Scene 3: The Cry for Freedom

[A church balcony in the town of Dolores. It is before dawn, September 16, 1810. FATHER HIDALGO stands with his hand on a bell rope. ALLENDE waits below, anxious.]

NARRATOR: For three hundred years, Spain has ruled New Spain with an iron hand. Peninsulares—those born in Spain—hold all power. Criollos, pure Spanish but born in the Americas, are treated as second-class citizens. Mestizos and Indigenous people exist only to serve. But ideas are crossing the ocean—ideas about liberty, equality, revolution. And in the quiet town of Dolores, a parish priest named Miguel Hidalgo has been waiting for this moment.

ALLENDE: (urgently) Father, we have no choice now. The conspiracy has been discovered. They're coming to arrest us.

HIDALGO: (calmly) Then we begin tonight instead of October. God's timing is not always our timing, Allende.

ALLENDE: But we're not ready! We have no army, no weapons—

HIDALGO: We have something better. We have three centuries of injustice. We have the Virgin of Guadalupe. And we have... (gestures to the sleeping town) them.

[HIDALGO grips the bell rope and begins to ring. The bells peal out into the darkness. Lights come on throughout the stage as TOWNSPEOPLE emerge, confused.]

TOWNSPERSON 1: What is it? A fire?

TOWNSPERSON 2: The bells—at this hour?

HIDALGO: (his voice rising) My children! My children! Will you be free? Will you recover the lands stolen from your forefathers three hundred years ago?

TOWNSPEOPLE (chorus): (growing louder) Yes! Yes!

HIDALGO: Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the gachupines!

TOWNSPEOPLE (chorus): Viva! Viva!

[The cry is taken up. Lights shift to suggest the passage of time—months of war, victories, and defeats. MORELOS steps forward.]

NARRATOR: The Grito de Dolores ignited a war that would rage for eleven years. Father Hidalgo was captured and executed within a year, but his cry echoed through the mountains and valleys of Mexico.

MORELOS: (addressing an unseen congress) We are no longer called colonies, but a free nation. Slavery is abolished forever. All citizens are equal before the law, regardless of their origin.

ALLENDE: (as if from beyond, in memory) We knew we might not see freedom in our lifetimes. But we lit the torch.

[JOSEFA ORTIZ DE DOMÍNGUEZ steps into the light.]

JOSEFA: They will try to make this a story of men and battles. But remember who warned Hidalgo that night when the conspiracy was discovered. Remember the women who hid the wounded, who carried messages, who sacrificed everything.

NARRATOR: On September 27, 1821, eleven years after the Grito, the Army of the Three Guarantees entered Mexico City. Independence was declared. But the question remained: What would this new nation become?

HIDALGO: (appearing in a final spotlight) We rang the bell. We raised the banner of Guadalupe. We dreamed of a nation where birth would not determine destiny. Our children... will tell us if we succeeded.