Portal:Mexico/Selected biography archive/July 2007

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Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla Gallaga Mondarte Villaseñor (May 8, 1753 – July 30, 1811) also known as Cura Hidalgo (Priest Hidalgo), Mexican patriot and chief leader of Mexico's war of independence against Spain.

Miguel Hidalgo was a Mexican criollo (historically, any Mexican of Spanish descent, but broadly, any Mexican of pure or predominate European ancestry), and the parish priest of Dolores, now called Dolores Hidalgo, a small town in the modern-day central Mexican state of Guanajuato. The child of Cristóbal Hidalgo y Costilla and Ana Maria Gallaga, Hidalgo was a keen reader of banned French literature and was an avid nonconformist. He learned several indigenous languages, wrote texts in the Aztec language and organized the local communities in Michoacan. In the mining/farming region of central Mexico Miguel Hidalgo and other criollos of high society started conspiring for a considerable uprising of mestizos and indigenous peasants.