Last Thursday was Flag Day in Mexico. Did you know there is a Flag Day in the United States too? According to Wikipedia, it is June 14. Few Mexicans would need Wikipedia to know what day is Flag Day here (February 24).
From an early age kids are taught to revere the flag. Every school begins the week with a flag ceremony called “homenagen.” A cadre of six or seven students marches the flag around a courtyard while everybody else stands at attention with one hand on their chest. (The salute looks funny to those not used to it. The hand on the chest remains open with palm to the ground.) Then everybody sings the national anthem, after which the cadre repeats the march while everyone salutes again.
Homenagen for the nursery school and kindergarteners. |
Saluting the flag. |
In Mexico Unconquered, a book by John Gibler about resistance movements in Mexico from the conquest through the present, Gibler observes that protestors in Mexico do not burn the flag in protest, as they do in the United States and other countries. Instead they view their movement, whatever it might be, as being true to the flag, and the groups they oppose as betraying it. There is a widespread reverence for the flag that we simply do not see at home. Of course, we also are patriotic in the United States and the flag is an important symbol of that patriotism. But the ways we demonstrate our patriotism in our daily lives do not feel as formal, or reverential, as they do here.
Helen practicing her salute. |
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