▲ On the Damián Carmona esplanade of Military Field number 1-A, in Mexico City, the troops who will participate in the civil-military parade today were reviewed.Photo Roberto García Ortiz
From the Editorial
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, November 20, 2025, p. 11
The parade on November 20, to mark the beginning of the Mexican Revolution, has become one of the commemorative events with the most modifications throughout its history. Not only has it changed its format, but also its headquarters; The routes have changed and it has even been cancelled, as happened during the six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto, due to social protests after the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students.
Its first precedent was in 1928, when a relay race was organized, and it had its first modification the following year, with a military-sports parade. In 1930 it took on the character of a parade for the first time.
By 1936, the Senate of the Republic approved that this date be remembered and it became an official act in 1941, when Manuel Ávila Camacho was the first president to lead the activities.
After decades in which it was a civic-sports parade, in the last year of Vicente Fox’s six-year term (2006), in a drastic way, the commemoration was taken to the official residence of Los Pinos to hold only a civic event.
The then presidential spokesperson, Rubén Aguilar, justified that since 2002 he had considered modifying the format of the commemoration, since it was “one of the old rituals” of the “old system.” In addition, he equated it with the decision of former President Ernesto Zedillo to cancel the May 1 Labor Day parade in his government.
Train and horses
Although the parade returned with Felipe Calderón, during the six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto it was canceled in 2014 due to protests over the Ayotzinapa case. In its place, a ceremony was organized to present decorations and promotions to military personnel at Campo Marte.
The military parade returned in 2019 with Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the locomotive was incorporated petra and hundreds of horses.
For this year, last Sunday morning the Secretariat of National Defense announced that the civic-military parade commemorating the 115th anniversary of the beginning of the Mexican Revolution will have a different route: it will begin at the Zócalo plateau and will conclude at the Monument to the Revolution.
Sports recognitions have also been modified. In 2011, the delivery date for the national Sports and Sports Merit Awards was changed from November 20 to the first Sunday in December, with the argument that this would allow “giving greater relevance to said celebration.” In January 2020 it was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation a decree that reassigned the ceremony to November 20.
