Mexicanas, mexicanos:
¡Viva la Independencia!
¡Viva Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla!
Gather as the bronze bells of the Lord sound from on High! Prepare yourselves, for the flames of liberation are coming! We ask our Lady of Guadalupe: ruega por nosotros as we brandish our weapons and turn them on the viceroy! Our first rounds fire under the watch of cocoa eyes from Dolores with the hope that our bullets break off the arm of corruption from the statue of Spanish authority! Our second rounds aim at the guts of gluttons! The tears of mothers, whose children were lost to their gorging, will clean the streets of the filthy scraps they toss us! Our third rounds aim at the wicked slaveholders! May we pierce their spineless backs with the fruits of our labor born from their whips! Our fourth rounds, carried by the gracious wishes of the Padre, will fire from barrels resting on the chests of those who dare try to silence us on the day we finally declare victory!
¡Viva Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez!
Knock on your walls! Stomp on your floors! Breathe in the dust of your land and raise your voices! Call out to your sleeping brothers and sisters, for our hour has come! Come, you who were born of Las Sierras, your spirits unbreakable! The path to victory is treacherous and our trials will be more than mere cannons and bayonets Peaks cloaked in glistening white shrouds, sinuous rivers which carve out vast canyons, sweltering deserts home to serpents and scorpions whose venom is more potent than any Spaniard’s bullet The loss of life will, indeed, be great, but greater still is our yearning for dignity and freedom! Rise, you who were forged by Popocatépetl, your wills indomitable! Just as the warrior who watches over his sleeping maiden, you too must stay vigilant! Our enemy is one of great strength, but also one of great cunning He will try to fool you with titles and riches and false promises to place a crown on your head Be attentive to the needs of your people and listen not to the siren’s song of vanity in your heart. Come, then, all of you who inhabit this land, with pride in your hearts and bullets in your guns! Gather together as patriots for our noble cause!
¡Viva Ignacio Allende!
Be warned, brothers and sisters, that our fight will not be a short one The fighting will be arduous, our suffering will be great It is therefore in our best interests to unite! To unite as one force, to unite as one people, to unite as one nation! There are those among us who may think that raw power alone will bring us victory, but they are every bit as foolish as the ones who say our struggle is in vain! Just as our enemy will not rely on might alone, we too must be intelligent with our actions! We must learn to best the serpent at his own game Needless cruelty will only drive those uncertain of our cause into the arms of our enemy! Bloodshed for the sake of statement is every bit as cruel and evil as the desecrated bodies left on the roads! Such acts of barbarism would sooner serve as our poison than our sword Could we truly call ourselves a force of liberation for a people who we slaughter with impunity? To do so would only sow the seeds of cynicism which surely will bring us not the bountiful harvest of victory, but the bitter famine of defeat
¡Viva Leona Vicario!
For those who are less able-bodied, who must care for young children, and even those who find themselves gripped by man’s greatest adversary–fear–there is still a means by which you can aid your countrymen! Those who side with our enemy will no doubt try to feed their pernicious lies to you, but they will also serve them to your neighbors, your friends, your family Do not allow the deceptive spirit to roam free on your streets! Tear down papers printed with falsehoods! Quash words spoken with malice! Educate those who are ignorant! These are the actions oft overlooked that prop up a people’s hope! Be that hope! For civilians and soldiers alike, be their hope! Be like the mothers who prepare warm meals for their families! Be like the fathers who fight to keep the jaguars out of their homes! Be like the sisters that mend the clothing and the brothers who create toys and games out of sticks and leaves! And should you find yourselves called to testify against your fellow citizens or if soldiers invade your home for knowledge about their comings and goings, then you must harden your hearts and steel your tongues! Give to our enemies little respect and reveal even less! Fear not what punishment may come from these brutes, for it is the Lord who will punish traitors on the day of judgment, and I wish upon no soul here the wrath of God.
¡Viva José María Morelos y Pavón!
¡Viva Vicente Guerrero!
But our fight is not only for freedom from the crown, it is also for the freedom of our countrymen in chains! What honor is there in declaring ourselves a free people who benefit from the yoking of another? Some may claim it is merely the intelligent who enslave the ignorant, but did our Lord, the most intelligent of all, not liberate his people from slavery in Egypt? Slavery, in all its ghoulish forms, has no place in a society of free persons! Sugarcane and maíz harvested by shackled hands has no place on the tables of, in the bellies of, and lining the pockets of those who think it is good and proper to own a fellow human as a farmer owns his livestock! An honorable man is beholden to only three things: the law to which he shall adhere to create a prosperous society, his God who he shall honor and worship for all his days, and to himself. It is only the dishonorable man, beholden to the heinous ruler of Hell itself, who would dare think to subjugate his fellow citizen!
¡Vivan los héroes anónimos!
My friends, it is undeniable that we will not arise from this conflict unscathed and without great losses to ourselves We will lose homes, possessions, crops, and livelihoods We will lose names and faces, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. We will lose friends and neighbors, priests and farmers Rich and poor, old and young, we will lose them It is a painful truth that evidence of countless lives lived in humble service will fall in with the ashes of destruction I will not stand here before you and paint a portrait of war in nothing but gilded colors. To do so would be to perpetuate a falsehood so terrible that it would surely earn me my place in the lake of fire There is freedom and much more to be won in war, but there is just as much to be lost Such are the laws of this world that nothing can be earned without something of equal value being given. Christ Himself sacrificed his life to save us from death, so too must we sacrifice our lives to save ourselves and our children from tyranny. The hand of history will surely massacre many and spare only a fortuitous few, but we do not go with the fear of death! If we are to die, we will die amongst our brothers and sisters! We
will not die as traitors to the crown with shame on our backs, but with smiles on our faces as heroes of our land!
