Mexico and indigenous communities, seeking these reforms to create a nation of small yeoman farmers. Once Mexico achieved independence in 1821, the paternalistic crown protections of the Indians institutionalized in the General Indian Court and the special status of Indians before the law ceased to exist, leaving the indigenous population and their lands vulnerable to those more powerful. Insurgency for independence and agrarian violence 1810–21 The outbreak of the insurgency in September 1810 led by secular cleric Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla was joined by Indians and castas in huge numbers in the commercial agricultural region of the Bajío. The Bajío did not have an established sedentary indigenous population prior to the arrival of the Spaniards even though the area had fertile soils. Once the Spanish defeated fierce northern indigenous from the region, Spaniards created towns and commercial agricultural enterprises that were cultivated by workers who had no rights to land via indigenous communities. Workers were dependent on the haciendas for employment and sustenance. When Hidalgo denounced bad government to his parishioners during the Cry of Dolores, he quickly gained a following, which then expanded to tens of thousands. The Spanish crown had not seen such a challenge from below during its nearly 300 years of colonial rule. Most rural protests were brief, had local grievances, and were resolved quickly often in the colonial courts. Hidalgo's political call for a rising against bad government during the period when Napoleon's forces controlled the Iberian peninsula and Spain's Bourbon monarch had been forced to abdicate in favor of Joseph Bonaparte meant that there was a crisis of authority and legitimacy in the Spanish empire, touching off the Spanish American wars of independence. Until Hidalgo's revolt, there had been no large mobilization in New Spain. It has been argued that the perception that the ruling elites were divided in 1810, embodied in the authority figure of a Spanish priest denouncing bad government, gave the masses in the Bajío the idea that violent rebellion might succeed in changing their circumstances for the better. Those following Hidalgo's call went from town to town in the Bajío, looting and sacking haciendas in their path. Hacendados did not resist, but watched the destruction unfold, since they had no means to effectively suppress it. Hidalgo had hoped to gain the support of creole elites for the cause of independence and he tried to prevent attacks on haciendas owned by