Afro-Mexicans played an important role in the Mexican War of Independence, most prominently with insurgent leader Vicente Guerrero, who became commander in chief of the insurgency. The initial movement for independence was led by the American-born Spaniard priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla in central Mexico. White Mexicans quickly abandoned the movement for independence which had become more of a social revolution, with Indians, Blacks, mixed-race castas, and other plebeians seeking social equality. The movement for independence remained active on the Gulf Coast and the Pacific Coast, where there were large concentrations of Afro-Mexicans. The royal army and the insurgent forces had reached a stalemate militarily, but the equation changed in 1820. American-born Spaniard and royalist officer Agustin de Iturbide sought an alliance with the insurgents led by Guerrero. Iturbide and the white creoles sought independence, but expected that racial hierarchies would continue in the post-independence period. Guerrero and other Afro-Mexicans demanded that they would be equal citizens and not until Iturbide acceded to that demand did the Afro-Mexican forces sign on to the Plan of Iguala which laid out the terms for the insurgency movement.
Outbreak of the Mexican independence movement
When Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Iberian peninsula, the Spanish Bourbon monarchy was displaced, with Charles IV abdicating the throne and Napoleon's brother Joseph placed on the throne of Spain. For peninsular Spaniards and those in the overseas Spanish Empire in the Americas, the question of legitimacy of the monarchy was a crucial question. In Iberia, the Peninsular War raged between 1807-1814; in Spanish America, a number of regions set up local juntas, ruling in the name of the Spanish king sprang up. In New Spain (Mexico), the outbreak of an insurgency for independence came from elite America-born Spaniards who sought independence. Among them was the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, formerly the rector the seminary in Michoacan to train priests, now exiled to the small village of Dolores as its parish priest. In September 1810 he issued what is known in Mexican history as the Grito de Dolores, denouncing bad government of the Spaniards, loyalty to the Virgin of Guadalupe and Ferdinand VII (considered the legitimate Spanish monarch. In the region north of Mexico City, known as the Bajío, the movement quickly swelled with poorly armed plebeians, who attacked property owned by whites, peninsular-born or American-born, causing them to abandon the cause of independence in the face of a social revolution. Royalist forces caught Hidalgo, defrocked him, and tried and executed him in 1811. The cause for independence was taken up by his former seminary student, a mixed-race priest José María Morelos y Pavón. Morelos was likewise caught by royalists and executed. The insurgency was continued under the leadership of former muleteer Vicente Guerrero in the southern hot country of Mexico, along with many other Afro-Mexicans, castas, and Indians, the dark-skinned plebeians.
Afro-Mexicans
At the time of the outbreak of the insurgency for independence, there was a large Afro-Mexican population of mainly free blacks and mulattos, as well as mixed-race castas who had some component of Afro-Mexican heritage. Black slavery still existed as an institution, although the numbers of enslaved had declined from the high point in the 1600s, when the Atlantic slave trade had brought enslaved Africans to Spanish America. For the period 1580-1640, Spain and Portugal were ruled by the same monarch and Portuguese slave dealers could freely operate in Spanish American territory. When the Portuguese revolted against Spain in 1640, the numbers of slaves brought from Africa dropped precipitously and the demand for slaves was met by natural reproduction of American-born Africans. Children of enslaved women became slaves themselves, so that marriage to non-slave women meant the off-spring were free. Unions between enslaved men and free black or mulatto women increased the population of the Afro-Mexican community, but there were also many unions between blacks and women of other ethnicities, resulting in a large, free mixed-race population.