Mes Patrio: Why September in Mexico Suddenly Turns Green, White, and Red

Everyone learns two dates for Mexican Independence — the night of the 15th and the holiday on the 16th. September actually carries three, and the third one catches almost every foreigner out.

The month has more than one anniversary

Mes patrio means patriotic month, and in Mexico it means September specifically. It is not a marketing season: the war it commemorates began on 16 September 1810 with Miguel Hidalgo’s call to arms in Dolores, and ended on 27 September 1821. The whole month sits inside that bracket, which is why the decorations go up at the start of it and not the week before.¹²

The 13th is the one that surprises people. It commemorates six military cadets who died defending Chapultepec Castle during the US invasion of 1847 — a defeat, not a victory, and a solemn occasion sitting two days before the loudest party of the year. If you are in the city that week, the tonal switch between the 13th and the 15th is real and worth knowing about.

Patria is not the same word as país

This is the small linguistic thing that makes the season legible.

País is a country — a place on a map, neutral, administrative. Patria is the homeland, and it is emotional. It is the word in the anthem, the word in the Grito, and the word on the banners; you will almost never hear it in an ordinary conversation about where someone is from.

• Soy de otro país.
  I'm from another country.
• Viva la patria.
  Long live the homeland.

Swap them and the sentence goes strange in both directions — viva el país sounds like a civics lesson, and soy de otra patria sounds like a nineteenth-century novel.

The historian Patricia Galeana has argued that the 15 September ceremony is a large part of how a shared national identity was built in the first place, which is why the language around it stays formal even when the party around it is not.³

What actually happens, in order

1. todo el mes Sale la decoración The decorations come out Flags on buildings, papel picado over streets, menus in green, white and red.
2. 15, en la noche El Grito The Cry Close to eleven, from the balcony. Then the anthem, then fireworks.
3. 16, de día El desfile The parade The military parade and the statutory holiday. Much of the country is recovering.

There is a good reason the party lands the night before the holiday, and it is not convenience. The original Grito happened in the early hours of 16 September 1810, in Dolores, Guanajuato.⁴ The commemoration was later fixed to the night of the 15th — a decision credited to Santa Anna — so the ceremony now falls on the eve of the date it commemorates. If someone invites you to a noche mexicana, the useful question is not what to bring but what time the grito is, because the whole evening is arranged around it.

Joining in without wearing the culture

Foreigners are welcome at all of this, genuinely and without reservation. The distinction people notice is between celebrating with Mexicans and dressing as Mexicans for one night.

The short version

Mes patrio is a season with three anniversaries in it, and the quiet one on the 13th sits two days before the loudest night of the year.

Learn patria as the emotional word and país as the ordinary one, ask what time the grito is, and wear the colors rather than the costume. That is most of it.