Mexican Bicentennial and Centennial Celebration

Throughout 2010 Mexico will celebrate Mexico’s Bicentennial Celebration. This celebration is for its 200 year Independence from Spain. Also, they will be celebrating its’ 100 anniversary of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 that toppled Dictator Porfirio Diaz.

The official countdown for these two Centennials began on September 16, 2010. Earlier this year President Felipe Calderon placed the first cornerstone for ‘El Arco del Bicentenario (Bicentennial Arch) on the ‘Paseo De La Reforma’ (Mexico’s equivalent of Les Champs Elysees) where Mexico will commemorate two hundred years of Independence. Very similar will be its celebration of the 100 year or Centennial of Mexican Independence.

The Mexican Bicentennial celebration is for the independence from Spain, the country that had control over the territory of New Spain, (Mexico.)The people were fueled by thee centuries of oppression and sparked by a call to revolt a by well respected Catholic priest named Miguel Hidalgo. The first call to arms was made in the village Dolores in the state of Guanajuato.  The rebellion rutted the indigenous Indians and the diverse mestizo groups against the privileged class of Spaniards and pushed them into a brutal and bloody battle for freedom from Spain.

On September 16, 1810 Miguel Hidalgo mad a monumental decision that would transform the course of Mexican history. Within hours Miguel Hidalgo ordered the arrest of the Dolores’ native Spaniards. Then he rang the church bell as he normally did to call the Indians to mass. The message that he gave the Indians and the meztizos called them to retaliate against the hated Gachupines, the native Spaniards who had oppressed and demoralized the Mexican people for ten generations.

A movement toward Mexican independence had already been in progress since the conquest of Napolean of Spain. Hidalgo’ fervent declaration was a hasty, unplanned decision on his part. Hidalgo made the most momentous decision in his life, one that manifested the first struggle for Mexican independence and would recognize Hidalgo as the national hero of the revolution.

Every year at midnight on September 15, Mexicans led by the president of Mexico shout the “Grito”, honoring the crucial and impulsive action that was the catalyst for the country’s bloody struggle for independence from Spain. There will be a Bicentennial Celebration in Mexico in the year 2010 like none in Mexico has ever seen.

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