Jose Maria Morelos, a hero of the Mexican struggle for independence,

headed the Congress of Chilpancingo in its declaration of Mexican independence in 1813. Morelos urged the economic equality of Mexico's peoples and the abolition of all ethnic distinctions so that Mexico might become a nation in which the only distinctions would be of virtue and vice. At the opening of the Congress, he compared Mexico to the people of Israel in Egypt suffering under Pharaoh. God himself, Morelos said, had heard Mexico's pleas and had ordered its liberation, sending God's spirit to move Mexico's heart and lead the young nation into battle. Morelos compared God to the Mexican eagle, which protected its people with its wings and its talons. He closed with the following invocation:

We are about to reestablish the Mexican Empire, improving its government....Spirits of Montezuma, Cacamatzin, Cuauhtemoc, Xicotencatl and of Catzoni [leaders of Aztec, Texcocan and Tarascan Indians], as once you celebrated the feast in which you were slaughtered by the treacherous sword of Alvarado, now celebrate the happy moment in which your sons have united to avenge the crimes and outrages committed against you, and to free themselves from the claws and fanaticism that were going to grasp them forever. To the 12th of August [the day Tenochtitlan fell], there succeeds the 14th of September 1813 [the day of his speech]. In that day the chains of serfdom were fastened in Mexico-Tenochtitlan; in this day in the happy village of Chilpancingo they are broken forever!

specific questions:

Observe how Morelos uses both religion and history to rally the Mexican people. Notice how he suggests that God has specially graced Mexico and refers to unresolved issues from the Conquest, nearly 300 years earlier, to make his argument.

1. Which side does he favor rhetorically, the Spanish or the Aztecs?
2. Why do you think he has invoked the Indian spirits?
3. Can you figure out which feast he is talking about?
4. What does "the treacherous sword of Alvarado" mean?
5. What are the crimes and outrages that Mexico will avenge?
6. What do you think his audience is? why?

Broader questions:

1. Have other countries invoked God and religion to exhort their people to struggle?
2. Have other countries and movements used historical figures to give sanction to their actions?
3. How is this similar to and different from the First Lacandon declaration?