Mexican Independence Day

Mexican Independence Day is a national holiday that marks the timing and private circumstances of Nora Hayden’s stay at the Regis Hotel in Mexico City. In the episode, its public celebration becomes the backdrop to a cabinet minister’s private arrangement—and a temporal marker for the shaking that interrupts Nora’s visit.

Holiday as a Plot Marker

A cabinet minister brings Nora Hayden to Mexico City to help him celebrate Mexican Independence Day. Three days later, she is still at the Regis Hotel, a landmark on Avenida Juárez near La Alameda Park. The holiday thus locates her in the city and establishes the duration of her stay without giving a calendar date in this passage.

Private Celebration at the Regis

The minister’s celebration is divided between public respectability and private indulgence: he returns home to his wife in the evenings, then comes back to the hotel in the afternoons. The narration’s dry description turns the language of independence into a private joke, making the national occasion the cover for a personal routine. Nora’s presence at the hotel is part of that arrangement, though the passage does not elaborate on its terms.

The Holiday and the Shaking

The three-day interval matters because Nora is still in her seventh-floor room when the shaking begins. At first she struggles to focus on the clock; then she recognizes that the side table, lamps, chair, and bed are moving. Mexican Independence Day therefore anchors the scene not only in a holiday visit but in the immediate circumstances from which Nora wakes to a world that seems to be moving beneath her.