I wrote the entry below soon after the Mexican Independence Day celebration but hadn’t managed to post it—and the accompanying photos—yet. But today, during a club de conversation—a one-hour session of conversation for which students of English sign up and attend as assigned by their teachers—I discovered that one of the participants, Abigail, is a drama student and a mime whom I saw perform on September 15 and who in fact I photographed and wrote about. And that is my motivation for finally posting the entry and photos below:

On Saturday, September 15, Margarita and her 9-year-old daughter Miriam picked me up at my apartment, and we walked down (and I do mean down) steep Clavijero Street to Parque Juárez, which was already crowded with people milling around or sitting on benches or standing in one of seven or eight different food lines to be served a variety of different dishes—courtesy of the state government of Veracruz.


We didn’t eat—I was still full from la comida I’d eaten at Pery’s—but we watched one of several mimes who drew large crowds in the park that evening. The mime we watched was a young woman dressed and coiffed like Marie Antoinette who had us all spellbound, marveling first at her statue-like stillness and then at her slow, expressive movements of face and body.

An aside: Not long ago, Albuquerque’s city council passed a busking ordinance. Maybe when I get back, there’ll be mimes in Old Town and downtown and in the parks and on Central.

I always enjoy the opportunity to look at people—really look, really stare—because I find humans to be such fascinating creatures and because scrutinizing them is not allowed in polite society. We can look long and hard at children, but staring at others past the toddler stage is unacceptable social behavior. I remember taking a portrait-and-figure-drawing course in my 20s, and it was a freeing feeling to be able to intently study another person’s face and body. And this is what mimes invite us to do: to study them.

After that, Margarita, Miriam, and I wove our way through the crowds in the park and headed toward the cathedral and the palacio estatal (palace of the state government of Veracruz) located on opposites sides of the street. The streets of city’s center had been cordoned off, and people started to gather in front of the stage and runway erected for the entertainment to come.

We found a prime spot near the grandstand where the governor of the state of Veracruz, Fidel Herrera Beltran, and other dignitaries and their families would sit. From there, we watched some of the entertainment, beginning with a young woman named Sandra, a local talent who sang several songs. She was followed by three young women who sang operatic pieces; and then a danzon group, made up of six or seven couples in their late 60s and 70s who danced with rhythm and dignity.

At that point, we decided to find a place to sit and have something to drink. But as we pushed our way through the crowd—by now it was after 9, and the street was wall-to-wall people—I got separated from Margarita and Miriam. I assessed my chances of finding them again in the swelling crowd as nil, but I was determined to stay for el grito at 11:00 p.m. alone or in company. Then about a half hour later, almost miraculously, Margarita and Miriam found me, and we went for that drink.

We found a Cuban café, Cabanias, with tables outside in the callejon (alley) where Margarita ordered tequila served that night in three different shot glasses sporting the patriotic red, white, and green colors of Mexico's flag: the red one containing tomato juice and chile, among other ingredients; the "white" one containing tequila; and the green one containing lime juice. As for me, I had a glass of dry red wine.

When it got to be 10:45, we headed back to the centro to hear the grito de dolores—the cry of pain—first uttered by Miguel Hidalgo on September 16, 1810, and that over time has become a shout of pride: Viva Mexico! [If you’d like to see a very close facsimile of what I saw and heard last Saturday, view this YouTube video, which shows the stirring ritual as it took place in Mexico City at the same time that Xalapa’s celebration took place. In Mexico City, Mexico’s president Felipe Calderon was the principal actor, but in Xalapa, it was Veracruz state’s governor, Fidel Herrera Beltran.

As I listened to the people around me shout, “Viva…” in response, I could hear their pride in their mexicanidad, their country, their history, their culture, and I was moved by this demonstration of their national pride.

After the grito ritual, the fireworks show began—with great blossoms of red, white, and green exploding over our heads. We were so close, at times we could feel the rain of ashes in our eyes. And then, when the fireworks ended and the bands—the Banda Que Manda among them—were about to start playing, people behind us started pushing. It was a scary feeling, like being caught in an undertow while walking at the edge of the ocean. And there were little kids and babies in the crowd, on the shoulders or in the arms of their parents. Luckily, someone moved a barricade, and we were able to move around a large RV that otherwise might have become the windshield against which we bugs might have been squashed.

Once past the crush of people in the centro, we walked home through streets still full of kids, their parents, their grandparents, people still partying, people done partying and sitting in doorways, and people like us wending our way home.