DIA DE INDEPENDENCIA

No one ever said that Mexicans don't know how to throw a party, and September 15th, the night before the commemoration of Mexican Independence Day, is one of the biggest.  Imagine New Year's Eve, the Fourth of July, and Super Bowl Sunday wrapped into one.  On the night of the 15th, in every city, town, and village from Juarez to Tapachula the mayor, the governor, or whoever is the reigning chief stands before the citizenry and shortly before midnight leads them in the famous El Grito--the shout for freedom proclaimed by Father Miguel de Hidalgo in 1810, an impassioned cry that inspired Mexicans to unite and break the colonial yoke of Spain.  (Never mind that Hidalgo and two of his patriots were executed and their severed heads hung for ten years as a warning to future revolutionaries:  it's the thought that counts; no pain, no gain).

In the city of Oaxaca the fiesta actually begins weeks earlier with free concerts and dances in the zocalo (the town square), street vendors selling Mexican flags of all sizes, impromptu fireworks, and a general sense of anticipation that gradually gains momentum until the afternoon of the 15th when things really start heating up.  The usual crowd of tourists  and casual strollers begins thickening in the zocalo as uniformed young men are brought in by the truckload.  They have handsome, clean-shaven faces carved out of mahogany, and they are absolutely no-nonsense as they position themselves at every street corner surrounding and every few feet within the zocalo.  There is a sense of busy-ness and urgency as fireworks are hastily strung along huge scaffolds in front of the cathedral. Shop owners are pulling down the roll-top metal covers or bolting their big wooden doors for the night while vendors place their carts and wares strategically along the streets.   Only the restaurants and food shops remain open--an all night fiesta requires all night nourishment.  The always frenetic rush-hour traffic seems even more anxious, more harried.  Policemen are blowing their whistles, waving at traffic; horns are honking, engines revving; every vehicle is a thoroughbred chomping at the bit, and it is only 5:00 PM.

At 6:00 PM, we step out of our apartment on Calle Garcia Vigil and join the mass exodus towards the zocalo where, at least on this night, all roads seem to lead.   For us it is a pleasant ten minute walk as dusk settles over the little city, but pity the folks who live on the outskirts.  The streets have become parking lots.  You could earn your Boy Scout hiking merit badge tonight.  We join the mass exodus which is in full force:  couples, families, tourists, locals, mischievous packs of teenagers, all making their way towards the festoons of red, white, and green lights spanning the streets and shining like a distant promise in the heart of the city.  We pass familiar faces--the mobile vendors offering shawls for 20 pesos, hand-painted place mats, big straw baskets that a snake charmer would envy; the pobres sitting on the street corners wrapped in shawls or blankets, gazing up at us pathetically; an old man with a missing leg vigorously playing a fiddle while his female partner holds out a Styrofoam cup.  The crowd is moving leisurely, certainly not with the nervous energy of North Americans trying to make the opening kick-off.  The zocalo is not going anywhere; the night is not going anywhere; the band is not going anywhere.  Time is ours.

As the crowd funnels into the zocalo, we are greeted by a troupe of ballet folkloricos in flamboyant dress dancing up a storm on a wooden platform surrounded by an admiring crowd.  Mariachis are tuning up in the gazebo, an elevated structure that glows magically above the crowd.  Little children are playing with long, fat balloons four times their size, projecting them high into the air and catching them as they float back down.  People are milling, gathering, easing their way to the front of the Governor's Palace:  flood-lit, it is a grand facade of old stones and colonial arches, a night shot for a picture postcard.  It has been cordoned off and is being guarded by a small army of the uniformed young men.  Security is tight but not obsessive.  Gigantic black loudspeakers are positioned like cannons in front, facing the crowd:  all ears will hear the Governor's message tonight.  A big, bearded man who looks like a young Pavarotti in a splendid white tunic speaks into a microphone with a robust radio voice:  “En unos minutos nuestro gran gobernador del único y magnífico estado de Oaxaca. . .”  It is the first of many long and lofty pronouncements, his words like gravy.  Huge signs are glowing in red, white, and green lights at either end of the square:  ¡VIVA MEXICO!  ¡VIVA OAXACA!  Small groups of gringos sit at tables in the outdoor cafes, smoking, eating, biding their time.  Meanwhile, the locals continue their gradual and imminent press, the ever thickening of people.

At 8:00 PM we leave to attend a party sponsored by some friends on the southside.  When we return two hours later, the band is still playing, and the Pavarotti is still making his intermittent announcements.  The sky above the plaza is very dark, and the red, white, and green lights and signs seem to glow with new power and vigor. The lit archways--¡VIVA MEXICO!  ¡VIVA OAXACA!--are blazing with a gaudiness fit for the occasion, big, bold, brash, grand.  Bathed in yellow light, the governor's palace appears ornate, gilded. Through the three large, arched windows on the top floor we can see the casual and detached coming and going of dignitaries--men in suits and uniforms, women in long gowns--as the masses squeeze into the plaza below.  Three young women in long, lavender dresses stand on a third floor balcony gazing down at the little people below.  A young man in a black suit slides out of a white limousine and opens the door for a young woman in high heels and a black dress tight enough to split if she twists, bends, or inhales.  He leads her to a door where an armed guard checks their I.D. before letting them pass into a ballroom where the well-dressed are holding champagne glasses.

