The Revolution Monument

The Revolution Monument wasn't originally intended to be what it is today. In 1906, president Porfirio Díaz wanted to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the Independence Movement and hired architect Émile Bénard to design the new sumptuous Legislative Palace.

The construction of a metal structure began in 1906 but soon after, the Revolutionary Movement left the building without funds and the development was suspended in 1912. 

By the end of the Revolution, two decades later, the architect, Émile Bénard went to then president, Álvaro Obregón and offered the repurposing of the building to serve as a Mausoleum for the war heroes of the Revolution. Unfortunately, both Obregón and Bénard died subsequently in 1928 and 1929.

Finally in 1933, architect Carlos Obregón Santacilla took the abandoned structure and once again, repurposed the design to become a plaza and a public space commemorating the Revoultion as a constant and evolving movement. By 1936, the place also became a mausoleum and some of the most important figures in the Mexican Revolution were transfered and buried there.

I was walking by this monument the other day and in 2010 we commemorated a hundred years of the Mexican Revolution. We have been through the EZLN movement back in 1994 and though revolution didn't actually emerge from the movement, they brought back not only the desire of change but the spirit of the Revolution with it. Today, we are being witness to the Autodefensa Movement and if we pay attention to numbers it's 2014, twenty years after the Zapatistas. These two cases totally unrelated on their origins have only one thing in common: people rising because they are tired of being abandoned to injustice.

*All the information and images 1 to 5 were taken from the MRM website.