Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/1

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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"), was a Mexican priest and revolutionary rebel leader. He is regarded as the founder of the Mexican War of Independence movement; who fought for independence against Spain in the early 19th century. The state of Hidalgo in Mexico is named after him.Hidalgo was born to a criollo family (historically, any Mexican of unmixed Spanish ancestry). Growing up in an hacienda, where his father Cristóbal Hidalgo y Costilla was employed as a superintendent, Hidalgo developed an early sympathy for the unskilled Amerindian workers. He was reportedly a keen reader of banned French literature and an avid nonconformist. Though he trained as a priest, he retained an interest in political and social questions, which he carried with him to his first parish in the town of Dolores, now called Dolores Hidalgo, in the modern-day central Mexican state of Guanajuato. He learned several indigenous languages, wrote texts in the Aztec language and organized the local communities in Michoacan.