Years of restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador replaced the traditional "vivas" with the phrases "Death to corruption! Death to classism! Death to racism!" After the "vivas" to national independence and to the initiators of the insurgency in 1810, the president added three "mueras" (deaths), resuming and closing the ceremony with three "Long live Mexico!"
The streams of people had begun to flow in and out as the afternoon drew on. The afternoon rain kept some people away, but by ten o'clock at night the plaza was packed, the steps beneath the Palace empty, and people continued to pour in. "What's the point, it's full now? You can't get through," said a police officer who, with his colleagues, had resigned himself to trying to get the men to go one way and the women to another.
On a corner of the Supreme Court, Manuel Oropeza, the Historic Center Authority—that's his title—and a couple of his staffers were bored, asking passersby to leave their flagpoles there. "Everything was very peaceful," the official simply said.
There was an hour left until the Grito ceremony, and the head of government, Claudia Sheinbaum, reported that there were 130,000 people in the Zócalo. And counting, anyone would say amid the shoving.
Shortly before nine o'clock at night, Los Tigres del Norte had launched into their classic "Jefe de Jefes" (Chief of Chiefs), following a video presentation in which the musicians expressed their pride in playing that day in the main square.
As chance would have it, the release of drug trafficker Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, whom some consider the boss of bosses, was postponed on this very day.
