan Antonio Riaño , intendant of Guanajuato , and Manuel Abad y Queipo , bishop of Michoacán . For these reasons it was felt that Hill could be a good leader of the movement. Hill agreed, and stood as the starting date for the motion on December 1 , day of the Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos , where many Spanish people gathered to trade at a fair near Querétaro. Allende later proposed to do the October 2 , for military and strategic issues.