So far, then, this is traditional history. But the Centennial was, above all, a Mexico City affair: the parades and processions, the banquets, the unveiling of monuments and mental asylums were designed to impress Mexico City high society, the press, the diplomatic corps and, perhaps, the fickle Mexico City populace-'this capital', as an army general put it, 'always full of amusement.
And, by all accounts, they were impressed. In all this, provincialism had no part, even if the provinces made their gastronomic contribution a hundred sea-turtles from the Guaymas fisheries, a thousand Rio Lerma trout, which formed part of one of the master-chef Sylvain's lavish banquets.
Overt provincialism, however, was frowned upon at such cosmopolitan occasions, and strenuous efforts were made to ensure that Indians in their baggy white shirts and drawers were kept off the streets of the capital. Outside Mexico City, it is true, there were attempts to make this, the hundredth anniversary of the Grito de Dolores, something special, and there by to foster the tender plant of patriotism: the Indian children of Morelos were got up in clean white blouses and had patriotic recitations drummed into them; in Chihuahua and Durango the authorities did their best to combine patriotic enthusiasm and public order during three days of torrential rain.
Yet the real Mexico, and in particular the Mexico of the Revolution, was provincial Mexico. In same histories the story begins and the metropolitan angle is fixed with the Centennial; from this angle we focus on the comings and goings of revolutionary leaders - boorish, provincial interlopers - in Mexico City, and on the intermittent paranoia of the diplomatic corps, fearful of a repeat of the Peking siege.
But the Revolution cannot be comprehended in these terms; unlike the Russian counterpart, it arose in the provinces, established itself in the countryside, and finally conquered an alien and sullen capital. And, unlike its Chinese counterpart, it failed to produce either a vanguard party of a coherent ideology.
