Mexico City was preparing to live one of its most important and emotive nights as the Independence Cry was set for the Zócalo, with more than 250,000 people expected to fill the plaza. Elián Zidán reported from the heart of the capital as thousands were already concentrating there and only a few hours remained before the celebration took over the square.
The draw was clear: music, fireworks and a ceremony tied to the country’s independence tradition. Intocable was scheduled to give a concert in the Zócalo, while fireworks were expected to begin from Mexico City, turning the gathering into a massive public event in the center of the city.
That scale helps explain why the number mattered. Zidán said it was expected that “more than 250,000 people” would arrive at the plaza, a crowd large enough to make the Zócalo one of the city’s biggest holiday assemblies. The celebration was taking place 216 years after independence, and the balcony of Palacio Nacional was to be the place where the arenga would be pronounced for the second time.
The political language around the ceremony was also shifting, even if the details were left broad. Zidán said there would be changes and that heroines and heroes of the patria would be added to the call, but the report did not spell out exactly which names or words were new. It did say the arenga would begin with “mexicanos y mexicanas,” and that the previous year Claudia Sheinbaum had used the name Josefa Ortiz Téllez Girón while saying women are not owned by anyone.
The setting carries its own weight. The Zócalo, also called the Plaza de la Constitución, sits in the area of the former Gran Tenochtitlán and is framed by a cathedral that took more than 200 years to build, passed through more than 20 architects and began to sink because it was built on wooden piles. The report also noted that the area had once been a lake, a reminder that the stage for the country’s most symbolic night was never meant to be fixed in one shape.
Coverage was scheduled to begin at 11:35 through Univision, Galavisión and Vix, with the ceremony and concert set to proceed that night. What remained unsettled was the exact shape of the updated arenga, even as the crowd, the music and the fireworks were already waiting for the night to begin.
