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Cry of Dolores

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El Grito de Dolores
A statue of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla in front of the church in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato
Observed byMexico
SignificanceCommemorates the start of the Mexican War of Independence, by repeating the words of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla in the early morning of 16 September 1810
Date16 September
Next time16 September 2025 (2025-09-16)
FrequencyAnnual

The Cry of Dolores[n 1] (Spanish: Grito de Dolores) occurred in Dolores, Mexico, on 16 September 1810, when Roman Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla rang his church bell and gave the call to arms that triggered the Mexican War of Independence. The Cry of Dolores is most commonly known by the locals as "El Grito de Independencia" (The Independence Cry).

Every year on the eve of Independence Day, the President of Mexico re-enacts the cry from the balcony of the National Palace in Mexico City, while ringing the same bell Hidalgo used in 1810. During the patriotic speech, the president calls out the names of the fallen heroes who died during the War of Independence and ends the speech by shouting "Viva Mexico!" three times followed by the Mexican National Anthem.

History

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Close-up of balcony where the president of Mexico gives the annual 'Grito de Dolores' on Independence Day
Image extracted from the book by Vicente Riva Palacio, Julio Zárate (1880) "México a través de los siglos" Tomo III: "La Guerra de Independencia" (1808–1821).

In the 1810s, what would become Mexico was still New Spain, part of the Spanish crown. Following Napoleon's overthrow of the Spanish Bourbon monarchy in 1808, Spain's American possessions rose in rebellion, refusing to accept Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as king. In New Spain the creole leadership attempted to set a course of autonomy and in support of the legitimate heir to the throne, Ferdinand VII, but the peninsular elite fearing loss of the colony carried out a coup, also in the name of Ferdinand. Almost immediately groups of creoles began forming various plots around the viceroyalty, including in Querétaro, of which Father Hidalgo became a part. When the plot was discovered in early September 1810, some of the plotters decided to proceed with the uprising.[1] Around 2:30 am of September 16, 1810, Hidalgo ordered the church bells to be rung and gathered his congregation. Flanked by Ignacio Allende and Juan Aldama, he addressed the people in front of his church, urging them to revolt. His speech became known as the "Cry of Dolores".[2]

The liberated country adopted Mexico as its official name. Mexico's independence from Spain took a decade of war. Independence was achieved by the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire 11 years and 12 days later, on 28 September 1821. However, Hidalgo is credited as being the "father of his country".[3]

Exact words and meaning

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Scholars have not been able to reach a consensus on the exact words Miguel Hidalgo said at the time. Michael Meyer has noted:

"The exact words of this most famous of all Mexican speeches are not known, or, rather, they are reproduced in almost as many variations as there are historians to reproduce them."[4]

Meyer also argues that:

...the essential spirit of the message is... 'My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once... Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the Gachupines!'[4]

In contrast, William F. Cloud divides the sentiments above between Hidalgo and the crowd:

[Hidalgo] told them that the time for action on their part had now come. When he asked, 'Will you be slaves of Napoleon or will you as patriots defend your religion, your hearths, and your rights?' there was a unanimous cry, 'We will defend to the utmost! Long live religion, long live our most holy mother of Guadalupe! Long live America! Death to bad government, and death to the Gachupines!'[5]

Many believe that Hidalgo's Grito condemned the notion of monarchy and criticized the current social order in detail. In fact, his opposition was targeted to Spain and its viceroy in Mexico: that is, not against the monarchy in general but against "bad government". The Grito also emphasized loyalty to the Catholic religion, a sentiment with which both Mexican-born Criollos and Peninsulares (native Spaniards) could sympathize. However, the strong anti-Spanish cry of "Death to Gachupines" (Gachupines being a slur given to Peninsulares) would have shocked Mexico's elites.[6]

National festivities

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The day of 16 September was first celebrated in 1812 in Huichapan, Hidalgo.[7] It was given the status of a national holiday in the Constitution of Apatzingán, ratified by the conventions of 1822 and 1824, and first celebrated nationally in 1825.[8]

The Cry of Dolores has assumed an almost mythical status.[9][10] Since the late 20th century, the event has come to symbolize Mexican independence and to initiate Independence Day ceremonies the following day (16 September). Independence Day in Mexico is a patriotic holiday, marked by parades, concerts, patriotic programs, drum and bugle and marching band competitions, and special programs on the national and local media outlets.[11]

Presidential celebration at Mexico City

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President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the National Palace balcony during the Grito Mexico City, 15 September 2023
Video of the ceremony in 2022.

