Just before midnight on September 15, 1810, a priest by the name of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla addressed his congregation from the steps of his church in the small town of Dolores, in the central Mexican region of Guanajuato. “Death to bad government!” Hidalgo cried, in what later became known as the Cry of Dolores and the Cry of Independence. The next morning, the priest’s revolutionary army marched on the region’s capital, marking the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence.

One hundred years later, Francisco I. Madero, an upper-class upstart from the northern state of Coahuila, declared that he would run against Mexico’s autocratic leader, Porfirio Daz, in the country’s upcoming presidential electionto which Daz’s characteristically autocratic response was to have Madero thrown in prison. Madero escaped and on October 5, 1910 issued the Plan de San Luis Potos, which called on the citizens of Mexico to revolt. The first major revolution of a century that would sport plenty of them began on November 20, 1910. It, too, would last ten years.

Between September 15 and November 20, 2010between independence and revolution, between two anniversariesjournalist Matthew Clayfield and photographer Austin Andrews will be travelling through Mexico and visiting a number of the towns and historic sites that played some role in these two conflicts. The War of Independence and the Revolution remain the two most important events in the history of modern Mexico. They also form a prism through which we might look at the country today.

For while Mexico is looking forward with understandable excitement to the one-two punch of bicentenary and centenary celebrations planned for later this year, the bloody events for which it currently finds itself in the headlines are not those of its past, but rather, worryingly, those of its present.

The work we hope to produce on this tripa magazine feature article and an accompanying series of photographs, as well as a blog and, eventually, possibly even a bookwill combine elements of travelogue, history and frontline reportage in order to do so.

Like Capa and Steinbeck’s A RUSSIAN JOURNAL, the work we propose to produce will provide a unique and nuanced look at a country that remains of such enduring interest to so many, and which this year more than any otheror at least, any other in the last hundredhas found itself caught so squarely and so inescapably in the spotlight.