Despite the chronic political turmoil, civil wars, and foreign invasions that plagued Mexico from the 1830s to the late 1860s, civic and religious leaders continued to hold extravagant ceremonies to mark occasions that they deemed significant. Both Antonio López de Santa Anna and Emperor Maximilian proved to be imperious masters of ceremony, orchestrating spectacular state ceremonies to bring grandeur to their regimes. During the age dominated by Santa Anna ( 1833-55), military parades were held annually on September 27, the day marking political Independence from Spain, on Santa Anna's birthday of February 21, and on his saint's day in June. Newly appointed bishops passed before "His Most Serene Highness" during their investiture ceremonies. In 1842 government functionaries exhumed Santa Anna's leg, lost in battle during the Pastry War against France, and reburied it in Mexico City. A cortege composed of govern ment officials, diplomats, and the military processed the urn that contained the gruesome appendage through the principal streets of the city to the Santa Paula Cemetery. Sporting a new cork leg, Santa Anna watched as the urn was set atop a stone column, a cenotaph that symbolized the missing limb and served as a sepulchral monument. The leg funeral resembled the glorious return of Napoléon's ashes from St. Helena to Paris less than two years earlier in 1840. Like the Bonapartists of midcentury France, Santa Anna derived a great deal of sympathy and political capital from the event.

Processions also figured prominently in the lavish celebrations under Emperor Maximilian ( 1864-67). On June 12, 1864, Maximilian and his wife Carlota entered Mexico City in their sumptuous imperial coach and rode through hundreds of triumphal arches with General Bazaine at their side. The Mexican Imperial Guard, detachments of Zouaves, Chasseurs, and Hussars, French infantrymen, and 60 carriages filled with bureaucrats, priests, and nobles escorted the royal couple. Sporadic cries of "death to the mochos" were drowned out by "vivas" to the new emperor. During Maximilian's empire, military parades were held on Independence Day (restored to September 16) and on the emperor's birthday. Religious processions continued on Corpus Christi and Virgin of Guadalupe Day (December 12). But to Maximilian's dismay, civic demonstrations commemorating Mexico's defeat of the French at Puebla in 1862 sprouted in Puebla and Mexico City on May 5, 1865, and May 5, 1866. Such manifestations did not bode well for the future of Maximilian's empire.

Thousands of citizens welcomed President Benito JuArez as he entered Mexico City in victory over imperial and French forces on July 15, 1867. His ordinary travel-worn black coach contrasted markedly with the pretentious goldtrimmed carriage that had carried Maximilian to the city. After the expulsion of the French, republican governments continued to celebrate national holidays with great enthusiasm, but the constant challenge of empty treasuries obligated them to withhold expense. In addition, by adopting some measure of fiscal and ceremonial austerity, the republican government highlighted its departure from the exorbitance of Maximilian's empire.