¡Viva la libertad!
¡Viva la igualdad!
¡Viva la justicia!
The world has seen what such an honorable struggle can accomplish! Only thirty-five years ago, our American friends to the North rose up against their own tyrannical crown! Scarcely six years ago, our Haitian friends to the East triumphed over their enslavers! Do not tell me that our fight for freedom is one that cannot be won! Do not tell me that our forces are not enough! Our spirit is enough! Our hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness is enough! We are enough! For what purpose did God give man legs if not to tread his own path? What motive was there in giving man hands if not to build cities where he might gather with his fellow men? What divine revelation could strike Him that He would make man in His own image and love him for eternity, yet condemn him to an existence of injustice and bondage? Flawed and sinful as human nature may be, it is not so pathetic as to desire its own subjugation! The eagle does not yearn for a cage! In every era, in every society, man yearns for freedom! And when that freedom is not soberly given, it is the obligation of the people to demand it, and grasp it firmly with their own two hands! Such was it in America! Such was it in Haiti! Such will it be here as well!
¡Viva la democracia!
¡Viva nuestra soberanía! ¡Viva la fraternidad universal!
It is without a doubt that the age of the monarch has come to its inevitable conclusion Even now, an imposter sits on the Spanish throne! This land had been a colony of the crown now worn by a fool! I ask you then: to whom does this land belong? Does it belong to that French conqueror’s puppet who dares call himself king? Does it belong to the viceroy whose gilded boot stands on our necks? No! This land belongs to us who break our backs building its cities! It belongs to us who drink from its crystal springs and eat from its branches of bounty! It belongs to us whose veins flow with the blood of Guadalupe! Empires and dynasties, along with their rulers, rise and fall like the tide. The Romans, as mighty as they were, one day saw their great city fall into ruin The Moors saw the day when their holy mosques became our grand cathedrals Those who are born, state and man alike, must one day face judgment at the hands of the Lord, but those who have tasted freedom are loathe to relinquish it so readily! Are we to be expected to bow to this new tyrant who has usurped the throne? Look around yourselves! This arid kingdom yet stands, even without a king! Is this not proof enough that such a position is not needed?
Mexicanas, mexicanos:
¡Que muera la corrupción!
What is the lone common man to do in the face of absolute power? If those who sit at the base of the snowy peaks drink the rivers dry every spring, what is left for us who are further
down its course? And what are we to do when they enact laws to prevent us from moving ourselves closer to them in the hopes that we might share in their comfort? If the poor man wishes for status equal to the rich man’s, what will the rich man do but everything he can to keep the poor man beneath him? Absolute power is an absolute evil, and yet, the Spaniards have thrown their clever lot in with it! They expect us to be complicit while they get richer and we get poorer! They terrify us into silence with the cracks of whips; our pain is their profit! No more! No more! Down with the encomiendas! Down with their predatory taxes! Down with their laws that take what they want and withhold what we deserve! If they wish to rule with absolute authority, then we shall show them just how absolute their downfall is to be!
¡Que muera la avaricia!
¡Que muera el racismo!
¡Que muera la discriminación!
¡Que viva el amor!
When you look amongst your neighbors, do not see them as pardo or mestizo or indio or criollo! See your brothers and sisters beside you for who they truly are: Mexicans! The peninsulares hunger for nothing but our destruction! They will stop at nothing to drive us apart from one another! They know that they cannot defeat us alone so they seek to make us destroy each other! Do not let them discourage you, for you have something far more precious than their silver or gold! You have your pueblos! Your ranchos! You have the food on your table and the clothes on your backs! You have your pride as citizens of this noble land! The Europeans pillage and conquer those they deem inferior and rule them with an iron grip, all while blaming them for their own subjugation “If only they had wealth like ours,” they say. “If only they had knowledge like ours, technology like ours. If only their skin was as fair as ours If only they were us!” It is time we show them that there is no shame in being who we are!
¡Que vivan nuestros hermanos migrantes!
¡Vivan nuestros pueblos indígenas!
¡Viva la grandeza cultural de México!
Open your arms to those parties who would join us, both foreign and domestic! The citizen born under the spires of a cathedral and the one baptized in Texcoco are not each other’s enemies! Treat the migrant who offers his hand as a brother, for all solidarity is welcome! Accept offers of food and medicine as you would a blessing from the Lord and repay them as you are able Among perceived enemies, do not hesitate to offer hospitality to those willing to lower their weapons. But if they insist upon violence, and a truce cannot be agreed upon, use your final words to inform them that we will never relent in our pursuit! We will resist their rule to the last soldier standing! We will endure until the last of our cities has been razed to the ground! We will fight until the last drop of our blood returns to nourish the soil from whence it came! When the golden future we long for arrives, this land will be New Spain no longer!
¡Viva México!
¡Viva México!
¡Viva México!