The Bicentenario

There was a rather sizable celebration in Mexico last week, as the country celebrated the 200th year of its existence. At the same time, it also celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution.

The fact that one occurred in 1810 and the other in 1910 always struck me as pleasantly convenient. This brought great comfort to me and thousands of other children forced to memorize dates.

On the other hand, the precise hundred year gap also brought about a feeling of slight discomfort, not unlike that feeling you get when you are afraid that you have mistaken coincidence for fate. This is a feeling you laugh at in the daytime, but come night you lie awake in bed counting the days until the calendar turns the page on 2010. You know, just in case things come in hundreds.

It is no secret that the current situation in Mexico is precarious. I am not the first to note this symmetry. The media, as is its wont, has done its best to overblow the situation. Despite the fact that the Drug Wars are mostly localized in a very small section of the country, and that the victims of the violence are almost exclusively its perpetrators, Mexico is considered by many to be a country aflame, collapsing slowly under the weight of kilos and tons.

That said, the situation is bad, to understate the fact. The sad truth is that deaths in Mexico due to the drug war far outnumber the deaths in Iraq due to an actual war. Couple that with the medieval methods -- beheadings, mutilations, and intimidation of the "we kill you because we can" variety -- used by the cartels and it is plain to see why more and more Americans are reluctant to remain in or even visit Mexico. Add to that number the multitudes fleeing for the safety of American shores -- unconstitutional Arizona laws be damned -- and it is hard to deny that the current state of affairs in my home country is that of crisis.

Mexicans have never had an easy go of it. Over the past 200 years, Mexico has somehow made it through countless wars, the loss of half our country (how's Texas working out for you guys?), massive earthquakes, dictatorships, political instability (at one point, we managed to have 40 presidents in 30 years), and even a French (French!) takeover.

And yet, somehow we endure. Mexico has weathered all of that and more. It is sustained, as a country must, by its people. Good, hardworking people who toil in the sun all day for the privilege of sending their earnings back. In turn, they are sustained by their country, which beats in their chest and suffuses their every act and their every thought with the culture and the tradition and the patrimony that was forged in independence and galvanized in revolution. One holds up the other, which responds in kind.

Today, Mexico has emerged through the dust of 200 years bent but not broken, battered but not beaten, ready to defeat this drug war and stand at the hilltop to claim 200 more.