Mexico City is set to celebrate the 214th anniversary of Mexico’s independence on Sept. 16 with a series of enormous lighting displays installed at the capital’s Zócalo.
Mexico City’s Public Works and Services Minister Jesús Esteva explained that the light mosaics for the 2024 national holidays pay tribute to Mexico’s historical memory.
“This year, we have 12 luminous mosaics on tricolor bands,” he said.
The light displays include images of leading historical figures, including key figures of Mexico’s independence movement such as Miguel Hidalgo and Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata and Latin America’s first Indigenous president, Benito Juárez, among others. The Mexica god Quetzalcóatl is also represented.
But the centerpiece of the light show is a three-dimensional, 16-meter-tall figure of an eagle devouring a snake — one of Mexico’s three national symbols.
“Remembering our past reaffirms our national identity and sovereignty,” Mexico City’s mayor Martí Batres said on X along with a video showing clips from the display’s inauguration.
Buildings in and around the Zócalo have also been decorated with the luminous images, including the Edificio de Gobierno (the capital’s city hall), the Museo Virreinal (the city’s historic city hall), and the Portal de Mercaderes (a space for merchant businesses that has existed since the Spanish colonial era).
Furthermore, lighting displays have been placed at other iconic locations in Mexico City, including Reforma Avenue, Insurgentes Avenue, 20 de Noviembre Avenue and the side street that connects with the nearby Plaza de la República.
The Public Works and Services Ministry (Sobse) said that for this year’s display, they used 32,000 colored LED lights. Powering the display requires 20,000 meters of power cables, the ministry said.
To mark the occasion, Sinaloa’s Banda MS will perform a free concert in the Zócalo after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador performs the traditional Independence Day ceremony, the Grito de Independencia or “cry for independence” — frequently referred to as “El Grito” — on the night of Sept. 15. In addition, a Mixe band from Oaxaca will also perform. The whole event will be broadcast on Mexico’s major television stations.
The Grito commemorates the call to Mexicans to take up arms against their colonial Spanish rulers, which was issued in a speech by revolutionary figure and Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla on Sept. 16, 1810 in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato.
One of Mexico’s Independence Day traditions is that the nation’s sitting president publicly recreates Hidalgo y Costilla’s historic speech from the balcony of the National Palace in the Zócalo, ringing a bell like Father Hidalgo did to gather Mexicans. The president also leads citizens gathered in the Zócalo in exuberant proclamations featuring the names of Mexico’s independence leaders, ending with “¡Viva Mexico!”
This year’s Grito will be President López Obrador’s last, as President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum takes office in October.
Earlier this year, the president announced that his last public political act before handing over the presidential sash on Oct. 1 to President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum would be his performance of the Grito. López Obrador has vowed to retire from political life to his home in Chiapas after his presidency ends.
He will present the presidential sash — and the reins of power — to Sheinbaum in a traditional inauguration ceremony at the Palacio de San Lázaro, the seat of the federal Congress.
