8/ Independencia

To die is as nothing if you die for your country.

-- José María Morelos y Pavón

August in Oaxaca has come and gone. The rains have been persistent and, as a result, mosquito-hunting has become for us a consuming pastime, due to the nonexistent weather-stripping around our windows and doors. I briefly contemplated setting up some netting around our bed, but in the end decided that it was less work—and much more fun—to hunt mosquitoes with an electrified swatter for 15 minutes or so every night before bedtime.

These mosquitoes (zancudos) are said to carry either dengue fever or zika virus, or both—but so far we have been spared anything worse than the usual itchy red welts. My Mexican friends tell me that zancudos never, ever bother to bite the locals, gringo-blood being much more to their liking. (This begs the question of how the zancudos managed to survive in the millennia before our arrival on the scene.)

In our household, Labor Day Weekend passed without much notice, being irrelevant here. Mexicans find this U.S. holiday incomprehensible: like the rest of the world they observe The International Day of the Worker on May 1, and don’t understand why, in a country that seems so determined to get rid of organized labor once and for all, we have a national holiday celebrating it. 

But here, immediately following the last day of August, a remarkable transformation occurs. Virtually overnight, every city and town in Mexico is festooned with red, white and green: the tricolor of the Mexican flag.

Flags are draped over balconies on buildings large and small; businesses display them in their windows; shops hang them in their doorways; taxis fly them from their antennas. Carts appear in the streets with every conceivable delivery vehicle for the national colors: hairpins, garlands, scarves, hats, plastic drums and guitars, dresses, masks, pinwheels, and of course the flags themselves in small, medium, large, and extra grande. Bandstands are erected overnight in the plazas, and drum-and-bugle corps flaunt their martial skills at all hours in every park in the city.

It is the month of Mexican Independence, known here as El Mes de la Patria. The centerpiece of this celebration is Independence Day, the 16th of September—so designated because it was the day on which, in 1810, a call to overthrow the Spanish overlords rang out from a church in the small town of Dolores in central Mexico. This call-to-arms, issued by a firebrand secular priest named Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, has since become known as El Grito—The Shout. This catalytic event was followed by 11 years of tumult, mayhem, carnage, insurgency and eventual victory against a wealthy, arrogant and better-equipped colonial power.

El Grito: Father Miguel Hidalgo issues a fiery call-to-arms to the people of Mexico on September 16, 1810.

In Mexico, El Grito is the equivalent of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It is reenacted every year on the night of September 15th in public spaces throughout the land, followed the next day by a national holiday marked by parades, marches, music and a day of remembrance for the heroes of the war. As discussed earlier [“The Trip to Puebla”], it is a hugely more important commemoration in Mexico than the Battle of Cinco de Mayo, which most Americans mistake for Mexican Independence Day.

It’s usually not a good idea to generalize about a group of people based on their nationality or other superficial identifiers.

Let me repeat this, and go a step further: IT IS DANGEROUS AND STUPID TO GENERALIZE ABOUT PEOPLE BASED ON THEIR NATIONALITY OR OTHER SUPERFICIAL IDENTIFIERS.

Having gotten that out of my system (for now), I will offer the following observations based on my own experience: Over the years, I have found the Mexicans I have met to be friendly, welcoming, hard-working, funny, intelligent, polite and well-mannered to a fault. They are also fiercely patriotic, and as proud of their history and traditions as anyone, anywhere. For that reason, despite readily owning up to the serious challenges their country faces, they are ALL IN when it comes to celebrating their national independence.

A street-side flag cart in Mexico City.

The run-up to El Grito found us in Mexico City for a few days while meeting up with Martha’s sister Christine, who had flown down from Austin to visit us. Just as in Oaxaca, buildings everywhere were plastered with flags, and street vendors hawked their red, green and white wares. In the gargantuan main square of the old city, known as the Zocalo, enormous bleachers had been set up, and the surrounding government buildings plastered with lighting displays that make the Disneyland Electric Light Parade seem like a candlelight vigil. 

One of our Uber drivers excitedly informed us about the size of the crowd that would be gathered in downtown Mexico City on the night of the 15th, possibly numbering in the hundreds of thousands. We told him that we wouldn’t be there on the night in question—we’d be in the tiny (by comparison) Zocalo in Oaxaca de Juárez. “Oh, that will be much better!” he replied, laughing.

In a restaurant overlooking Oaxaca’s Zocalo on the night of September 15th.

And it was. Once again, upon our return, we felt relieved to be back in quiet, rural, manageable Oaxaca. The city had strung up multicolored lights across the streets of the Centro and from the central bandstand in the Zocalo, which lent a magical, Christmas-y air to the evening. We had managed to secure a reservation at one of the restaurants on the perimeter of the square, on a balcony overlooking the holiday festivities. We dined on chiles en nogada (the national dish of independence) and drank some margaritas while a military band played for about an hour in the square below. After a while, the governor appeared on the balcony of the Government Palace to give a short speech. Then, at precisely 11:00 pm, he cried out to the expectant crowd, in a grito of his own, the names of the heroes of Mexican Independence, answered each time by a full-throated roar from the crowd:

“Mexicanos: ¡Vivan los héroes que nos dieron patria y libertad!”  — ¡VIVA!

“¡Víva Miguel Hidalgo!”  — ¡VIVA!

“¡Viva José Maria Morelos!”  — ¡VIVA!

“¡Viva Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez!”  — ¡VIVA!

“¡Viva Ignacio Allende!”  — ¡VIVA!

“¡Vivan Aldama y Matamoros!”  — ¡VIVA!

“¡Viva Leona Vicario!”  — ¡VIVA!

“¡Viva Vicente Guerrero!”  — ¡VIVA!

“¡Viva Los Pueblos originales!”  — ¡VIVA!

“¡Viva Oaxaca!”  — ¡VIVA!!!!!!!!

“¡Viva México!”  — ¡VIVA!!!!!!!!!

It’s hard not to get caught up in such fervent patriotism, and we were VIVA-ing along with the rest. There followed a lengthy fireworks display and more music, after which the crowd began to disperse into the surrounding streets for continued revelry, hand-to-hand fireworks and heartfelt embraces. We finished our margaritas and went down to be part of the holiday tide. With my Zapata-like handlebar mustache glued in place and sporting a red-white-and-green sash, I felt, on this occasion, nearly 100% Mexican.