Expect Crowds for National Holiday Long Weekend

by Tara A. Spears

Savvy expats know how to deal with a Mexican national holiday: enjoy it! One of the five federal holidays that enables the middle class to travel and vacation is rapidly approaching. The long weekend begins this year on Thursday, November 14 and continues to include Monday, November 18.

This holiday commemorates the rebellion against long-term dictator, Porfirio Diaz. While not as big as spring break, it is a very popular holiday for traveling so expect increased driving times and delays.

Aniversario de la Revolución (Revolution Day) is one of five Mexican national holidays that are established by law. For our coastal community you can expect an increase in visitors from Thursday, November 14 thru Monday, 18th November for the long weekend off from school and work. A little advance planning will ensure that life is good for you and the visitors! Plan ahead and stock up on your groceries, beer, wine before the 14^th. Go to the beach and people watch the families: the children are so happy with sand and the ocean. The strolling mariachi bands will perform everywhere: beachside, hotels, neighborhoods. Don’t like live music after midnight? Buy some ear plugs rather than complain about someone else’s custom. “We Mexicans like our music LOUD!” my plumber explained to me when I asked about the custom of live music in the streets.

The importance of this day is that it venerates the start of the 1911 Mexican Revolution against the long-term dictator, Porfirio Diaz. Diaz was popular with the wealthy class due to perks given the landowners/hacienda system and business owners. Under his iron rule Mexico experienced huge economic growth but the peasants and laborers were poorer than ever. They were also seriously fed up with their government. Perhaps one of the reasons that Jaltemba Bay celebrates this day more than some of the other holidays is that as a working class community it identifies with one of the leaders of the 1911 uprising, Pancho Villa. Without Villa’s fighting there would not be a holiday a hundred years later.

Born in 1877 with a different name, Doroteo Arango, Villa came from a poor family in north central Mexico. At age 16 he killed the man who raped his sister and had to flee for his life. When he became a fugitive he changed his name to Francisco “Pancho” Villa to elude the law. He worked a series of manual labor jobs throughout northern Mexico until about 1899 when he tried an easier way to get money, robbing banks.

In order to avoid capture, Pancho Villa took off with his group of bandit followers into the Sierra Mountains of central Mexico in 1900. Over the next decade he became a legendary hero-a Robin Hood to the poor in his country, robbing the rich and sharing with the hungry masses-all the while skillfully evading the government’s troops.

Thus, soon after Francisco I. Madero’s declaration of war, Pancho Villa led his men down from the hills to join the revolutionary forces. By joining the rebel forces against the dictator, Villa transitioned from bandito to revolucionario. The charismatic Pancho was able to recruit an army of thousands, including a substantial number of Americans, some of whom were made captains in Pancho’s División del Norte.

In true Robin Hood style, Villa broke up the vast land holdings of local hacendados and parceled the land out to the widows and orphans of his fallen soldiers. (This concept of everyone entitled to land ownership formed the basis of the present day ejido system.) Rather than use the government’s despised peso, Pancho Villa produced his own money, and any merchant who refused to accept this “new” currency faced the risk of being shot. Executions, often ordered on a whim, weren’t often carried out by Pancho himself. Instead, they were carried out by his friend Rodolfo Fierro, (far left in photo) best known by his nickname El Carnicero, or The Butcher. It seems that Pancho just couldn’t live by non-violent rules.

Pancho Villa is remembered with pride and respect by most people in Mexico. He led the most important military campaigns of the constitutionalist revolution. Since Villa’s death, many statues have been erected in his honor across the country, and most villages and towns dress up as Pancho for parades on November 20.

Don’t miss out on sharing the Mexican pride: watch the Revolution Parade that begins around 9:00 am on Wednesday, La Penita’s main avenida.

¡Viva Mexico! ¡Viva la Revolución! Long live Mexico! Long live the revolution!