Don't Drink the Water: ¡Viva Mexico!

The 16th of September is Independence Day in Mexico. This day celebrates Mexico’s Independence from Spain that began with the grito (cry or yell) of independence given by Miguel hidalgo in Dolores, Guanjuato (now called Dolores de Hidalgo) that lead to the start of the war of Independence.

For weeks now the streets of Puebla have been decorated with flags, banners, and everyone red, white, and green. Vendors with push carts have been selling flags, hats, jewelry, jalepeno pepper ornaments with bottles of tequila, noise makers, and all sorts of other stuff on every street corner. Here is me with some of the decorations.

The big night for the celebration is the night of the 15th. The official grito is in Mexico City at midnight, but all the individual gritos in the states must be finished before the one in Mexico City (side note here, because Calderon won the presidency, but lost the popular vote, the candidate that won the popular vote also did his own grito). So the grito in Puebla took place at 10:30pm in the zocalo that night. There were some other vols in town so we all met up for a little Independence Day party and then headed over to the zocalo to squeeze into a good viewing location to see the governor. Basically the governor appears from one of the windows of the municipal palace and gives the grito which ends with “Viva Puebla (obviously this varies depending on the state you live in) and Viva Mexico”. Then the zocalo breaks out in a snowstorm of shaving cream and confetti (a combination that is not so forgiving on white clothes). And of course, because what would a celebration in Mexico be without fireworks, there was a huge firework display over the cathedral choreographed to music from the orchestra.