¡Viva Morelos!
José Maria Morelos y Pavon … born 30 September 30, 1765 (Valladolid, now Morelia, Michoacán)… an afro-mestizo cow-puncher turned priest (Miguel Hidalgo was one of his professors at the seminary) who led the independence movement after Hidalgo”s capture and execution. A more effective military leader than Hidalgo, by 1814, Morelos controlled large swaths of New Spain from Acapulco to Veracruz… and — a thorough-going egalitarian — insisted on including complete racial equality in the 1814 Constitution of Chilpancingo, the first such document anywhere to make such a statement.
“We should do away with the picturesque jargon of black, mulatto, mestizo… and etc., and instead view ourselves geographically, calling ourselves Americans for where we are from, as do the English, and the French and that other European country that is oppressing us, and the Asian in Asia and the African in his part of the world.”
The Mex Files 