Mexico

Mexico

PAGE CONTENTS:

A Brief Overview

More Mexico

The Mexican Revolution

Mexico Revolts

The Ancient Mayans

The Aztecs

Irish in theThe Mexican-American War (1846-1848)

A Brief Overview

Old Mexico

"Old Mexico" really is old--at least if you include the ancient cultures that once flourished there.

No one knows when humans first arrived in what's now Mexico, but scholars say ancient Mesoamerican farmers tilled the earth by roughly 8000 BC. Eventually, agricultural advances fed the growth of a variety of Mesoamerican civilizations--including the Olmec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya, Toltec, and Aztec.

The Olmec are widely credited with establishing cultural and religious traditions that the Maya and Aztec built upon. Teotihuacan's inhabitants built one of the largest cities in the world at the time. The Zapotec invented a hieroglyphic writing system, perhaps the earliest American script. The Maya made a calendar more accurate than anything Europeans could muster until after the Scientific Revolution. And the Toltec built a commanding capital, Tula, just 45 miles (75 km) from what's now Mexico City.

After the Toltec succumbed to drought and invasion in the 12th century, an alliance of tribes emerged that collectively came to be known as the Aztecs. Chief among the tribes was the Mexica, from whose name "Mexico" derives. By the time the Spanish arrived in the early 16th century, the Aztecs had built an empire that spanned most of modern Mexico.

Yet that empire crumbled quickly when the conquistador Hernándo Cortés invaded in 1519. He had just a few hundred men, but he cunningly exploited Aztec religious beliefs (notably, that the plumed serpent god Quetzalcoatl would one day return from the east), his superior military technology (notably, guns and horses), and the troops of Aztec enemies (notably, the Tlaxcalan)--not to mention a smallpox epidemic that ravaged the Aztec population.

The Spanish then exploited the indigenous Mesoamericans, too, or at least the ones who were left after more Spanish-borne diseases took hold. Some estimates say more than 90 percent of the indigenous population died during the first century of Spanish rule.

The Spanish razed the great Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, and built Mexico City in its place. While the government constructed colonial buildings and bureaucracy, the Catholic Church went to work winning converts. Soon the church delivered more social services than the government--from education, to medical care, to small business loans. It also delivered the Spanish Inquisition, which arrived in the New World in 1571.

From early on, colonial society was divided into castes. There were peninsulares, people born in Spain (who got all the best jobs); criollos, "pure-bred" Europeans born in Mexico; mestizos, people of mixed European and indigenous descent; and slaves and indigenous people, who were frequently exploited despite decrees that purported to protect them. If society was stratified, though, it was far from fully segregated. By the 19th century, mestizos were the majority.

By then, Spain had pressing problems at home, and many Mexicans were itching for independence. In 1808, French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Spain--and inadvertently sparked a revolt 6,000 miles away in Mexico City. With mother Spain preoccupied, factions of peninsulares and criollos began struggling for control.

They weren't the only ones who saw a chance for change. On September 16, 1810, a parish priest in the town of Dolores, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, issued his "Grito de Dolores," calling for land redistribution, racial equality, and an end to Spanish rule. ("Grito de Dolores" is a pun that can mean both "call from Dolores" and "cry of pain.") A popular insurrection ensued.

Hidalgo was captured and killed the following year, but the insurrection continued under another parish priest, José María Morelos y Payón. Formal independence came in 1821. By then, conservative forces in Mexico had decided to align with the revolutionaries, compelling the Spanish viceroy to sign the Treaty of Cordoba. But to this day, Mexico celebrates its Independence Day every September 16, in remembrance of Father Hidalgo's "grito."

Steve Sampson
September 6, 2006

More Mexico

Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821. But then it slipped into a half-century of revolts, rebellions, insurgencies, and coups--some of them supported by foreign powers. After all that, a strongman emerged: Porfirio Diaz, who ruled Mexico for more than 30 years, from 1876 to 1911. The leaders of the Mexican Revolution, including Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, eventually brought Diaz down, but then they fell to fighting among themselves.

