The long-forgotten origins of Mexico’s national anthem

While most Americans know the story or at least the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” comparatively few Mexicans know who was behind their national anthem.

Francis Scott Key famously wrote the former after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy in Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812, but the composition of the “Himno Nacional Mexicano” remains a largely unknown tale.

“It’s time that schools and government pay attention to the education of children, they should know what the national anthem means, who wrote it, when and under what conditions,” said Tec de Monterrey researcher Arlene Ramirez Uresti this week. “These things are now being forgotten.”

The winning entries, chosen the following year, were a ten-verse composition by criollo poet Francisco Gonzalez Bocanegra, who reluctantly agreed to enter the competition after much persuasion from his fiancee, and a piece of music entitled “Dios y Libertad” by Catalan composer Jaime Nuno. The two works were combined to form the “Himno Nacional,” which was first performed on September 16, 1854.

When de Santa Anna’s government fell in 1855, Nuno fled Mexico and settled in Buffalo, New York, where he died in 1908. His role in composing the anthem was largely forgotten until a biographer uncovered a trove of 6,000 of Nuno’s letters, photographs and newspaper clippings in the attic of his Buffalo home in 2010.

Since 1953, the full anthem officially consists of the chorus and the first, fifth, sixth and tenth stanzas of Gonzalez’s poem. At sporting events, only the chorus and first stanza are played, while when opening and closing television or radio programming, stations often play a version consisting of the chorus and the first and tenth stanzas.
All children learn the words of the Mexican national anthem from an early age, since it is sung at schools each Monday morning.

You may have heard the Mexican anthem during the Olympic Games this summer or at other events and it will receive plenty more airings throughout this weekend’s Dia de Independencia celebrations.

EL HIMNO NACIONAL

Chorus

Mexicanos, al grito de guerra
el acero aprestad y el bridón.
Y retiemble en sus centros la Tierra,
al sonoro rugir del cañón.
Y retiemble en sus centros la Tierra,
al sonoro rugir del cañón!

(Mexicans, at the cry of war,
make ready the steel and the bridle,
And may the Earth tremble at its centers
at the resounding roar of the cannon.
And may the Earth tremble at its centers
at the resounding roar of the cannon!)

Stanza I

Ciña ¡oh Patria! tus sienes de oliva
de la paz el arcángel divino,
que en el cielo tu eterno destino
por el dedo de Dios se escribió.
Mas si osare un extraño enemigo
profanar con su planta tu suelo,
piensa ¡oh Patria querida! que el cielo
un soldado en cada hijo te dio.

(Let gird, oh Fatherland!, your brow with olive
by the divine archangel of peace,
for in heaven your eternal destiny
was written by the finger of God.
But if some enemy outlander should dare
to profane your ground with his sole,
think, oh beloved Fatherland!, that heaven
has given you a soldier in every son.)

DID YOU KNOW?

At the Olympics and other sporting events, only the chorus and first stanza of Mexico’s national anthem are played.