If the fact that Mexico's revolution took about 200 more years to happen than America's isn't proof enough, read the following article to realize what a sorry job we did at raising a ruckus.

On September 16, 1810, a hardcore priest named Miguel Hidalgo opened up a can of awesome when he made everybody realize Mexico should do it solo. The Man, played by Napoleon Bonaparte, had put Spain under the rule of his brother. Some other folks, like Jose Maria Morelos, Vicente Guerrero, General Augustin de Iturbide, and everyone's favorite Santa Anna joined in the brouhaha. It took these hooligans until August 1821 to finally get to Mexico City (maps then were not what they are now, so they had to ask for directions along the way.) Once there, they forced the Powers that Be (the Spanish gov'ment reps) to sign a piece of paper that said "Contract of Cordoba, Veracruz" on the top, except that it was in Spanish. It acknowledged Mexico's independence and right to party.

Anyway, Iturbide (which sounds a lot like that Alaskan dog race "Iditarod") declared himself emperor until a monarchy could be set up. The people saw through this scheme and overthrew him in 1823, starting the good times of the Republic of Mexico. Things took a few years to get good when Santa Anna came "back again for the very first time" (Degenerate, "Here We Go"). In 1829, he "retired" as a general after whipping 3,000 Spanish troops at Tampico with a small force (although the Spaniards did have yellow fever). Anna told everybody to give him a call if Mexico needed him. When Anastasio Bustamante busted the mante of then-president Guerrero (a.k.a. killed him), Santa Anna jumped on it and got president in 1833.

Iburtide winning the 1821 Iditarod.

During his first term as president, Anna spent most of his days in long lunch breaks, leaving vice-president Valentin Gomez Farias to run things such as the country of Mexico. That didn't last long, though. Farias ticked off the wealthy and military, so Santa Anna took control. He showed Farias the door, burned the Constitution, and told Congress to get lost. Next he centralized everything and told the states to shut up or get out. So Texas and some Mexican state no one cares about seceded. Anna went north himself in 1836 to teach them what was up, but instead he got schooled by folks in "Tejas" (as the Mexicans misspelled it). Sam Houston and Company made him sign a treaty which let 'em fly solo too, but before he could get back to Mexico City, they'd kicked him out of the presidency. So he went to the United States to let things get ripe again.

They did in 1838, when France invaded. Anna came back and beat up the French, losing one of his legs to a cannonball in the process. He was so awesome that he required that his leg be given a military burial, and he waved his wooden peg leg over his head while on horseback from then on. Bustamante had come back, so Santa Anna kicked him out again (deja vu?) and started his second term of ruling. A few years later the people of Mexico kicked him out again and he went to Cuba. There, he beat people senseless with his wooden leg until his dying day.

Here's Santa Anna sneaking up on an ancient warrior. You devil, you.

Except that he didn't really do that. Instead, he came back in 1846 to help Mexico beat the United States. He pulled a total "psyche!" on both countries when he took over as president (kicking out his old understudy Farias) and didn't sell the U.S. a bunch of territory like he said he'd do in a secret backroom deal. Too bad, though. He lost the war to the U.S. After some vacationing/exile in Jamaica and Columbia, he made a fourth return as dictator-for-life "Most Supreme Highness." By this time, Santa Anna was finally starting to lose public support. Gallup polls in 1855 showed him at an all-time low of 23% of the country at his support. A guy named Benito Juarez saw an opportunity to end Anna's rampage and did it.

This only lasted a few years before all-out civil war started between The Church and those who realized how much bologna The Church was. For a short time, the religious fools instated an emperor named Maximillian, who was from Austria. Despite getting their faces kicked in on May 5, 1862 at the Battle of Puebla, the French managed to win a war and get Maximillian pretty well entrenched. (Thus, Mexico should be pretty embarrassed to be one of the only countries to actually lose to France.) Juarez ignored everything and kept the fed running just the same. His forces soon removed Maximillian by an old-school form of recall election called "kidnapping and execution."

One liberal estimated The Church to equal four (4) bologna.
One (1) bologna is defined as the nonsense of a successful communist government.

In 1867, after Juarez kicked Church officials out of the government and gave all its land holdings to the people, a wild-and-ready general named Porfirio Diaz took over and won the dictatorship election of 1876. Although Diaz improved national infrastructures such as the water cycle and Taco Bell, he was a jerk to the citizens. Therefore, in 1910, one-hundred years after Hidalgo had "started the fire" (though he claimed it had been burning since the world's creation), Diaz tried to fudge the numbers (essentially making up new ones, like "threeve" and "eleventeen") of an election for president that he lost to Fransisco Madero, who he had put in prison.

Madero told everybody to rise up and stick it to The Man, played by Diaz. They did, so Diaz hightailed it to France. Then a brawl for control that reminds me of the finale of a Fourth of July fireworks show erupted. In the ring were Pancho Villa, Emilio Zapata, Madero, and Venustiano Carranza. All four got capped in the ensuing gunfire, but before it was over Carranza managed to get some people to sit down and draft the Mexican Constution of 1917. After that happened, Mexico finally calmed down. The 207-year rockfest was over. If that's not a good revolution, I don't know what is.