The political violence finally ended with the rise of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional ("Institutional Revolutionary Party"), or PRI. After its birth in 1929, the PRI held the presidency for 71 years. The PRI brought a measure of stability but hardly true democracy. Opponents wryly called it the "Ministry for Elections." The people of old Chicago or New York would have called it a "political machine."

After World War II, Mexico enjoyed three decades of economic expansion, fueled in part by nationalizing the country's oil reserves. The population boomed, and women won the right to vote. Unfortunately, the fruits of economic expansion never reached many Mexicans. As frustration with the frequently corrupt government grew, so did political repression. In 1968, hundreds of student demonstrators were killed when government forces opened fire on them.

The discovery of new oil reserves brought a renewed economic boom in the 1970s, followed by a debilitating bust when oil prices fell in the 1980s. Complaints about the PRI increased. In 1988, an opposition candidate nearly captured the presidency, only to see the PRI candidate proclaimed the winner amid widespread allegations of fraud.

Public pressure soon pushed the PRI to implement electoral reforms, moving vote-counting responsibilities from the interior ministry to an independent Federal Electoral Institute and moving the certification of election results from the PRI-controlled Chamber of Deputies to a Federal Electoral Tribunal within the judiciary.

In 1997, opposition candidates actually won the majority of seats in Mexico's Chamber of Deputies. In 2000, Vicente Fox, of the PAN, won what many consider the first free and fair presidential election in Mexican history. The PRI is still an important player in Mexican politics, but its candidate in the 2006 presidential election finished a distant third, behind Calderon and Lopez Obrador.

Mexico by the Numbers

761,606 - Mexico's total area, in square miles (1,972,550 sq km). That's a bit larger than Indonesia or Saudi Arabia, and roughly three times the size of Texas.

107,449,525 - Mexico's total population. That makes it the world's 11th most populous nation, right behind Japan. Mexico has more people than any country in Europe except Russia.

18,000,000 - Population of the Mexico City metropolitan area, one of the world's largest. More people live there than in all of the Netherlands, Cuba, or Greece.

3,759,000 - Barrels of oil produced per day in Mexico in 2005. That makes Mexico the world's fifth largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States, and Iran.

89 - Percentage of the population that's Roman Catholic.

17 - Percentage of the population living in extreme poverty, according to government figures.

Steve Sampson
September 5, 2006

The Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution was brought on by, among other factors, tremendous disagreement among the Mexican people over the dictatorship of President Porfirio Diaz, who, all told, stayed in office for thirty one years. During that span, power was concentrated in the hands of a select few; the people had no power to express their opinions or select their public officials. Wealth was likewise concentrated in the hands of the few, and injustice was everywhere, in the cities and the countryside alike.

Early in the 20th Century, a new generation of young leaders arose who wanted to participate in the political life of their country, but they were denied the opportunity by the officials who were already entrenched in power and who were not about to give it up. This group of young leaders believed that they could assume their proper role in Mexican politics once President Diaz announced publicly that Mexico was ready for democracy. Although the Mexican Constitution called for public election and other institutions of democracy, Diaz and his supporters used their political and economic resources to stay in power indefinitely.

Francisco I. Madero was one of the strongest believers that President Diaz should renounce his power and not seek re-election. Together with other young reformers, Madero created the "Anti-reeleccionista" Party, which he represented in subsequent presidential elections. Between elections, Madero travelled throughout the country, campaigning for his ideas. Madero was a firm supporter of democracy and of making government subject to the strict limits of the law, and the success of Madero's movement made him a threat in the eyes of President Diaz. Shortly before the elections of 1910, Madero was apprehended in Monterrey and imprisoned in San Luis Potosi. Learning of Diaz's re-election, Madero fled to the United States in October of 1910. In exile, he issued the "Plan of San Luis," a manifesto which declared that the elections had been a fraud and that he would not recognize Porfirio Diaz as the legitimate President of the Republic.

