ORIGIN OF THE MEXICAN FLAG

When the Plan of Iguala was promulgated on the 24th of February of 1821, Don Agustín de Iturbide, a Royalist general who tried to make peace with the insurgents, the Catholic clergy, and the Royalists according to the stated plan, the Insurgent general, don Vicente Guerrero carried a flag with the colors of white, green, and red diagonal stripes, dedicating it to Don Vicente Guerrero on the second of March of 1821. The colors represented the three fundamental points of the Plan of Iguala or Plan of the Three Guarantees:

(1) the Independence of Mexico
(2) the recognition of the Catholic religion and
(3) the union of Spaniards and Mexicans.

The order of the colors and the shield (emblem) in the center underwent alterations through history until the President Don Venustiano Carranza decreed on the 20th of September of 1916, that the emblem of the eagle with a serpent would be official as it is known today.

The origin of the Mexican emblem is based on a tradition which declared: "After a long pilgrimage, ordered by the god Huitzilopochtli, the Aztecs found an eagle with a serpent between its claws. This was the foretold sign to found on that site the capital of its dominion."

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