Independence Day Mexico 2007 September 16
Today is the 16th of September, 2007–Mexico’s independence day–and all is quiet after last night’s grito (shout for independence).
Noche Mexicana (Mexican Night) and the grito make such a fun celebration and preamble to the holiday on the 16th (which, of course, isn’t always on a Sunday as it is this year). It’s really fun to live in Mexico during September. People decorate their houses, cars, motorcycles with green, white, and red during the weeks leading up to it. There are Mexican flags flying everywhere! Children have Independence Day shows at their schools where they dress up in traditional costumes and perform dances. They look so adorable in their outfits. Boys wear manta (the sometimes unbleached traditional white cotton clothing) with hats and green, white, and red ties. The girls in little colored dresses and braids (made of yarn if their hair isn’t long enough) adorned with green, white, and red ribbons.
Yesterday evening, all three of us showered and my husband and I put on our red T-shirts and dressed our son in bright red overalls. I did my hair in braids tied with green, white, and red hair bands. We were planning to walk around the zocalo before it got too crowded. I grabbed my camera and shot some pictures in
our neighborhood as we walked to the bus stop. The light was really dramatic due to a coming storm and they turned out really good. As we were waiting for the bus we saw how huge the storm clouds loomed and saw lots of lightening striking so we decided we’d better not go because we were sure to get all wet. There we were, all dressed up and no where to go. Instead we went to the grocery store and it was fun to see some other people dressed in red and green.
One lady had a fancy beaded necklace and matching earrings made in the colors of the flag. There is such a happy energy about Independence Day because people really love Mexico. They love to celebrate their traditions and play with their family and friends. When you live in Mexico the month of September gives you lots of opportunities to learn Mexican history, Mexican customs, what makes Mexicans most proud, and what Mexicans enjoy the most about their country.
When I still worked at the language school I always enjoyed the bulletin boards people would put up and the way people would dress up for Mexican Independence Day. I remember once three of the administrative people agreed to be the flag and one came in a red shirt, one in a white shirt, and one in green. They would line up for you and say, “look we’re the flag.”
Along with the grito, there are fireworks and music in zocalos large and small all across Mexico. At home people eat pozole, mole, tamales, and other traditional foods along with copious quantities of alcoholic beverages, of course. Even we got to eat some pozole. Just as we got back from the grocery store one of our neighbors rapped on the passenger side window. She had pozole and taquitos de papa for us! She accompanied us at our kitchen table for a while as we served our pozole and added our oregano, lemon juice, chopped onions, and avocado condiments on top. Later I made hot chocolate for the cold, cloudy night and took some over to their house to share.
We heard fireworks going off over our house but they scared our son so we didn’t get to see very many. We watched special Noche Mexicana (Mexican Night) shows on T.V. with singers playing traditional music. We especially enjoyed the performance by the Mexico City Folkloric Dance Ensemble on the University T.V. station (canal 11). Our son liked the stomping, swinging dancing and we all had to stand up and do our own version; zapateando around the house.
The televised grito was in the zocalo in Mexico City from the balcony of the Palacio del Gobierno given by the declared President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón. We noticed that the T.V. stations showed a loooooooooot of artsy shots of the fireworks and lots of cute family shots of the declared president’s family on the balcony and not much of the crowd. The only crowd shots they showed were either really really zoomed out and all you saw were thousands of people packed together or this one area that must have been way in the back that was almost empty. A few people were loosely scattered around among the litter in the street.
We know that the crowd must have been full of people who support the probably elected president of Mexico, Lopez Obrador. We heard a few shouts from the crowd in the background as the declared President was returning the flag to the cadets in the hallway behind the balcony, “Obrador, Obrador, Obrador” before they switched the sound feed to something else. It made me wonder if we still have people in the U.S. who bother to shout “Gore, Gore, Gore!” or even “Kerry, Kerry, Kerry.”
Anyway Mexico has lots to celebrate. It is growing, modernizing, sanitizing, computerizing, and getting more honest (really). Noche Mexicana is a joy to participate in and I’m glad I live in Mexico.