John F. Kennedy photo

Remarks at an Independence Day Celebration With the American Community in Mexico City.

June 30, 1962

Mr. Chairman, Ambassadors, Mike Mansfield, ladies and gentlemen:

I want to say that this is the most prosperous looking Peace Corps contingent which I have reviewed, and I want to tell you what a pleasure it is to come and celebrate our national holiday here in this city. As the Chairman pointed out, Mrs. Kennedy and I were welcomed with the warmest hospitality and feeling, which I believe reflects the true sentiment of the people of Mexico for the United States, and I believe that part of this hospitality and friendship has been due to your efforts. When they see you, those of you who are Americans, they see the United States. And this is true of people all around the world; they make an impression, one way or the other, about our country and what we stand for and what we believe, and where we have been, and where we are going. And if the relations between Mexico and the United States are felicitous, which I believe they are, then you can take satisfaction in it; because you represent the long hand of the United States day in and day out, not merely on a ceremonial or state visit, but year in, year out, working among them, and giving an impression of what kind of a people we are.

Next Wednesday I am going to Philadelphia to speak on the fourth of July. But I think it is just as appropriate to celebrate the fourth of July here in this city as I do in Philadelphia in the United States, and the reason is very simple. That is because the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence from the beginning recognized, and in their public statements indicated, that they were not advancing a theory of government merely for the people of the United States, but for the people around the world. George Washington, John Adams, and the others, all emphasized that this spirit which had motivated the Declaration of Independence represented the basic concept which should govern around the world, of the relationship between the Government and the people.

It is not accident that the revolutionary spirit in the best sense which sprang out of Philadelphia and the United States has had the most profound reverberations down through the long corridors of time ever since that date.

Simon Bolivar, the liberator, wore next to his skin a picture of George Washington. And the heads of state who come year in and year out to Washington, and the 30 or 40 new states which have been formed since the end of World War II, in nearly every case in their constitutions, in their declarations, have used phrases from our Constitution and our Declaration.

So this is a most heart-warming event, to come here to this city and this country which feels so much in their everyday life the principles which our country espoused in those momentous documents. And I believe we feel them because we realize that this was not merely an event which took place a long time ago, and is consigned to the past, but, instead the whole premises upon which Mr. Jefferson and Adams and the others sat when they drafted the Declaration are under a more serious challenge today than they were even in the earliest days of the great Republic.

So I do not believe that these are phrases to be trotted out on the fourth of July, but they are phrases to work, to implement and fight for all around the globe, every day-particularly in the great decade of the 1960's.

So I come here today. I am particularly happy that this represents a meeting not only of the American community, but also of their Mexican friends, and that both today celebrate a national holiday of ours as we celebrate Mexican national holidays, and other holidays of freedom all around the globe.

Any American would feel at home on their anniversaries as they would feel at home on the anniversary of any free people. So, ladies and gentlemen, we are very grateful to you for taking part in this ceremony. F want you to know that you are part of us, and we part of you, and I appreciate this opportunity to reaffirm the solidarity which binds all of us together, particularly at this time of year.

Note: The President spoke at I2:35 p.m. in the recreation area at Satelite City. His opening words "Mr. Chairman" referred to Willard D. Andrews, President, American Society of Mexico. He also referred to Antonio Carrillo Flores, Ambassador of Mexico to the United States; Thomas C. Mann, United States Ambassador to Mexico; and Mike Mansfield, United States Senator from Montana.

John F. Kennedy, Remarks at an Independence Day Celebration With the American Community in Mexico City. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/236134

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