No one had explained it better than the Mexican Nobel Prize of Literature winner, Octavio Paz:
"Each year on the fifteenth of September, at eleven o’ clock at night, we celebrate the fiesta of the Grito in all the plazas in the Republic, and the excited crowds actually shout for a whole hour… the better, perhaps, to remain silent for the rest of the year. All of our anxious tensions express themselves in a phrase we use when anger, joy or enthusiasm cause us to exalt our constitution as Mexicans: Viva Mexico!”
The excuse to liberate all that energy is the commemoration of the start of the war for Mexican Independence. It was the night of the 15th of September of 1810, when a priest called Miguel Hidalgo addressed the people of the little town of Dolores (“pains”, isn’t that ironic?) in the state of Guanajuato, and encouraged them to revolt against the Spaniards.
That was the first step in a long war to achieve independence from Spain that would be consummated eleven years later. Hidalgo himself never saw a free Mexico, as he was captured and decapitated roughly a year after his famous speech. But, every year on September 15th Mexicans remember him, recreating that night in Dolores and celebrating Mexican Independence Day.
The fight for independence in Mexico differs from that in other parts of the continent in its origins. While in North America, the thirteen colonies fought for the achievement of something new and unknown, a republic of free men, the creation of a new nation. In Mexico the war started more as a social revolution. Octavio Paz again:
“The war began as a protest against the abuses of the metropolis and the Spanish bureaucracy, but it was also, and primarily, a protest against the great native landholders. It was not a rebellion of the local aristocracy against the metropolis but of the people against the former. Therefore the revolutionaries gave greater importance to certain social reforms than to Independence itself: Hidalgo proclaimed the abolition of slavery and Morelos broke up the great land estates. The Revolution of Independence was a class war, and its nature cannot be understood correctly unless we recognize the fact that unlike what happened in South America, it was an agrarian revolt in gestation. This is why the army (with its criollos like Iturbide), the Church and the great landowners supported the Spanish crown, and these were the forces that defeated Hidalgo, Morelos and Javier Mina. A little late, when the insurgent movement had almost been destroyed, the unexpected occurred: the liberals seized power, transformed the absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy, and threatened the privileges of the Church and the aristocracy. A sudden change of allegiance took place: the high clergy, the great landowners, the bureaucracy and the criollo military leaders, confronted with this new danger, sought an alliance with the remainder of the insurgents and consummated the Independence. It was a veritable act of prestidigitation: the political separation from the metropolis was brought about in order to defeat the classes that had fought for Independence. The Viceroyalty of New Spain became the Mexican Empire. Iturbide, the former royalist general, became Agustin I.”
That’s the paradox behind the Mexican war of Independence, those who started the war fighting against it, are the ones that consummated it. Defending in the process, the privileges that Hidalgo and Morelos (our Washington and Jefferson) wanted to abolish, and maintaining the status quo, only with a different ruler. It wasn’t till the beginning of the twentieth century, that those same social demands would be answered with the explosion of the Mexican Revolution. But that’s another story…
“Fiestas Patrias” Schedule:
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September 15th:
08:00 hrs. Ceremony to honor the Mexican flag. Puerto Vallarta’s Main Square.
12:00 hrs. Commemorative event of the 158th Anniversary of the Mexican National Anthem. Puerto Vallarta’s Main Square.
23:00 hrs. Ceremony of the Cry of Independence. Puerto Vallarta’s Main Square.
September 16th:
09:00 hrs. Commemorative parade of the Mexican Independence. Downtown streets.
