ORTIZ DE AYALA, SIMON TADEO ORTIZ DE AYALA, SIMÓN TADEO
(1788–1833). Simón Tadeo Ortiz de Ayala, Mexican colonizer and
writer, was born on October 18, 1788, at Mascota (now in the
Intendency of Guadalajara), Jalisco, to unknown parents, almost
surely of a well-to-do merchant family. He studied Latin and
philosophy in Mexico City after doing his first studies in
Guadalajara. In 1809 he ended his formal training and moved to
Spain, where he became a supporter of Mexican independence.
Later (1811–13), in Philadelphia, Washington, and New Orleans,
he engaged in military activities with José Álvarez de Toledo y
Dubois and José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Laraqv to liberate Texas
from Spain and tried to obtain an official appointment as a
representative of leaders in the cause of Mexican independence,
a position he failed to attain. He appeared in Nueva Granada
(1814–15), Buenos Aires (1818–19), England (1820), and Spain
(1820–21), often posing as a diplomatic agent of the Mexican
revolutionary government. In 1821 he was