at the base of the Angel of Independence in Mexico City. In 1692, there was a major riot in Mexico City, where a plebeian mob attempted to burn down the viceroy's palace and the archbishop's residence. A painting by Cristóbal de Villalpando shows the damage of the tumulto. Unlike the riot in 1624, in which elites were involved and the viceroy ousted with no repercussions against the instigators, the 1692 riot was instigated by plebeians alone and had an additional racial component. The rioters attacked key symbols of Spanish power and shouted political slogans, such as, "Kill the [American-born] Spaniards and the Gachupines [Iberian-born Spaniards] who eat our corn! We go to war happily! God wants us to finish off the Spaniards! We do not care if we die without confession! Is this not our land?" The viceroy attempted to address the cause of the riot, a hike in maize prices that affected the urban poor. But the 1692 riot "represented class warfare that put Spanish authority at risk. Punishment was swift and brutal, and no further riots in the capital challenged the Pax Hispanica." Food shortages almost a century later, due to a growing population and severe droughts, led to two food riots in 1785 and 1808. The first riot was more severe, but both culminated in violence and anger at officials of the colonial regime. However, there is no direct link between these riots and the independence movement of 1810, although the 1808–1809 food shortage may have been a contributory factor for popular resentment at the political regime. Various indigenous rebellions in the colonial era occurred but were generally local in nature, attempting to redress perceived wrongs of immediate authorities rather than throw off crown rule more broadly. They were not a broad independence movement as such. However, during the War of Independence, issues at the local level in these rural areas were so widespread as to constitute what some historians have called "the other rebellion." Finally, before the events of 1808 upended the political situation in New Spain, there was an isolated and abortive 1799 event called the Conspiracy of the Machetes, perpetrated by a small group in Mexico City seeking independence. Age of Revolution, Spain and New Spain The eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Age of Revolution was already underway when the 1808 Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula destabilized not only Spain but also Spain's overseas