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Juan Alvarez
From 1810 to his death in 1867 Juan Alvarez fought for progressive causes. Son of a Spaniard and an Acapulco Afro-Mexican, Alvarez was a lieutenant to Guerrero during the 1810 war, and later was the key person responsible for getting a state named for Guerrero. Alvarez and his son Diego each served as governor of the state. Juan Alvarez was one of the two activists credited with starting the "Reform" of the mid 19th Century. Alvarez became the first president in the Reform, and in the process brought the fabled Indigenous leader Benito Juarez into the national limelight for the first time. Juarez was a minister in the Alvarez government. Alvarez was a fiery orator for equality. A speech to his Afro-Mexican and Afro-Filipino troops on the Acapulco coast in 1820 displayed his passion, and helps explain the reason for the determination of dark skinned Mexico in that fight for independence. Alvarez said.
Beloved comrades and sons of the people... we may wonder why we continue on toward a distant dream, asking ourselves if perhaps we have not had enough after the long ten years of a bloody and destructive war? We fight to gain our rights. To manifest to ourselves that we can't be bought off or seduced by the Spaniards, those egotistical, avoricious, robbers, despots and seducers without comparison. We stand today as mortal enemies of all CREOLISMO (the phrase for White Mexican CREOLES who aped European power and culture). They have long tried to cover us with shame, to herd us as if we were four legged beasts,... to speak of us as if we were stupid animals... and now they solicit our extermination... We say to the Creoles that we want our freedom.Made a paraplegic by a battle wound during the 1810 war, Alvarez subsequently conducted much of his business on horse back. Although barely educated, he became an avid reader of history and politics, and he wrote enough personal letters to become known nationwide for his correspondence. In political declarations Alvarez combined passion for freedom with a scholar's attention to facts, as in a 1845 treatise on Indian rights in which he cited legal precedents going back to 1706 and 1716, and stated
If, in place of the rich hacienda owners persecuting the Indigenous and treating them like slaves; if, in place of taking what little they own, stripping them of their tiny plots of land that the nation had given them, or that they had obtained from Spain, so that they could eke out their miserable existence; if in place of devising legal infractions under which they can be thrown in prison, in order to compel their families to leave their homes, (we instead) offered them protection and accepted their petitions of grievance, the republic would find that before a half a century it had many men thoroughly useful and productive, who generated wealth in a wide area of industry and agriculture. The Indians amounted to very little during the colony, but they would be something soon, if we offered them the opportunity; and they would be much more after the system of education had reached out to them and erased the negative impressions of their race.Shortly before his death at age 76, Juan Alvarez put on his military uniform and mounted his horse for one more battle, this time against the French invaders of Emperor Maximilian. Alvarez told his soldiers, "I still live, men of the coast, I who have ever led you to fight against tyrants."