Frontera NorteSur
In uncertain and tumultuous times, Mexico’s celebrated its 200th anniversary of the War of Independence from Spain on September 16.
Euphoric cries were mixed with a flashy Mexico City military parade, a counter-bicentennial gathering, fresh outbreaks of narco-violence in different parts of the country and goads of symbolism that embodied the past, present and future of a nation of more than 100 million people. As the historic day faded, Hurricane Karl bore down on the state of Veracruz, already battered by this summer’s torrential rains.
At a ceremony in the town of Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, the unassuming place where Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla launched the 1810 rebellion that resulted in Mexican independence 11 years later, President Felipe Calderon was greeted with a sprinkling of obscenities and unusual shouts.
Some members of the audience reportedly yelled out “Viva El Chapo,” or “Long Live El Chapo,” in apparent reference to fugitive drug lord Joaquin Guzman Loera. “Death to the Bad Government!” also was heard.
Later, Calderon presided over a Mexico City military parade of about 23,000 Mexican army and navy personnel, including members of elite anti-narco units. While air force jets flew overhead, military delegations from 17 countries were on hand for the historic commemoration.
The participation of a Federal Police contingent was an unusual feature of this year’s parade. As the emerging front-line force in the so-called drug war, the Federal Police headed by Genaro Garcia Luna is the institution favored by Mexico City and Washington to take over combat of organized crime from the army and the navy.
Plenty of narco-tainted violence disturbed the bi-centennial celebration.
In Tamaulipas, a September 16 shoot-out between the military and suspected cartel members left 22 alleged delinquents dead. In the central city of Aguascalientes, a grenade was tossed at police patrol, while three hours down the road in Guadalajara, the bodies of two men who had been costumed up to resemble old-time revolutionaries were draped from an overpass.
In the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Luis Carlos Santiago Orzoco, a 21-year-old photographer for the El Diario de Juarez newspaper, was gunned down in the middle of the afternoon in the parking lot of the popular Rio Grande Mall. Santiago’s companion and fellow photographer, Carlos Manuel Sanchez Colunga, 18, was seriously wounded in the attack.
The young men had just attended a photography workshop held at El Diario’s offices located down the street from the scene of the shooting. Santiago was reportedly a friend of Alejo de la Rosa, son of Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission investigator Gustavo de la Rosa.
Condemning the attack, the elder de la Rosa demanded a thorough probe.
Both his son and the slain Santiago were previously threatened by a group of youth he described as “half-way gangsters and drug addicts.”
In 2009 de la Rosa was briefly locked up in El Paso by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, after he indicated to US border guards he was afraid for his safety in Mexico.
The International Journalists Federation also denounced the bicentennial murder of Luis Carlos Santiago.
In Ciudad Juarez and eight other municipalities of Chihuahua, the state where the priest Hidalgo was executed in 1811, actual and threatened violence prompted local authorities to cancel the traditional midnight festivities that kick off September 16 celebrations. “We’ve offered police protection, but the cancellation of celebrations, their autonomy, is respectable,” said outgoing Governor Jose Reyes Baeza.
A scheduled but muted street parade was pulled off during the daylight hours of September 16 in Ciudad Juarez under heavy security. In Chihuahua City, a public protest led by the Mormon community of Le Baron reportedly dwindled in numbers because of pre-September 16 fiesta violence.
“I don’t know if we are going to celebrate Independence,” said community leader Erick Le Baron, “but what I do know is that we must involve ourselves in a movement for peace to end the insecurity which does not permit us to live or work freely.”
Back in Mexico City, 2006 (and 2012) presidential candidate and left opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador staged a counter-bicentennial event that drew thousands to the Plaza of Three Cultures, site of the 1968 Olympic Games massacre of hundreds of students by Mexican soldiers and police.
Almost like the priest Hidalgo two centuries earlier, Lopez Obrador rang a bell of freedom and shouted, “Down with the Bad Government! “Long Live the Downtrodden!” “Long Live the New Republic.” After invoking the memories of Mexican heroes of independence, the former Mexico City mayor urged his followers to work for the “rebirth” of the Mexican people via the ballot box.
Meanwhile, another opposition movement, the indigenous Zapatista Army of National Liberation, continued its long and intriguing silence in the jungles and mountains of southern Mexico’s Chiapas state.
Thousands turned out for September 16 events in the Other Mexico. Big crowds gathered in New York City, a place with a relatively new and large Mexican immigrant population, and in El Paso, Texas, home to many former residents of neighboring Ciudad Juarez exiled by crime and violence.
Although US media rarely devotes much attention to the significance of September 16, a great chunk of the land mass of the present-day US was part of the country that freed itself from Spanish rule.
Writing in the Albuquerque Journal, Dr. Cynthia E. Orozco, chair of the history and humanities department at Eastern New Mexico University-Ruidoso, recounted how a lively independence celebration was held in Santa Fe after residents of the then-remote town belatedly found out about Mexico’s freedom from Spain in 1822.
“Hispano New Mexicans did indeed celebrate Mexico’s victory,” Dr. Orozco wrote. “A Spanish/Mexican identity persisted.” While noting that September 16 has not been widely celebrated in New Mexico in more recent times, the border state historian predicted that omission will change as Mexican immigration deepens and “more Nuevo Mexicanos recognize their ties to Spain and Mexico.”
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico