Mexico Turns 200 This Week!

 
 Did you know that Mexicans won their "independence" 200 years ago, and their "democracy" 100 years ago? And they even have a "president," Felipe Calderon, who lost the 2006 election by 1.5 million votes but still "won" it very narrowly. ¡Viva México Mágico! Anyway, Messicans are not very happy about their upcoming bicentennial celebrations -- even the Mexican national newspaper, the New York Times , sounds crestfallen today: "the national mood has sunk into its deepest funk in years." Yeah, like 200 years! And what do we do down South of the Border when we are in a "deep funk"? Revolutions! Revolts! And gringos don't want these manual labor jobs these days, either, so once again the Mexicans are stuck with the dirty work.

Here is a live video feed from the Opening Ceremonies of the 200th Anniversary of Mexico:

And so the government will hold a national party Thursday night to gather the crowds to shout ¡Viva México! But the $53 million monument it ordered to crown the celebration isn't actually finished yet. And so the newspapers, TV and radio stations banded together to mount an inspirational marketing campaign to try and make everybody forget that this is a week to celebrate rebellions! But their ad campaign really sucked because it featured a soccer coach and also Salma Hayek, neither of whom even live in Mexico and obviously kind of hate it, and it shows. And then some rebels made a video parody of it –- Jodido México 2010 , above, with English subtitles –- that has 110,000 YouTube hits in Spanish, which is to say, more winning votes than Calderon.

So it should be quite the fiesta this week and it will continue on for two more months, all the way through November, when the centennial of Zapata and Pancho Villa hits. At this point, U.S. cable news analysts are expected to announce that "Aztec temples" are really just "Mexican Mosques." [ Narco News ]

 Al Giordano, publisher of Narco News, warblogs at The Field from south of the border. Haha, yes,thatAl Giordano.