Every 15 September at around 11 p.m., the President of Mexico stands on the balcony of the National Palace in Mexico City and rings the same bell that Hidalgo rang in 1810, which was moved to the National Palace. The President then recites a shout of patriotism (a Grito Mexicano) based upon the "Grito de Dolores", with the names of the important heroes of the Mexican War of Independence who were there on that historic day. The Grito ends with the threefold shout of ¡Viva México!

The Grito often differs slightly from year to year to reflect recent sentiments, or a preference by the President for a shorter or longer shout. This is the version often recited by the President of Mexico:

Spanish
¡Mexicanos!
¡Vivan los héroes que nos dieron patria!
¡Viva Hidalgo!
¡Viva Morelos!
¡Viva Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez!
¡Viva Allende!
¡Vivan Aldama y Matamoros!
¡Viva la Independencia Nacional!
¡Viva México! ¡Viva México! ¡Viva México!
English
Mexicans!
Long live the heroes who gave us our homeland!
Long live Hidalgo!
Long live Morelos!
Long live Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez!
Long live Allende!
Long live Aldama and Matamoros!
Long live the nation's independence!
Long Live Mexico! Long Live Mexico! Long Live Mexico!

Beneath the balcony of the National Palace, there is a large crowd in the Plaza de la Constitución (also called the Zócalo), to hear the recitation. The event draws up to half a million spectators from all over Mexico and tourists worldwide. After the President recites each line beginning with "¡Viva(n)!", the crowd responds by repeating, "¡Viva(n)!"

After the recitation, the President rings the bell one last time and waves the Flag of Mexico to the applause of the crowd.

This is followed by the playing of the Mexican national anthem by a military band from the Mexican Armed Forces, with the crowd singing along. The ceremonies conclude with a spectacular fireworks display at the Zócalo grounds.

On the morning of 16 September, or Independence Day, the national military parade in honor of the holiday starts in the Zócalo and its outskirts, passes the Hidalgo Memorial and ends on the Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City's main boulevard, passing "El Ángel de la Independencia" memorial column and other places along the way.

Recent exceptions

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Grito de Dolores, 16 September 1810
Our Lady of Sorrows Parish in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Mexico

The Grito is not always re-enacted at the National Palace; some years it is performed in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, where it originally happened. This is especially common in the final year of a President's term.

President Felipe Calderón made an exception by re-enacting the Grito in Dolores Hidalgo as part of the bicentennial celebrations on 16 September 2010, even though he had already done so the night before from the National Palace balcony to launch the celebrations.[12][13] As a result, in 2012, Calderón's final year as president, he did not go to Dolores Hidalgo but gave the Grito from the National Palace balcony instead. President Enrique Peña Nieto did not give the Grito in Dolores Hidalgo in any of his six years as president, becoming the fourth president to break the tradition.

Many presidents add their "personal touch" to the Grito and this can be controversial. President Vicente Fox frequently took liberties with it, adding and removing items, addressing Mexicans in both genders, and in 2001 wishing long life to "our agreements".[14] Peña Nieto gave "vivas" to victims of recent earthquakes in 2017.

During Peña Nieto's presidency, the Grito became an occasion for political protest against him and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). On 15 September 2016, a month after the president appeared to be humiliated by U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, thousands of citizens marched, yelled, and carried signs. They tried to enter the Zócalo during the Grito, but were blocked by a wall of soldiers.[15] News outlets within Mexico failed to acknowledge the protest. The event was well-attended but opponents charge that the PRI brought acarreados (poor people or hand-picked party members) as a fake show of support.[16]

The Grito was also disrupted in 2006 by a demonstration called the Plantón. Crowds loyal to losing candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador protested alleged irregularities in the general election just concluded, and the Grito could not be delivered at the Zócalo but was spoken at the National Palace.[17] López Obrador won the presidency in 2018.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the Grito to be done remotely.[18]