Meanwhile, in the plaza, there is music!  Loud, brazen, hip-shaking, trumpet-blaring mariachi music, then some Mexican standards followed by a little salsa jazz, a touch of marimba, and then suddenly it stops and a military band takes over playing a loud, pounding march, half the band playing in key, the other half minoring out. It is a hammering and hypnotic cacophony that is at first a little ear-and-nerve wracking until taken within a revolutionary context (i.e., a militant and mocking refusal to bow to the classical colonial traditions. . . ).  Pavarotti in the white tunic once again reminds us of the special occasion, how en unos minutos nuestro gran gobernador del único y magnífico estado de Oaxaca. . . .

And now the crowd is a giant squeeze.  Bodies are packed into the gazebo--arms waving, flags waving, heads and limbs hanging over the wrought iron rails like survivors on the last lifeboat of the Titanic.  Except there is no panic here, no pushing or shoving or elbowing; no cast-offs or violent eruptions--just the slow, gradual press of bodies into the square.  We wait on the perimeter until a little Oaxaqueño father finds a seam in the crowd and begins leading his family, in single file, through the mass of bodies.  We follow right behind and others follow us, and suddenly we are a Congo line slowly weaving our way forward until we are fifty feet from ropes cordoning off the Governor's Palace.  And here we wait, trying to be as patient as the locals, a little boy sitting on the shoulders of his father, an older woman tugging gently at my sleeve, smiling, motioning for me,  por favor, to move my six-foot-four frame a little to the left so she can see.  We are giants here, far better doors than windows.  We tilt, shift, hunch down a little, but we remain obstacles. 

At 11:00 PM the military band has finished its revolutionary romp and lightens things up with a little—did you say John Phillip Sousa?  The heat from the compression of bodies thickens, but it remains a cool, tropical night in the mountain lowlands.  Arms are waving Mexican flags, plastic horns are honking.  There is chattering, laughing, teenagers spraying shaving cream into the air and at each other as if celebrating the last day of school  Suddenly the band stops, and Pavoratti introduces the Governor of the one and only magnificent state of Oaxaca. 

There is mostly silence as a man in a black suit steps up to the center balcony window of the palace.  A long rope hangs from the bell in the alcove directly above him.  He delivers a short speech, then begins El Grito, The Shout:  "¡Viva lo futuro!" And the crowd thunders back:  "¡Viva!"  He yells several more vivas with the crowd responding in kind, quickly building to the climactic:  "¡Viva Oaxaca!"  "¡VIVA!"  “¡Viva Mexico!"  "¡VIVA!"  "¡Viva Mexico!"  "¡VIVA!"  And one more time: "¡Viva Mexico!"  Followed  by an earth-shaking and ear-splitting "¡VIVA!" 

After the third viva, the Governor pulls on the rope, clanging the bell enthusiastically.  The military band strikes up a very moving rendition of the Mexican National Anthem, the crowd singing the words--mothers and fathers, old women and children, even the teenagers who have been waiting for the next phase of this all night fiesta to begin.  Then the crowd absolutely erupts:  horns honking, flags waving, balloons popping, children cheering.

And then the fireworks. This is not your neat little Fourth of July display where you park your lawn chairs  on the golf course and casually watch from afar as every five minutes or so a few rockets wriggle up into the night sky, politely pop, and blossom into a fluorescent dandelion of reds, whites, and blues.  This is up close and personal:  World Wars II and III condensed into a non-stop fifteen minute pyrotechnic highlight film.  It is loud, fast, and varied, with big, multiple blossoms lighting up the sky,  pinwheels screaming on the walls of the cathedral, from top to bottom a white waterfall of sizzling lights.  The explosions are relentless, the sounds of war and the bottled anxieties of a nation.  Hot fallout drops from the sky, splattering on the zocalo and searing the heads of the inattentive.  It burns loud and hard and bright and fast for fifteen minutes, and then it stops.  The smoke lingers for a few moments, like the ghosts of lost generations, then disappears. And there is a moment of relative silence.

The crowd--some of it--begins moving out, looking for seams.  We join another Congo line and follow the human flow towards the perimeter.  As we are making our way up the street, another crowd--the second wave--begins pouring out of the bars and cafes, heading towards the square:  more packs of teenagers armed with shaving cream, more young couples strolling arm in arm.  A full moon is squeezing between two cumulus clouds, and the lights along Macedonio Alcalá seem exceptionally bright, like a mid-summer’s day except it is midnight.  I would say it seems surreal, but it is much more than that--dream-like, exhilarating, a hyper blend of romance and adrenaline.  So on this magical night of nights we walk back across the sage-colored stones, past the ancient walls of the Santo Domingo church, past the big bolted door of the Iglesia Carmen Alto, and upstairs to our little apartment, holding hands as the salsa band warms up, once again, in the zocalo.

It is close to 1:00 AM when we finally turn in.  Tonight the mosquitoes seem to have taken a break as well, for it is a good two hours before I am finally awakened by a pernicious sneak attack.  I light a mosquito coil, then step out on our balcony for a moment and gaze towards the zocalo where the full moon is still shining, the band is still playing, and the evening is still very young.