Día de IndependenciaIndependence Day

(el 15 y 16 de septiembre)

by Susan Welk de Valdez

Animated by Señora Bowman

Copien estas palabras y las definiciones (Copy these words and definitions):

• Gachupines – Spaniards residing in Mexico

• Criollos – Mexican-born Spaniards

• Indios – Indians who originally inhabited the area

• Mestizos – people of combined indigenous American and European ancestry

La bandera de México es roja, blanca y verde.

Every September 15th

Mexicans commemorate the war of Independence, which was actually initiated in the small town of

Dolores

in Guanajuato, Mexico, on September 16, 1810.

On that day Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla,

a Catholic priest from a wealthy family

of Mexican-born Spaniards or criollos,

rallied his parishioners to rise up in arms.

He urged them to use stones, slings, sticks or spears to defend their religion against the French heretics who he claimed were threatening to come to the Americas. This September eve was remembered as El Grito de Dolores or the cry of Dolores.

Hidalgo had a hidden agenda, however, which was to incite his flock to rise up against Spaniards residing in Mexico. He accused these gachupines of exploiting the wealth of the Mexican people for more than 300 years.

In a short time more than 50,000 men, most of them poor indios, joined Hidalgo.

While the religious aspect of the fight attracted some of the new revolutionaries, others had less noble motives.

Within a short period of time, they had left the cities of San Miguel, Guanajuato and Celaya in ruin and were about to enter Mexico City. Along the way Hidalgo and his Indian and mestizo forces acquired a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a native Mexican. She became the banner of the revolutionary forces as the ragtag soldiers pressed on toward the capital and the expulsion of the gachupines.

At this point Hidalgo began to have some regrets about the bloodbath he had provoked with his fateful cry of Dolores. When he had made his hasty decision in the pre-dawn hours of September 16, he had not foreseen the mass slaughter of the Spaniards.

Before troops descended upon Mexico City, Hidalgo and a few associates retreated to Dolores. Within the year he was tried, condemned and executed by the gachupines.

This was not, however, the end of the peoples’ revolution. The seed had been planted, and a long and violent social struggle had begun. Father Hidalgo's Grito de Dolores became the battle cry of the Mexican War of Independence and despite his change of heart, Hidalgo is still revered as the Father of Mexican Independence. Eleven years of war, decades of despotic Mexican rulers and political unrest followed Hidalgo's cry of Dolores.

Yet throughout the years of turmoil, El Grito de Dolores,

"Mexicanos, viva México,“

has persevered.

Every year just before midnight on September 15, Mexicans shout the grito, honoring an impulsive and crucial action that was the catalyst for the country's bloody struggle for independence from Spain.

On September 25 of 1821, the Mexican state won its independence from the Spanish crown.

Viva Mexico!

September 16th is similar to July Fourth in the United States, and usually features rodeos, parades, bullfights, dances and grand feasts.

But September 15th or the eve of Independence Day is when the celebration really begins, as crowds gather in every village and town throughout Mexico. The pueblos are decorated with red, white and green flags and colorful flowers, and music fills the air.

As the clock begins to strike eleven, silence falls over the citizens as mayors across the land step forward to ring the symbolic liberty bell and give the "Grito de Dolores", met with the crowds’ response of: