This week’s travel dream: Mexico’s road to freedom

For Mexico, 2010 is a year of celebration, said Jonathan Kandell in The New York Times. Two hundred years ago, the nation’s war for independence from Spain began with a priest’s call to rebellion. Though the country now wrestles with economic troubles and a bloody drug war, those struggles won’t keep Mexico from celebrating. President Felipe Calderón has proclaimed 2010 as the “Año de la Patria” (Year of the Nation), and announced a series of festivals, concerts, literary events, and architectural restorations. The widening of the Ruta de la Independencia, a legacy trail that traces Mexico’s journey to independence, makes travel between the key sites “easier than it’s ever been.”

The trail begins in Dolores Hidalgo, a provincial town in the state of Guanajuato known as “the cradle of independence.” It was here that Father Miguel Hidalgo uttered his famous cry—“Down with bad government!”—and called for revolt. His presence still permeates the town, beginning with the Museo de la Independencia Nacional, housed in the former prison where Hidalgo summoned 80 prisoners to launch the uprising. Hidalgo and his confederates then climbed the towers of Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de la Dolores, a “yellow and pink, richly baroque-style” church, ringing its bells to gather a greater crowd.

From Dolores, the renegade priest headed southeast to Atotonilco, home to a church that even then was “one of the colony’s largest pilgrimage sites.” Today, the “cavernous” Santuario de Atotonilco, with its blue-tiled dome, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The “semi-arid countryside” just outside the village has barely changed since Hidalgo’s arrival: Farmers still steer plows pulled by oxen through fields “bordered by cactus and aloe.” Hidalgo assembled new recruits here, then ventured with his ragtag army to the city of Guanajuato, where his men massacred the colonial elite who had taken refuge in a “fortress-like public granary,” the Alhóndiga de Granaditas. Hildago and his chief co-conspirators were captured and beheaded within the year, but their revolution eventually succeeded. Today, Alhóndiga is a museum of Mexican art and history: Though it’s a “neoclassical beauty with 40 Doric and Tuscan columns” inside, the citadel-like stone exterior still evokes a memorable day in Mexican history.

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Contact: Bicentenarioguanajuato.gob.mx