Born in the Canary Islands in 1754, Simón de Herrera started his military career at the early age of nine, joining the Guimar Militia as sub-lieutenant on September 12, 1763.
[1] During the rebellion led by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Herrera was imprisoned in 1811, during the Casas Revolt in San Antonio.
[5] Herrera and Governor Manuel María de Salcedo were removed for detention to Ignacio Elizondo's hacienda in Coahuila.
[6] Their new convert Elizondo soon captured Hidalgo and his followers on their pilgrimage to establish San Antonio as the center of the revolt in New Spain.
Two days later radical Mexican revolutionaries murdered Governors Herrera and Salcedo, and several other leaders as they were marched out of town.
Their bodies were left on the ground,[11] but later they were retrieved by Father José Dario Zambrano and buried at the San Fernando Cathedral on August 28.