Celebrations by governors and municipal presidents

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Municipal president giving the "grito" of "¡Viva México!" at the commencement of Independence Day festivities at 11 pm on 16 September 2008 in Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo

Similar celebrations to the presidential one occur in cities and towns throughout Mexico, and in Mexican embassies and consulates worldwide on 15 or 16 September. The chief executive, ambassador, or consul rings a bell and recites the traditional words, including the names of independence heroes and local patriots, and ending with the threefold shout of Viva Mexico! The bell rings a second time, the Mexican flag is waved, and everyone sings the National Anthem, followed by fireworks. There are also celebrations in schools throughout Mexico, and in these cases whenever the bell ringing is reenacted the school or university head utters the traditional words. Celebrations also take place outside of Mexico, such as in U.S. states that have a large concentration of people of Mexican heritage who celebrate the holiday.[19]

US observances

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As Mexico has historically been one of the largest sources of tourism to the region, the US city of Las Vegas is known for hosting cultural events—including concerts and sporting events—appealing to Mexicans and Hispanic Americans on and around 16 September.[20][21] In the United States, National Hispanic Heritage Month also begins on 15 September; the date was chosen due to its proximity to the independence day of Mexico and other Latin American countries.[20][21][22]

Since the early-1990s, boxing cards with main events involving top Mexican fighters have been a fixture of Independence Day weekend in Las Vegas. While U.S.-hosted fights on the weekend date back as far as the 1970s, the tradition of hosting these fights in Las Vegas was first established by Julio César Chávez and his manager Don King, who fought annually during Independence Day week from 1991 to 1995. All but one of these bouts were held in Las Vegas, with his 1993 fight against Pernell Whitaker occurring at San Antonio's Alamodome instead. The tradition was later taken up by other boxers of Mexican descent, such as Oscar De La Hoya and Canelo Álvarez.[23] The tradition has also been extended to mixed martial arts, with UFC beginning to host a Las Vegas event on the weekend promoted as Noche UFC beginning with 2023's UFC Fight Night: Grasso vs. Shevchenko 2 (with a main event featuring the promotion's first women's champion of Mexican descent, Alexa Grasso), and UFC 306 in 2024 (where all but one of the matches featured at least one fighter of Mexican or Mexican-American descent).[24][25]

Notes

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  1. ^ As a common noun, dolores means "pains" or "sorrows" in Spanish; in this context, however, Dolores is a place name. Overliteral translations such as "shout of pains", sometimes made by machine translation software, are therefore incorrect.

