The nation state form, which creates collective ideological identities under a common flag, history, language, and other symbolic resources, is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. In the colonized land that came to be known as “México,” settler colonialism materialized the transformation of a colony into a nation state. This transfiguration can inform how rhetoric makes things matter by analyzing what makes rhetoric. By managing the magnitude in-between presence and absence, I try to answer the question: how does one rhetorically read the nation state form as a text? Finally, I analyze a text that is said to have started the call for Mexican Independence in El Grito de Dolores, which is now memorialized every year by the sitting Mexican President.

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