Before there was a flag, before there was a president, before there was a national anthem to stand for, there was a bell.
On the night of September 15, 1810, a Catholic priest named Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla rang the bell of his parish church in the small town of Dolores in the state of Guanajuato. He rang it to call his congregation together. What he said to them that night — a passionate appeal to rise against three centuries of colonial rule — began the chain of events that would lead, eleven years later, to Mexican independence.
El Dieciséis de Septiembre is the day those events culminated. It is Mexico's Independence Day. It is the day worth knowing, worth celebrating, worth carrying across the border and into every neighborhood where Mexican and Mexican-American families have put down roots.
What Is the Significance of September 16th in Mexican History?
September 16th is Mexico's Independence Day — the date in 1810 when Father Miguel Hidalgo rang the parish bell in Dolores, Guanajuato and called the people to rise against Spanish colonial rule. The date marks not just a political break but the birth of a national identity built from Indigenous roots, African heritage, and Spanish colonial history. It is one of the most important dates in the Mexican calendar, and in the Mexican-American community, it rivals any holiday on the year.
The Night That Changed Everything
New Spain in 1810 was a colony in tension. Three centuries of Spanish rule had produced a rigid social hierarchy — peninsulares (Spaniards born in Spain) at the top, then criollos (Spaniards born in the Americas), then mestizos, then Indigenous peoples, then enslaved Africans at the bottom. The wealth of the land flowed to Spain. The people who worked it had no say in how it was governed.
The ideas of the French and American revolutions were circulating among intellectuals and criollos. A group of conspirators — including Hidalgo, the military captain Ignacio Allende, and others — were planning an uprising. When the Spanish government discovered the plot and moved to arrest them, Hidalgo made a decision: don't wait. Act now.
He rang the bell of the Parroquia de Dolores. He spoke to the people who gathered. The exact words of what historians call El Grito de Dolores — the Cry of Dolores — are disputed. What happened next is not: thousands of Indigenous workers and mestizos followed Hidalgo's march. It was not a disciplined military campaign. It was a rising.
Miguel Hidalgo and the Cura de Dolores
Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla was 57 years old when he rang that bell. He was not a young revolutionary. He was a parish priest who had spent decades among the people of Dolores, teaching them to farm, to make wine, to care for bees. He was known in the region as a man who took his obligations to the poor seriously — which, in colonial New Spain, made him a suspicious figure to the authorities.
Hidalgo was captured by royalist forces in 1811 and executed. He never saw independence. But his image — the white-haired priest with the cry on his lips — became the face of the movement. In Mexico, his home state of Guanajuato renamed the town of Dolores to Dolores Hidalgo in his honor. The bell he rang that night now hangs above the balcony of the National Palace in Mexico City, where the President rings it every September 15th at 11 p.m.
What Happened on September 16, 1810
The date of independence is September 16 because that is the date Hidalgo formally began the march — not the date independence was achieved. Mexico's war for independence lasted eleven years. The final declaration came in 1821, when the Treaty of Córdoba was signed and the First Mexican Empire was established under Agustín de Iturbide.
But September 16, 1810 is the day remembered and celebrated. It is the day the bell rang. It is the day the people rose. It is the grito — the shout — that everything traces back to.
This distinction matters. Independence was not won in a day. It was won across eleven years of war, in battles from Guanajuato to Oaxaca to Veracruz, led by figures like José María Morelos, Vicente Guerrero, and Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez — La Corregidora, the woman who found a way to warn Hidalgo when the plot was discovered and could have stayed silent to save herself. The 16th celebrates the beginning, which is the right thing to celebrate: the courage to start.
The Flag, the Colors, the Meaning
The Mexican flag is tricolor: green, white, and red. In the center, the national coat of arms — an eagle perched on a nopal cactus, devouring a serpent — taken from an Aztec legend that told the Mexica people where to found their great city of Tenochtitlán. The combination says everything about what Mexico is: Indigenous roots, Spanish colonial history, the mestizo nation that emerged from the collision of both.
The colors have been assigned different meanings at different moments in history. One common interpretation: green for hope and independence, white for the purity of the Catholic faith and the unity of Mexicans, red for the blood of the heroes of independence. Whether you accept that reading or another, the three colors together are unmistakable.
On September 16th, they are everywhere. Pinned to lapels, draped from balconies, worn on the back in the form of a serape-colored phone case or a jersey with the eagle on the chest.
How Mexican-Americans Celebrate It Now
In neighborhoods with large Mexican and Mexican-American populations — East Los Angeles, Pilsen in Chicago, the Near Northside in Houston, colonias throughout the Southwest — el dieciséis is the late-summer celebration. It arrives after months of summer heat and it smells like tamales and elotes and the smoke of carne asada.
Fiestas patrias events go up in parks and plazas. Charreada (Mexican rodeo) competitions draw crowds from across the region. Folklorico dancers in embroidered dresses move through the footwork of Jalisco and Guerrero and Veracruz. Mariachis play from early morning. On the 15th, families gather the night before for their own version of el grito — someone calls out the names, someone rings a bell or bangs a pot, and the cousins shout back ¡Viva! into the kitchen air.
The food is the food of this culture. Not fusion, not rebranded. Tamales from the family recipe. Chiles en nogada if someone has the patience. Pozole verde if that's what the family does. The tricolor is everywhere: in the flag hung above the door, in the food on the table, in the decorations that come out of the same box every year.
According to the Pew Research Center, Mexican-Americans make up the largest share of the U.S. Latino population — more than 37 million people. El dieciséis de septiembre is their national holiday in the truest sense: the day that marks where the culture comes from, what it cost to build, and who built it.
What "Viva México" Actually Means
¡Viva México! — long live Mexico — is not a casual phrase. It is what Hidalgo shouted into the dark in 1810. It is what the crowd in the Zócalo shouts back to the President every September 15th. It is what Mexican and Mexican-American people shout at games and in bars and at family parties with the green and white and red on their chests.
To say Viva México is to say: I come from something. I know where this started. I carry the names — Hidalgo, Allende, Morelos, Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez, the conspirators whose courage made it possible. I carry the recipes and the dances and the language and the flag. I carry all of it, even here, even now.
The holiday does not need to be explained to those who celebrate it. It does not need to be sold or simplified for anyone. It is ours, and it has been ours for more than two centuries. El dieciséis de septiembre, we celebrate the beginning — the night a parish priest rang a bell and changed everything.
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Keep reading: El Grito de Independencia: What Happens at Midnight on September 15th | Hispanic Heritage Month: The Real History Behind September 15th