The Morgan Hill family will expand next week when Mayor Dennis
Kennedy signs up a second sister city. The mayor, his wife Eileen
and a group of Sister City enthusiasts leave Sunday for San Martin
de Hidalgo in Jalisco, Mexico, to formalize the relationship
between the two cities.
The Morgan Hill family will expand next week when Mayor Dennis Kennedy signs up a second sister city. The mayor, his wife Eileen and a group of Sister City enthusiasts leave Sunday for San Martin de Hidalgo in Jalisco, Mexico, to formalize the relationship between the two cities.
Mexicans will celebrate their Independence Day on Tuesday, Sept. 16, and part of Morgan Hill will be there to help. Mayor Pietro Roselli of San Casciano, Italy, the first Sister City, visited Morgan Hill this year over the American Independence Day celebration. Kennedy said he appreciates the connection and looks forward to the experience.
“The Independence Day celebration should be a very interesting time,” Kennedy said.
San Martin plans a big welcome.
“They plan to have a Mariachi band to meet us at the airport and lots of people, too,” Kennedy said. During the actual signing ceremony Kennedy said he plans to present the San Martin Presidente Municipal (mayor), Dr. Carlos Alberto Rosas Camacho, with an engraved silver tray recognizing the Sister City relationship.
“We’ll also be taking a lot of T-shirts and caps imprinted with the Morgan Hill logo,” Kennedy said.
The delegation also includes Council woman Hedy Chang, Jess Ambriz, Peter and Elena Anderson, Chuck Dillmann, Ida Williams and Bill Newkirk and Lien Newkirk. Bill is an analyst in the city’s Business Assistance and Housing Services department and has guided the Sister City program’s development from the beginning.
The mayor and his wife will be staying with Rosas Camacho and his family, which Kennedy said they are looking forward to especially since Eileen Kennedy is a nurse and Camacho a medical doctor. The other eight, according to Newkirk, will stay with San Martin citizens including an American expatriate named Tippet and his wife who is Mexican.
San Martin de Hidalgo is located in the Mexican state of Jalisco about half way down the west coast of Mexico – below Sonora and Sinaloa. It enjoys a long Pacific Ocean coastline and is surrounded by Zacatecas, Colima, Durango and Michoacan.
In another local connection, Santa Clara County’s San Martin was named after Martin Murphy, Sr., patriarch of an early settling family. The Murphy family also owned thousands of acres of land in the Mexican state of Durango. In fact, one of Martin Murphy’s grandchildren, Diana Murphy Hill – the wife of Hiram Morgan Hill – was once known as “the Duchess of Durango.”
MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE
Cinco de Mayo, contrary to what most Californians believe, is not the day on which Mexicans celebrate their independence. Sept. 16, 1810 was the day when Mexicans began a revolt to evict their Spanish rulers, headed by the Spanish king, Ferdinand VII.
Napolean Bonaparte was causing a political and economic upheaval in Europe that also threatened the Mexican culture, developed over three centuries since the Spaniards arrived in La Nueva España, or New Spain.
The French threat against their values united two groups in La Nueva España, the “criollos” – descendants of Spaniards born in Mexico – and the “mestizos” – descendants of intermarriage between Spaniards and indigenous peoples. The insurgents – los insurgentes – planned to begin the revolutionary movement in Queretaro.
A priest from the nearby parish of Dolores, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, discovered on Sept. 15 that the insurgents’ plans had been uncovered by Spanish authorities and encouraged the revolution to begin the next day by ringing the church bell just before midnight on Sept. 15. Local people heard the Dolores’ church bell ringing and gathered in the courtyard.
Father Hidalgo urged them on with a now-famous “Grito” cry:
“Long live religion!, Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe! Long live the Americas and death to the corrupt government!”
The famous bell was installed shortly afterwards above the central balcony of the National Palace in Mexico City and is rung every Sept. 15 at 11 p.m. by the president of Mexico.
The “Grito” or cry of independence, is repeated each Sept.16 in Mexico City by the president and by the governors of every state throughout the country. Other presidentes have added to the historic cry. Presidente Benito Juarez, another historic figure, once included a call to honor those who sacrificed to free their country: “Long live the heroes of our Independence.”
Cinco de Mayo celebrates the victory of the Mexican army over the occupying army of France at in 1862, a later year and different enemy.
- Lori Escobar, director of El Toro Youth Center, provided information on the Mexican Independence Day history.
