El Grito

What it is

One specific night. On September 15 the president appears on the balcony of the National Palace close to eleven, rings the bell brought from Dolores in 1896, calls out a roll of independence heroes and ¡Viva México!, and the crowd answers ¡Viva! to each one. Then the flag - taken from the honor guard and waved from the balcony, which is the image everybody has of the night - then the national anthem, sung by the whole square, and then the fireworks.

Every mayor in the country does the same thing in their own plaza at the same hour, and a great many families do a scaled-down version at home. Saying we are going to el Grito can mean the Zócalo, a town square, or somebody's roof.

Literal meaning

Un grito is a shout. The one being reenacted is the call the priest Miguel Hidalgo is said to have made in the town of Dolores in the early hours of September 16, 1810, to start the uprising.

What he actually said is not recorded, and the versions you will read were written down long afterwards. The modern shout is a roll of independence heroes followed by ¡Viva México! three times, and its wording changes with the government of the day - names get added and dropped, and recent administrations have added vivas to women and to indigenous women. Treat any version you are given as this year's, not as the original.

There is a story that Porfirio Díaz moved the celebration to the 15th because that was his birthday. He was born on September 15 - and the story is still false. Mexicans were marking the night of the 15th from the 1820s, and by 1840 the civic ceremony was already at eleven at night with a fair, a serenade and fireworks, decades before Díaz was president.

The real reason is duller and older: it is a víspera. The party is the eve, the way Christmas Eve outranks Christmas Day across the Spanish-speaking world. What Díaz did was formalize the ceremony, and in 1896 have the bell brought from Dolores to the National Palace - it is still there, and it is the bell that gets rung.

How it works in Mexico

It is the plan and the invitation. ¿Qué vas a hacer para el Grito? is a normal September question, and the answers are the Zócalo, a plaza, somebody's house, or nothing.

The food is part of the definition. Pozole is the standard, and September is also the season for chiles en nogada - the dish with the three colors of the flag on it, which is available for a few weeks and then gone.

The Zócalo version is enormous and it is a commitment. People arrive in the afternoon for a shout at eleven, there is no leaving early once you are in, and most chilangos will tell you to do it once and then do it in a plaza afterwards. What they will warn you about is the espuma - cans of foam sprayed at faces - plus confetti, matracas, and pickpockets in a crowd of a hundred thousand.

And what actually gets shouted after the official vivas, in the square and in every living room, is ¡Viva México, cabrones! On that night it is affectionate rather than aggressive, and it is the most quoted line of the whole thing. It does not travel to Monday.

Abroad, Mexican consulates hold their own, and for a lot of people living outside the country it is the night they show up.

Common mistake

Turning up on the 16th expecting the party. The 16th is the holiday and the parade; the night is the 15th, and somebody who invites you to el Grito means the evening before the date they said.

Confusing it with Cinco de Mayo. They are different months, different centuries and different events, and the confusion runs almost entirely one direction - from the United States, where Cinco de Mayo is the bigger occasion.