When did Miguel Hildalgo's speech take place?

Answer 1

Sunday September 16th 1810 At about eight o'clock in the morning,

From The Hidalgo Revolt by Hugh Hamill. At the core of Mexican patriotism is Hidalgo's Grito de Dolores. Every year, on the night of September 15-16, the President of the Republic "reenacts" the Grito on a balcony of the National Palace as the climax of the Independence Day celebrations.

To do this with historical accuracy is well-nigh impossible, for no one knows precisely what Hidalgo said.

The three principal contemporary reports fail to agree. Sotelo's account, the most confused and least authoritative, stated that the Grito was a short speech made from the window of the priest's house to the first group of followers who assembled before dawn.

Juan de Aldama's account of the Grito was recorded only a few months after the event. His version indicates some practical considerations but omits mention of any climactic conclusion to Hidalgo's speech. At about eight o'clock in the morning

"there were gathered more than six hundred men on foot and horseback for it was Sunday and they had come to Mass from the nearby Ranches, and the cura exhorted them to join him and help him defend the Kingdom because they [Yermo, Aguirre, et al.] wanted to turn it over to the French: that now oppression had reached an end: that there was no longer any tribute: that those who enlisted with horses and Arms would be paid a peso daily, and those on foot four reales." Aldama added that "the delivery of the Kingdom to the French was nothing more than a pretext for a very opposite end."