Mexico is a great country. A little rough around the edges but really great.
Flash back about 15 years, wife & I go to Merida and the Yucatan, and the cab driver as we drive into town over cobblestone streets and colorful houses built right up to the sidewalks, says, "Bet you've never seen anything like this?" Poor guy, had to tell him that to us the whole town looked just like the French Quarter, Marigny, Bywater & Lower Garden District
They even had a version of our St Charles Avenue, just without our streetcars, the Paseo de Montejo, with grand mansions on either side. Over all, great place. But, we were both parts of the Spanish Colonial Empire--and it shows. The 200th is just the anniversary of our statehood, we were made part of the US in 1803, and founded in 1718, nearly 300 years ago. Not old by European and Middle Eastern standards, but respectible we think. On the light posts on Canal Street in the CBD, there are medallions on each of the four sides of the base--one says, Spanish Domination, another French Domination, the third Confederate Domination, and finally, American Domination--a strange way to put it I've always thought, "domination." Another "anniversary" for New Orleans, at least, this year too. One hundred fifty years since the City fell to the Yankees in the War of Northern Aggression in 1862.
