New Spain Spain, at 42d north (now the northern boundary of the U.S. states of California, Nevada, and Utah). In the 1821 Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire, both Mexico and Central America declared their independence after three centuries of Spanish rule and formed the First Mexican Empire, although Central America quickly rejected the union. After priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's 1810 Grito de Dolores (call for independence), the insurgent army began an eleven-year war. At first, the Criollo class fought against the rebels. But in 1820, a military coup in Spain forced Ferdinand VII to accept the authority of the
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