Mexicans of European descent officially in force through the rest of the colonial period. Criollo resentment of the privileges afforded to the "Peninsulares" was the main reason behind the Mexican War of Independence. When the war ended in 1821, the new Mexican government expelled the peninsulares (approximately 10,000 – 20,000 people) in the 1820s and 1830s which at a degree, kept the European ethnicity from growing as a percentage; this expulsion however, did not lead to any permanent ban on European immigrants, even from Spain. Independence did not do away with economic and social privilege based on race as the Criollos took over those
Feminism in Mexico service to the country did not result in political rights until the middle of the twentieth century. Women distinguished themselves in battle and command during the Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821), and also were employed as spies, provocateurs, and seductresses. Newspapers in 1812 harangued women to take part in the independence effort as they owed their countrymen a debt for submitting to conquest and subordinating Mexico to Spanish rule. Mexican women did have some rights, including greater property rights, than their counterparts elsewhere in North America. Spanish colonial law, and Mexican law after independence, recognized the separate individual property of