Independence Day, Méxican Style!

I just got back from 10 days of vacation in the state of Oaxaca, alternating between Oaxaca City and the coastline. It was my first ¨real¨ vacation so far, and it was great! I could probably fill several weeks worth of blogs, but I'm going to focus on the major holiday last week and see how much other stuff I can post later this week...



The big event during my vacation was El Grito, or The Shout. This happens in every city in México on the evening of September 15th, Méxican Independence Day (although the official holiday is Sept 16). Each city celebrates it a little bit differently, but in Oaxaca, the town center, or zocalo, had several stages set up for the festivities. Live bands were playing on all of them, starting around 8 PM. Around 10 PM the zocalo started becoming packed with people. People were wearing giant sombreros and fake mustaches (some sort of tradition, couldn´t quite figure out if it was anything other than a touristy gimmick). Around 11 PM, the governor appeared and started giving his speech, celebrating the heroes of Méxican history and the Independence. Supposedly the ¨official¨ Grito occurs in México City at midnight, so all other cities in México have to do theirs before midnight. Everyone in the crowd shouted along with ¡Viva Domingez! ¡Viva México! ¡Viva Oaxaca! The fun part began when everyone pulled out the spray-cans of foam and threw around hollowed-out egg shells filled with confetti. Some guys directly behind me had a couple cans of foam, so I got hit pretty good.



There were also castillos, tall structures with fireworks strung on them. They go off in several stages, with different parts lighting up at different times. Here is a video of one of the stages. You could get pretty close, which is amazingly unsafe, since the sparks and even some fireworks were flying everywhere!



This was then followed by fireworks in the sky over the basilica. All in all, we were out til 1:30 AM, and we didn't even go back to the zocalo for more live music!!

We don't quite do anything like this in the states for Independence Day. The closest equivalent we have is probably New Year's, and I think that is centered on the big cities. Even the tiny beach town in Oaxaca that we went to later in the week had an Independence Day celebration with a grito and castillo's!