Vicente Guerrero

Vicente Ramón Guerrero Saldaña was born in 1782 or 1783 in the village of Tixtla, in what is now the Mexican state of Guerrero. His father, Pedro Guerrero, was an African Mexican and his mother, Guadalupe Saldaña, was Indigenous. He came from humble origins and worked in his youth as a mule driver on his father's route, a job that took him around the country and exposed him to ideas about independence.

When the revolution against Spain broke out in November 1810, Guerrero joined the independence movement under the rebel leader José María Morelos. After Morelos's death he kept the fight alive for years as a guerrilla commander, notably holding out in the mountains, and his determination was crucial to keeping the independence movement going through its most difficult period.

In 1821 he allied with the royalist colonel Agustín de Iturbide, and together they issued the Plan of Iguala, which declared Mexico independent. The plan initially gave civil rights to Indigenous people but not to people of African descent, and Guerrero refused to sign unless equal rights were extended to African Mexicans and people of mixed ancestry. The plan abolished the casta system of racial classification, declaring all inhabitants equal.

Guerrero served in the triumvirate that governed Mexico in 1823 and 1824, and as head of the People's Party called for public schools, land reform and other liberal measures. In 1829 he became the second president of Mexico, widely regarded as the first of African descent, and on 16 September 1829 he formally abolished slavery nationwide, decades before the United States did the same.

His presidency was brief. In December 1829 his vice president, Anastasio Bustamante, led a rebellion that removed him from power. Guerrero was captured through betrayal and executed on 14 February 1831 in Oaxaca. Slavery was not restored, however, and he is revered as a national hero, with the Mexican state of Guerrero named in his honour.