Mexico City: Mexico looked beyond its troubled history to throw a 200th birthday bash on Thursday celebrating its proud history, vibrant culture and mighty resilience, embodied in the traditional independence cry of ‘Viva Mexico!’
Across the capital, hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets blowing horns and dancing alongside a parade of serpent floats, marching cacti and 13-foot-tall warrior marionettes and staying late into the night at open-air concerts.
President Felipe Calderon capped the evening by ringing the original independence bell from a balcony in the Zocalo square and reciting ‘El Grito’ based on founding father Miguel Hidalgo's 1810 call to arms against Spain: "Long live independence. Love live the bicentennial. Long live Mexico!"
Thousands of roars echoed his cry as fireworks exploded in the square and at the iconic Angel of Independence about two miles (3.2 kilometres) down the city's crowded main promenade.
"I love being Mexican!" said Michel Dosal, wearing a green, white and red Mohawk wig. "The 15th of September is better than Christmas. It's better than my birthday!"
In cities worst hit by drug-related violence, festivities were more subdued. The grito was cancelled in Ciudad Juarez for the first time in its history. People still showed their patriotism in the border city, which is Mexico’s most violent, by hanging Mexican flags from their roofs and hosting family dinners. In the western city of Morelia, the scene of a cartel-related grenade attack that killed eight during the 2008 independence celebration, barely 2,000 showed up at the main plaza for a "grito" that once drew tens of thousands.
"My son asked me to take him to see the grito, so I brought him despite my fears," said Silvia Godinez Perez, a secretary. "We can't easily forget what happened two years ago."
But in Mexico City, a $40 million (Dh147 million) fiesta, two years in the making, drew people from across the country to the main Reforma Avenue and Zocalo. Moments before Calderon emerged on the balcony of the National Palace, a voice boomed from loudspeakers: "Let's show the world that Mexico is strong and standing."
"This one is special," said Iris Mari Rodriguez Montiel, a small business owner who had travelled from the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz and waited since morning for the festivities to start. "It gives me chills just to think about it."
Little girls wearing ribbons of the Mexican flag watched the 1.7-mile (2.7-kilometre) parade down Reforma from the shoulders of their fathers. Other children blew trumpets as the air filled with confetti.
"It's like a Carnival of Rio, plus an Olympic ceremony, plus Woodstock all put together on the same day," said artistic director Marco Balich, who produced the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics. "For the cost of a warplane, you can celebrate the birthday of a country."
Several neighbouring heads of state and US Labour Secretary Hilda Solis attended.
Still, anxiety hovered over the festivities in a country that most recently has seen car bombs, the assassination of a gubernatorial candidate and the massacre of 72 migrants who refused to smuggle drugs for a brutal gang.
Military helicopters buzzed overhead in the capital, heavily armed federal agents and metal detectors greeted revelers.
The Interior Department said there had been no attacks against the celebrations.
Prosecutors in the Caribbean coast resort of Cancun however told how they were investigating whether six men detained with assault rifles and hand grenades had planned an assault on the bicentennial festivities. In northern Nuevo Leon state, eight gunmen were killed in a shootout with soldiers.
"In Mexico, we all live in fear. And the worst part is that we are starting to get used to it," said Eric Limon, 33, a professional dancer who volunteered to wear a jaguar mask and swing a colourful Aztec club and spear for the parade.
"I want to be part of something important," he said. "I know this won't solve our problems, but this is my grain of sand to create a sense of unity. This is what Mexico needs."
Those who stayed away from the city centre celebrated from their rooftops and staged their own neighborhood fireworks displays. All night long, rockets whistled and boomed skyward, blanketing the yards and streets with smoke.
