Hello Friends!
Here we are again, another week gone! This one was especially enjoyable for me because 1. NO NEW SICKNESSES, NO IVs, NO INJECTIONS IN THE BUM!!! and 2. I only had to work 3.5 days! I got Thursday and Friday off so that I could celebrate properly 200 years of Mexico's independence from Spain. I did, in fact, celebrate by doing absolutely no work and thus this blog is going to be short and sweet and next week's blog will include pictures and a great quantity of my witty prose.
Mini - History Lesson:
In the early 1500s (1519 to be exact) Cortez and his crew of conquerors/murderers (depending on who's point of view you want to take... I've seen both Spanish and Mexican history textbooks that deal with the arrival of Europeans to what is now Mexico and the versions are somewhat SHOCKINGLY different) arrived at the coast of what is now Veracruz, Mexico. From there, the Spanish marched into central Mexico, battled with the Aztecs for roughly 2 years and by 1521, had established the beginnings of what we now know as Mexico city and the current Mexican civilization/culture/people.
Eventually you had a very stratified society that consisted of (listed in order of 'importance' to the Spanish king and access to power, money and land) Spanish born Spanish (Peninsulares), Criollos (Mexico-born but totally Spanish heritage), Mestizos (mix of Spanish and Aztec or other indigenous blood with access to power lowering as percentage of non-Spanish blood rose), Mulattoes (Mix of Spanish or indigenous blood with African Slaves), Indigenous peoples, and finally Slaves (Africa or Mexico-born, didn't really make a huge difference). To make a long story short, the Criollos got mad because the Virrey (Spanish King's representative in the colonies of 'New Spain') was taxing them and then Napoleon's bro, Maximillian, was instated and they were even less happy about paying HIM taxes. Also, those dang Peninsulares got all the good political appointments and looked down their noses on those who hadn't been born in Europe.
So, a priest by the name of Miguel Hidalgo and some army generals by the names of Ignacio Allende and Juan Aldama decided to rally the peeps of Queretaro and gave what is famously known as "El Grito" and got everything started. And by everything, I mean they freed some prisoners, threw together an army of peasants armed with pitch-forks and machetes and marched towards the capital. And that, my friends is the very concise, very abbreviated beginning to a sort-of civil war that ended in Mexico's independence from Spain. Don't be fooled into thinking, though, that those Criollos gave the Indigenous peoples or Slaves any rights or powers... not really, but you have to start somewhere and that somewhere was the Spanish colonial government.
Now that I have sufficiently procrastinated quite a bit more than I had intended to, I'll leave off. You may all learn more about the history of the fight for Mexican Independence here, here, or here. I, for one, NEED to get to my lesson planning or I will seriously regret it later on! Boo.
Hope you all had a great week, threw up a shout for Mexico on the 15th and 16th and are considering writing your local representative about the importance of legalizing drugs in the US and saving the country where I live! (Couldn't resist that last plug, sorry).xoxoxo y UN FUERTE VIVA MEXICO!
Leyah
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