Mossyrock residents and visitors alike are invited to the city’s Mexican Independence Day celebration, scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 16.
Mossyrock’s population, last counted at 739 people, is 34 percent Hispanic, more than double that of the state of Washington as a whole, according to the U.S. Census.
“We don’t have everything formalized yet as far as activities … but it’s coming right along,” Mossyrock Mayor Randall Sasser told The Chronicle. “There’s going to be a parade. There’s going to be bicycle races. There’s going to be dancing and piñatas. All that good stuff.”
While it is celebrating Mexican Independence Day, Sasser said everyone is invited. He said he hopes the event will help bring everyone in the community closer together.
“It’s for everyone. It’s to pull people together and try to understand each others’ culture and get more informed,” Sasser said.
Festivities will begin with a children’s bicycle race west of downtown Mossyrock. Kids wishing to participate will meet at the intersection of Isbell Road and West State Street between 10:30 and 10:45 a.m. to line up for the race.
Following the bicycle race, the Mexican Independence Day parade will begin at noon and make its way down East State Street through downtown Mossyrock.
After the parade, there will be a variety of activities including fútbol matches, piñatas, dancing ponies, sack races, a greased pole climb and other games. There will also be vendors, food trucks and music, all at Klickitat Prairie Park, from 1:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Once daylight fades, a DJ will perform for a dance party at the park until midnight. For more information, visit https://mossyrockfestivals.org/.
Klickitat Prairie Park is located just south of downtown Mossyrock off of E. State Street.
The history behind the date
Some 34 years after the American Revolutionary War, on Sept. 16, 1810, a Catholic priest named Miguel Hidalgo gave an impassioned speech to a large congregation made up of indigenous and mestizo people at the Dolores Parish Church in Guanajuato, Mexico.
The speech is known as Grito de Dolores, meaning the Cry of Dolores, and it ended up being the spark of the eventual 11-year-long Mexican War of Independence.
Mestizo was a racial classification for someone of mixed race and part of the Sistema de Castas, or the Casta system. It was a segregation system used by colonial Spain to control every aspect of life — for example, who can own land and who can work which jobs — and establish a social hierarchy, all based on ethnicity.
Being a priest and tasked to convert those in the Spanish colony to Catholicism, Hidalgo eventually grew disheartened with how the indigenous and many those in the lower classifications of the Casta system were being enslaved, exploited and persecuted.
This led to him giving his speech on Sept. 16, 1810, calling for an end of Spanish colonial rule, racial equality and redistribution of land.
Hidalgo was able to amass a small army and embark on a short military campaign, coming close to capturing the Mexican capital. He was defeated just short of the capital at the Battle of Calderón Bridge in January of 1811.
He was subsequently arrested trying to flee to the United States, stripped of his priesthood by the Spanish Inquisition, excommunicated from the Catholic church and executed on July 30, 1811. The Mexican War of Independence raged on until 1821.
Hidalgo has been immortalized in Mexican artwork and music since then and is considered Mexico’s founding father. His birthday is a civic holiday in Mexico and his remains are entombed in the column of the Angel of Independence statue in Mexico City.
The Casta system was created in the early 1500s and dismantled during the 1830s, following the Mexican Revolution as well as several other Spanish colonies which also fought for independence.
