In 1810, a few months before the outbreak of insurgency in Mexico, the erudite but pragmatic ecclesiastical administrator Manuel Abad y Queipo wrote to the Cádiz Parliament (Cortes de Cádiz): “Our American possessions and especially those of New Spain, are disposed to general insurrection if the wisdom of Your Excellencies does not prevent it.” The enlightened bishop added that it would be necessary to abolish the tribute that weighed upon the Indian peasant towns and villages and smooth the other exactions that pressed upon the viceroyalty in order to partially remedy the effects of the “bad government of the reign of Don Carlos IV.” The parliamentary deputies at Cádiz took note of this and other reports arriving from the American colonies and proceeded to abolish the Indian tribute. The remedy, however, was insufficient and came too late. Political discontent in the colonies had reached a boiling point and conflict was inevitable.

The collapse of the monarchy in Spain in 1808 and the birth of Liberal government at Cádiz in 1810 had pronounced repercussions across all of Spanish America. In most colonial territories the royalist authorities hung on to power, but insurgency spread rapidly, a clear sign that the days of the old colonial regime were numbered. The search for a new political order across the Hispanic world was unexpected and contradictory. In several cities and regions in Spanish America where the colonial administration was relatively weak and local elites divorced from mercantilist policies, independence movements quickly triumphed.