Vienna's Mexicans Dance in Square Named for Historic Courage

A three-year-old boy waved his tiny Mexican flag and danced with pure joy in the middle of Vienna's Mexikoplatz, and for a few hours, Austria's capital felt like home to the city's small Mexican community.

About 500 people gathered in the historic square on September 12 to celebrate Mexico's Independence Day, complete with traditional dancers in Oaxacan dresses, tacos, cumbia music, and the ambassador himself performing the ceremonial Grito de Independencia. The crowd may have been smaller than the 300,000 who pack Mexico City's Zócalo, but their enthusiasm matched it note for note.

The celebration happened in a square with deep meaning. Mexikoplatz earned its name in 1956 to honor Mexico's courage in 1938, when it became the only country to officially complain to the League of Nations about Adolf Hitler's annexation of Austria. While the rest of the world stayed silent, Mexico spoke up.

Today, only about 2,500 Mexicans live in all of Austria. The Mexican Embassy, which also represents Mexico in Slovakia and Slovenia, organized the event with the Mexico-Austria Association to bring the scattered community together.

The party featured Los Nopaleros, a Vienna-based cumbia and psychedelic Latin-rock band whose members come from Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Austria. Kids and grandparents danced arm in arm as the music filled the square.

Sunny's Take

There's something beautiful about watching small communities keep their culture alive thousands of miles from home. The contrast between Mexico and Austria couldn't be starker, comparing cumbia to waltzing, tacos to schnitzel. Yet the embassy's Javier Basulto says these gatherings matter deeply to Austrian Mexicans who want their children to know where they come from.

The wholesome celebration stood in sharp contrast to the boozy Cinco de Mayo parties common in the United States, which many Americans mistakenly think celebrate Mexican independence. This was the real thing, families sharing food and stories, passing traditions to the next generation.

Somewhere in that crowd, the little boy kept dancing with his flag. For those few hours in Mexikoplatz, Mexico wasn't 6,000 miles away.