Plans for a Grito de Independencia celebration are underway for Sunday, Sept. 15, from 5 to 9 p.m. at El Portal, adjacent to the Outlet Shoppes.
The late afternoon and evening event is free and open to the public and features music and dance. A ceremony is on tap for 8 p.m. It is hosted by the City of Laredo, the Instituto Cultural Mexicano de Laredo, the Consulado de Mexico en Laredo, and the Outlet Shoppes.
The ceremony commemorates el 16 septiembre 1810, when Fray Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, under the banner of la Virgen de Guadalupe, issued El Grito de Dolores, the call for Mexicans to rise up against three centuries under the rule of the Spanish Empire. Thousands of indigenes and mestizos formed the peasant army to fight for racial equality and the redistribution land.
Fray Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla
The move for independence became an armed insurgency as well as a political struggle that spanned a time frame of 16 September 1810 to 27 September 1821, culminating with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Fray Hidalgo was defrocked and executed by Royalist forces in July 1811. Father Jose Morelos continued to lead the insurgency, but was also captured by the Royalist army and executed in 1815. Vicente Guerrero led the Mexican battle that had become guerrilla warfare.
Former Royalist commander Agustín de Iturbide formed an alliance with Guerrero under the Plan of Iguala in 1821, forming
a unified military force that collapsed the Spanish rule of its most precious and lucrative property in New Spain.
When Spanish liberals overthrew the autocratic rule of Ferdinand VII in 1820, conservatives in New Spain saw political independence as a way to maintain their position. The unified military force for independence entered Mexico City in triumph in September 1821. Spanish viceroy Juan O’Donojú signed the Treaty of Córdoba that terminated the Spanish rule.
Mexico was declared a federal republic in 1823 and codified in the Constitution of 1824.
Mural of independence by O’Gorman: Embrace of Acatempan between Iturbide and Guerrero
