Benito Juarez and Maximilian

Before I can tell you this entry, I am going to have to tell you the story of Maximilian. Once, for some reason, France sent it's army to Mexico, and made a guy from Austria emperor. The guy from Austria was named Maximilian. Now this was pretty strange, because Mexico had a president already; Benito Juarez. And then, after a while the French decided it was too much trouble, so they took most of their army back to France. But Maximilian wanted to stay, I don't know if he just liked having lots of power, or if he thought that the Mexicans wanted an emperor, or what. Anyway, when his army left, Benito Juarez's army came in and captured Maximilian and executed him with two of his generals. About forty years later, the Austrians asked if they could come and build a monument to Maximilian. The Mexicans said that they could, but that they can't get any help from Mexicans and they couldn't use any materials from Mexico. So the Austians came with boats full of rocks and horses. They unloaded all the rocks on to the horses and took apart some of their ships and put the wood on the horses. Then they took the horses from the coast to Queretaro, which is a pretty long way. Then they built their little one-room chaple with three steps in it for Maximilian and his two generals. Then, about thirty years later, the Mexicans said, "Hey what's this monument doing here of some guy we hated and two of his generals?". So they built this 80-foot-tall statue of Benito Juarez looking down on the teeny one-room chapel that the Austrians built. Pretty weird story, isn't it? Well, my blog entry is that we saw the 80-foot tall statue of Benito Juarez and the little monument of Maximilian.