Villagrán, Julián and José María "El Chito"

Julián and José María ("El Chito") Villagrán, Mexican insurgents. Julián Villagrán (b. 1760; d. 21 June 1813), his son Chito (b. ca. 1780; d. 14 May 1813), and their kinsmen, clients, and allies were in many ways typical of the great creole clans of lower and middling economic position who led the insurgency in the Mexican provinces in the period 1810–1821. Julián was a muleteer, minor landowner, and sometime militia officer; Chito, a delinquent and estate foreman in their native town of Huichapán in central Mexico. Chito joined the rebellion to escape legal charges against him for the murder of a local landowner and town official with whose wife he had been amorously involved; Julián, to protect his son and to pursue vague political and economic goals. Their forces attacked or occupied a number of important provincial towns from late 1810 through mid-1813, including Huichapán, Ixmiquilpán, Zimapán, and Tulancingo. Both refused to acknowledge any higher insurgent authority in their spheres of influence; both rejected royalist pardons; and both were captured and executed in 1813.

See alsoMexico, Wars and Revolutions: War of Independence .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alejandro Villaseñor y Villaseñor, Biografías de los héroes y caudillos de la independencia (1962), vol. 1, pp. 110-118.

Christon I. Archer, "Banditry and Revolution in New Spain," Bibliotheca Americana 1, no. 2 (1982): 59-89.

Brian R. Hamnett, Roots of Insurgency: Mexican Regions, 1750–1824 (1986).

Additional Bibliography

Broseta, Salvador. Las ciudades y la guerra, 1750–1898. Castelló de la Plana, Spain: Centro de Investigación de América Latina, Universitat Jaume I, 2002.

Rodríguez O., Jaime E. El proceso de la independencia de México. México City: Instituto Mora, 1992.

Van Young, Eric. The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810–1821. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Wobeser, Gisela von. Dominación colonial: La consolidación de vales reales en Nueva España, 1804–1812. México City: UNAM, 2003.

                                          Eric Van Young