¡Viva México!

Saturday night, after returning from the four hour long Quinceanera fiesta I was faced with the difficult task of choosing how to spend my "Noche Méxicana." My two options: join my host family in eating pozoli, a traditional Mexican stew dish, OR go downtown where more than 20,000 people would be jammed into the city's central Plaza Lerdo awaiting the 'grito (cry) de Independencia,' scheduled for 11pm. Every time I had previously proposed attending the grito to a host-family member or Mexican friend I received a resounding shake of the head and a condescending pat on the back. Known as being the one night where cops turn a blind eye to public consumption of alcohol I guess it's developed a pretty bad reputation. The owner of the local pizza place where Jared and I ate that evening forced us to fill our pockets with their complimentary mints in anticipation for our beer-stenched breaths. Despite the repeated warnings of the nay-tive sayers (you like that?) we decided that taking advantage of what will be our only opportunity to see how the majority of Mexicans celebrate their country's independence was 'vale la pena' of potentially being accosted by some drunkard in the street.

Getting caught in the conversation with the pizza owner, where we were only permitted to leave once Jared and I had demonstrated to his satisfaction that we had some basic Karate moves to which we could resort in case a fought broke out, made us miss the grito by about 30 minutes. The grito, the main attraction of the street party that wouldn't end until sunrise, involves someone shouting off an entire list of people and places associated with Mexico's struggle for national independence. I've included it in its untranslated entirety below: (hint: 'viva' means live)

¡Viva la Independencia nacional, viva los héroes que nos dieron patria y libertad; Viva Hidalgo, viva Morelos, viva Guadalupe Victoria, viva dona Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez, viva Leona Vicario, viva México, viva Veracruz, viva México, viva México, viva México!

In between each salute the whole crowd responds emphatically "¡VIVA! Like I said, we missed this, the most important part of the night. When Jared and I did finally arrive we were welcomed by a motionless crowd. This isn't to say that the crowd wasn't drunk silly on national pride, and cheap Sol beer, only that there wasn't an inch of room in which to move in the entire plaza. Of course, this didn't phase the occasional group of rowdy teen-agers or impatient, elderly lady who futilely tried to push their way through the crowd toward the center stage. Wanting to see what there was to see Jared and I wiggled through about 30 feet of sweaty bodies until we found ourselves directly under the balcony of the State Government Building from which just an hour earlier the grito had been given.

Having gotten our fill of elbows in the butt and armpits in the face we decided to venture back. As we turned our backs on the stage that was now just meters away, the crowd erupted into a thunderous applause. After briefly considering the departure of two of the maybe ten gringos in the crowd to be the source of the applause, I looked up and saw Governor Fidel Herrera Beltran waving from the balcony. Adorning a common man's cowboy hat and of course a damn red tie (read the "Gobernator" post and you'll sympathize with my anger) Beltran stood proudly overlooking thousands of his state's people.

Not saying anything, he just stood there for nearly an hour. Not wanting to miss whatever was bound (we thought) to eventually come out of his being there, we remained standing under the balcony. At one point a special agent standing just feet from the governor began erratically pointing directly at Jared and I. As he continued pointing, a squadron of unnecessarily armed riot police began marching toward the two of us. They stood in confusion on all sides of us until they finally picked out the target and proceeded to drag him out of the crowd. However, before doing so the group of 20 cops beat the crap out of the kid who couldn't have been more than 15. Over the course of the next hour another 5 rabble-rousers were given similar treatment. Occasionally they would return with battered faces and bloodied tee-shirts.

While I know by now that the cops here aren't to be messed with, I guess I would have thought that the Governor of one of the larger and economically more important of only 32 states in Mexico would have stepped in, or done something, as a bunch of kids got beaten up by a bunch of baton-happy cops directly under his nose, literally. Sure, the kids were guilty of having done something questionable, but whatever it was it couldn't have been nearly as disruptive as the reaction of the cops. Immediately after we were nearly pushed to the ground when a fight broke out right behind us, we decided it was time to leave.

100% sober, (after seeing the cops' reactions to public displays of drinking we decided it TOTALLY wasn't worth the risk) we made our way back home somewhat downtrodden. Not only had we for the last two hours been pushed and pulled by hundreds of drunks, we witnessed first hand a nasty face of Mexico that lingers on still, even as the country nears its 200th year of existence. More disappointing perhaps than the over-reaction of the cops was the total lack of reaction of the Governor. I know, he couldn't really have been expected to hop over the rails of the balcony and yell at every cop that he had seen doing wrong. But certainly, if nothing else, he could do something everyday with the power granted to him as governor to end the culture of violence that exists in the world, but particularly in his native Mexico. Maybe some think such action is too much to expect of a public official. I, perhaps naively, strongly disagree.