Mexican and Colombian Independence Day
Mexico and Colombia: Independence Day By Miami News-Digest Two of Latin America’s most widely observed national anniversaries — Mexico’s Sept. 16 and Colombia’s July 20 — recollect different opening chapters of the long independence era that reshaped the Spanish-ruled Americas in the early 19th century. Both dates are marked by public ceremony, music and civic ritual, and both recall political ruptures set in motion as Europe convulsed under the Napoleonic wars. Mexico: the Grito that became a nation Mexico’s independence commemoration centers on the “Grito de Dolores” — the call to arms issued in September 1810 by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a parish priest in the town of Dolores (now Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato). The date widely observed today is Sept. 16, 1810, and the event is remembered each year with a public re-enactment known as “el grito,” performed...
