Every September 15, a curious thing happens in American cities. Bars in San Antonio and Los Angeles advertise "Grito Night" specials. College students who couldn't find Mexico on a map last week are suddenly shouting "¡Viva México!" at 11 p.m. sharp, phone cameras rolling. And every year, I watch a sacred ritual of another nation get flattened into a drinking game.
The Grito de Independencia is not a party theme. It's the cry Father Miguel Hidalgo let loose from his church in Dolores, Guanajuato, in the early hours of September 16, 1810 — a call to arms against Spanish colonial rule that launched Mexico's war for independence. It is Mexico's Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Memorial Day rolled into one, a moment when a nation remembers the people who died so it could exist.
Here in the States, we've turned it into a margarita promotion. And that's not just tacky. It's a symptom of something worse: our growing inability to treat anything as sacred unless it's ours.
Think about how we'd react if a bar in Mexico City ran "Fourth of July Shots" with red-white-and-blue Jell-O and a guy in a Washington wig yelling "Yeehaw" at midnight. We'd call it crass. We'd be right. But when the shoe is on the other foot, we call it "cultural appreciation" and post the video.
The deeper problem is that we've outsourced meaning to the market. Everything is content now. A 215-year-old battle cry becomes a caption. A religious and civic ritual becomes an excuse to day-drink. We don't participate in other cultures anymore so much as we consume them — and then we wonder why nothing feels important.
Meanwhile, actual Mexican Americans are navigating a strange double bind. Many grew up watching their abuelas cry during the Grito, hearing the names of heroes like Allende and Aldama recited in order. They know the ceremony matters. But in mixed American spaces, they watch their heritage get reduced to a hashtag, and if they say something, they're the buzzkill.
"We don't mind sharing," one second-generation friend told me in San Antonio. "We mind being turned into a costume."
And that's the heart of it. America has always been good at absorbing other people's traditions and stripping them of gravity. We did it to Cinco de Mayo — a holiday most Mexicans barely observe, now America's biggest beer-selling excuse after St. Patrick's Day. We did it to Dia de los Muertos, now sold at Party City next to the plastic pumpkins. The Grito is just the latest casualty.
So here's a modest proposal. If you're going to shout "¡Viva México!" this September, learn why. Learn who Hidalgo was. Learn what the bells mean. Learn that the ceremony is reenacted at 11 p.m. every year because that's the hour the cry went up. Then raise your glass — with respect, not as a punchline.
Because a society that can't hold anything sacred isn't diverse. It's just hollow, wearing other people's holidays as accessories.
We keep proving we can commercialize anything. The only question left is whether we can still honor anything.