Posted
on September 23, 2014
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| This is the church of Lares, with a memorial to the Grito in front. |
Imagine
being in the town of Lares, Puerto Rico, on this date in 1868.
A
group of men come into town at midnight. They loot the stores and
offices that are owned by peninsulares (men born in Spain),
and they take over the city hall. They enter the church and place a
revolutionary flag on the High Altar.
At
2:00 a.m. they declare Puerto Rico, colony of Spain, to be henceforth
the Republic of Puerto Rico.
A
rebellion has begun!
 |
| The flag of Lares is considered Puerto Rico's first flag. |
 |
| This is Puerto Rico's modern flag. |
Actually,
Spain's forces put the revolt down in short order—even though more
rebels rose up elsewhere on the island of Puerto Rico.
But the
rebellion did have some effect, because Spain gave the Puerto Ricans
more freedom to rule themselves.
About
thirty years later, Spain gave Puerto Rico all the rights of other
autonomous regions of Spain.
But the very next year Spain ceded the
island to the United States as the “spoils of war” after the
Spanish-American War.
The
U.S. granted Puerto Ricans citizenship, and they also have the right
of self-rule. For years, while still under Spanish rule, Puerto
Ricans had not been able to celebrate the Grito de Lares as a
holiday, but some nationalists encouraged celebrations from 1911 on.
Something
I would like to see...
I
know that Puerto Rico has some beautiful beaches, but I really enjoy
looking at old cemeteries, and the Cementerio
Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis looks
pretty gorgeous! Look at this beautiful tomb sculpture:
Something
I would like to hear...
Apparently Puerto Rico's capital, San Juan, has all these old cafes and bars with jukeboxes, and people not
only play the songs on the jukeboxes, they sing along as well. And
sometimes the singing crowds spill out onto the cobblestoned street.
I think it would be fun to walk along a street in San Juan, listening
to own crowd's enthusiastic singing fade away just as another crowd's
rendition of another song becomes audible.
Something
I would like to taste...
The
icy treat called limber
is a cross between shaved ice and sorbet. A man named Eddie has been
serving a variety of delicious flavors of limber (but only a few
choices a day) in plastic Dixie cups for decades now.
Learn
more about Puerto Rico with this earlier post – and with the
links it includes to even earlier posts!
By
the way...
If
you were wondering why this holiday is called “Grito de Lares,”
the word grito means “cry,” and an earlier revolution
against Spain, Mexico's revolution, began with “el Grito de
Dolores,” which means “Cry of Dolores.” (Dolores was the
town in Mexico where the revolution began.) So Puerto Rico's use of
the word “cry” honors that successful revolt from about half a
century earlier.
Also
on this date:
Plan ahead:
Check
out my Pinterest boards for:
And
here are my Pinterest boards for:
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