Tonight is celebrated an event of symbolic political, social and cultural significance. It is summed up with the phrase, “Death to bad government” and the event is the Grito de Dolores (“The Cry of Dolores,” named for a small town in Mexico).
The Grito de Dolores is the July 4th of Mexico: the celebration of their fight for independence from their own colonial power, Spain. Its rallying cry is “Death to Bad Government,” the tone of it has similarities with that of our Tea Parties, and conservatives well might embrace it.
On Sept. 15, 1810, just before midnight, Father Miguel Hidalgo ordered the bells of his church to be rung to summon his congregation and said:
My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once…. Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government!
So 2010 is the Grito‘s 200th anniversary. Among Mexicans, it is “an almost mythic event.” The Grito is redolent of America’s “revolutionary” values, values that reside inside America’s DNA and in the human core.
The Declaration of Independence and the Grito are rooted in the same ground: Dignity.
The Grito represents an opportunity for conservatives and Tea Partiers to celebrate the values we share with Hispanics. Tonight, on the eve of the Grito, half a million people will gather in the plaza outside the presidential palace of Mexico; millions more will rally throughout Mexico and many thousands here. Church bells will echo across the continent. Let us recognize and celebrate those who will “defend your religion and your rights as true patriots.”
The swelling Hispanic population here is a gift to conservatives and to the United States. Hispanic values are core American, and conservative, values, including pro life, traditional marriage, family and community minded, hard working, entrepreneurial, respectful of property rights, religious and deeply patriotic.
More Hispanics than any other defined ethnic group have received the congressional Medal of Honor at the risk of their own life above and beyond the call of duty in action against an enemy of the United States. Real conservatives say: Mi casa, su casa.
Bewildered by the moral hazard created by America’s long non-enforcement of its immigration laws, some conservatives have been slow to recognize how potent a cultural, social, economic and potentially political force for bringing the United States back to its moral and free-market roots is our growing Hispanic population.
Once conservatives come to terms with adding a redemptive step so that illegal aliens, if otherwise of good character, can earn their way to citizenship (very different from “amnesty”), it will be our privilege to welcome them into leadership of our councils.
The Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles (whose umbrella group, American Principles in Action, I advise) is demonstrating how Hispanics will support conservatives by promoting, within California’s Latino communities, the candidacy of Carly Fiorina to the United States Senate.
Pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-limited government, Fiorina exemplifies Latino as well as conservative values. Sen. Barbara Boxer, the incumbent California Democrat, does not. If Hispanics recognize Carly as their own, they will provide her with the victory margin.
The millions of Hispanics in America make up an invisible conservative electoral El Dorado, “City of Gold,” enriching American society. They are “imprisoned lighting” that can, once unleashed, help restore America to greatness.
Tonight no conservative should hesitate to ring a bell for the Grito de Dolores and for Father Hildago’s cry of “Death to bad government.”
Examiner contributor Ralph Benko is author of “The Webster’s Dictionary: How to use the web to transform the world.” He is also an adviser to the American Principles Project.