References

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  1. ^ Timothy J. Henderson, The Mexican Wars for Independence (New York: Hill and Wang, 2009), pp. 49–52, 64–68.
  2. ^ Timothy J. Henderson, The Mexican Wars for Independence (New York: Hill and Wang, 2009), pp. 70–71. [ISBN missing]
  3. ^ Virginia Guedea, "Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla" in Encyclopedia of Mexico, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn 1997, p. 640.
  4. ^ a b Meyer, Michael, et al (1979). The Course of Mexican History, p. 276, New York: Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0-19-502413-5.
  5. ^ William F. Cloud (1896). Church and State or Mexican Politics from Cortez to Diaz. Kansas City, Mo: Peck & Clark, Printers.
  6. ^ Kirkwood, Burton (2000). History of Mexico. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. ISBN 978-0-313-30351-7.
  7. ^ "En Huichapan, Hidalgo, se dio el primer "Grito de Independencia" hace casi 200 años" (in Spanish). La Jornada. 2010-09-16. Archived from the original on 2010-09-17.
  8. ^ Emmanuel Carballo (September 2009). "El grito de Dolores de 1812 a 1968" (in Spanish). University of México. Retrieved 2017-09-15.
  9. ^ Hamill, Hugh M. (1966). The Hidalgo Revolt: Prelude to Mexican Independence. University of Florida Press. ISBN 0-8130-2528-1.
  10. ^ Knight, Alan (2002). Mexico: The Colonial Era. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-89196-5.
  11. ^ Saint-Louis, Miya (9 November 2015). "How to Celebrate Mexico's Independence Day: Grito de Dolores". iexplore.com. Inside-Out Media. Retrieved 15 September 2016.
  12. ^ "Mexico Celebrates Its Bicentennial – Photo Gallery – Life". Archived from the original on 11 June 2011. Retrieved 8 April 2011.
  13. ^ "Calderón revive grito original en magnos festejos por bicentenario de México" (in Spanish). Archived from the original on September 19, 2010. Retrieved 8 April 2011.
  14. ^ Fernando Serrano Migallón (April 2008). "El Grito: símbolo, fiesta, mito e identidad" (PDF) (in Spanish). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-10-16. Retrieved 2012-04-25.
  15. ^ James Fredrick (2016-09-16). "'Resign now' thousands of Mexicans tell president Peña Nieto at Independence Day protest". The Telegraph. London Telegraph. Retrieved 2017-09-15.
  16. ^ "En el Zócalo, miles de acarreados para la ovación; afuera, miles de indignados exigen renuncia de EPN" (in Spanish). Periodicocentral.mx. 2016-09-15. Retrieved 2017-01-23.
  17. ^ "Mexicans Rally in Support of Recount". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2006-08-22. Retrieved 2018-09-17.
  18. ^ "A lo Miguel Hidalgo, Dolores tendrá su grito de independencia a pesar del COVID-19". 31 July 2020.
  19. ^ Paso, City of El (2019-09-10). "Mexican Independence Day celebration being held this weekend in El Paso". KFOX. Retrieved 2021-09-09.
  20. ^ a b "Mexico again the leading source of foreign visitors to Las Vegas". Las Vegas Review-Journal. 2023-06-18. Retrieved 2024-06-28.
  21. ^ a b Horwath, Bryan (2022-09-17). "'Huge weekend' forecast as Las Vegas celebrates Mexican Independence". Las Vegas Sun. Retrieved 2024-06-28.
  22. ^ Andone, Dakin (2021-09-15). "Why Hispanic Heritage Month starts in the middle of September". CNN. Retrieved 2024-09-15.
  23. ^ "Why Mexican Independence Day is huge for the fight calendar". ESPN.com. 2023-09-15. Retrieved 2024-06-28.
  24. ^ "Ranking the UFC 306 storylines: How Sphere, Suga Sean will shape a historic event". ESPN.com. 2024-09-09. Retrieved 2024-09-15.
  25. ^ "UFC to hold event at Las Vegas Sphere in 2024". ESPN.com. 2023-11-14. Retrieved 2024-06-28.

Further reading

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  • Fernández Tejedo, Isabel; Nava Nava, Carmen (2001). "Images of Independence in the Nineteenth Century: The Grito de Dolores, History and Myth". In William H. Beezly and David E. Lorey (ed.). ¡Viva Mexico! ¡Viva la independencia!: Celebrations of September 16. Silhouettes: studies in history and culture series. Margarita González Aredondo and Elena Murray de Parodi (Spanish-English trans.). Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. pp. 1–42. ISBN 0-8420-2914-1. OCLC 248568379.
  • Sr. Antonio Barajas Becerra, "Entrada de los Insurgentes a la Villa de San Miguel El Grande, la tarde del Domingo, 16 de Septiembre de 1801."
  • Antonio Barajas Beccera, 1969, Generalisimo don Ignacio de Allende y Unzaga, 2a edicion, p. 108 ("a las cinco de la manana del domingo 16 de Septiembre, 1810").
  • Gloria Cisneros Lenoir, Miguel Guzman Peredo, 1985, Miguel Hidalgo y la Ruta de la Independencia, Bertelsmann de Mexico, p. 87.
  • Costeloe, Michael (1 January 1997). "The Junta Patriótica and the Celebration of Independence in Mexico City, 1825–1855". Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos. 13 (1): 21–53. doi:10.2307/1051865. JSTOR 1051865.
  • Archer, Christon I. (2011). "Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821)". The Encyclopedia of War. doi:10.1002/9781444338232.wbeow399. ISBN 978-1-4051-9037-4.
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