Instead, Madero make the daring move of declaring himself President Pro-Temp until new elections could be held. Madero promised to return all land which had been confiscated from the peasants, and he called for universal voting rights and for a limit of one term for the president. Madero's call for an uprising on November 20th, 1910, marked the beginning of the Mexican Revolution.

On November 14th, in Cuchillo Parado in the state of Chihuahua, Toribio Ortega and a small group of followers took up arms. On the 18th in Puebla, Diaz's authorities uncovered preparations for an uprising in the home of the brothers Maximo and Aquiles Serdan, who where made to pay with their lives. Back in Chihuahua, Madero was able to persuade Pascual Orozco and Francisco Villa to join the revolution. Though they had no military experience, Orozco and Villa proved to be excellent strategists, and they earned the allegiance of the people of northern Mexico, who were particularly unhappy about the abusive ranchers and landlords who ran the North.

In March of 1911, Emiliano Zapata led the uprising of the peasants of Morelos to claim their rights over local land and water. At the same time, armed revolt began in many other parts of the country. The "Maderista" troops, and the national anger which inspired them, defeated the army of Diaz within six months. The decisive victory of the Mexican Revolution was the capture of Ciudad Juarez, just across the river from El Paso, by Orozco and Villa. Porfirio Diaz then resigned as President and fled to exile in France, where he died in 1915.

With the collapse of the Diaz regime, the Mexican Congress elected Francisco Leon De La Barra as President Pro-Temp and called for national popular elections, which resulted in the victory of Francisco I. Madero as President and Jose Maria Pino Suarez as Vice-President.

Mexico Revolts

Mexicans revolted--many, many times. It can be confusing, because there is a specific "Mexican Revolution," which started in 1910. But truth is, Mexico's history is full of revolts, rebellions, insurgencies, and coups. Here's how that history unfolded, from the nation's fight for freedom from Spain to its revolt against a French-imposed Austrian emperor to its own controversial "Reform."

1808 Napoleon Bonaparte invades Spain and inadvertently sparks a rebellion 6,000 miles away in Mexico City. With their colonial overlords preoccupied, Mexico's elites vie for control.

1810 With the elites struggling, a parish priest, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, launches a popular insurrection, calling for land redistribution, racial equality, and independence. Fearing a caste war--not to mention losing their special privileges--Mexican conservatives side with the crown. By 1815, royalists have gained the upper hand, but they can't crush the rebellion, now led by Vicente Guerrero.

1820 Back in Spain, reformers force King Ferdinand VII to accept a liberal constitution. Back in Mexico, conservatives don't want liberal reforms.

1821 A royalist commander, Agustín de Iturbide, cuts a deal with Guerrero and the rebels. Joining forces as the "Army of the Three Guarantees" (independence, union, and Catholicism), they compel the Spanish viceroy to sign the Treaty of Cordoba, creating an independent Mexican Empire. Iturbide becomes emperor the next year, but conflict ensues.

1824 - Iturbide is arrested and shot. Mexico adopts a new constitution and officially becomes a republic, but that doesn't bring stability. For the next decade, revolt follows revolt as centralist and federalist factions fight for control.

1833 A charismatic general, Antonio López de Santa Anna, becomes president. During his term, Santa Anna enacts a new constitution that reduces Mexican states' rights. That sparks trouble in several regions--including Texas, then a sparsely populated part of Mexico.

1836 Texas declares independence. Santa Anna attacks, defeating a force at the Alamo before losing the Battle of San Jacinto. He's captured, and his troops retreat. Mexico refuses to recognize the new Republic of Texas but doesn't try to take it back. After his release and return to Mexico, Santa Anna is forced into retirement. He returns to power in 1839, and again in 1841, before being exiled to Cuba.

1845 The United States annexes Texas.

1846 A dispute over the Texas-Mexico border triggers war with the United States. U.S. victories bring down the Mexican government, and Santa Anna returns to power yet again. He fares little better than his predecessors. U.S. forces take Mexico City in 1847, and Santa Anna goes back into exile.

1848 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially ends the war. Under the treaty's terms, the United States pays $15 million and receives northern Mexico--more than 525,000 square miles (1,360,000 sq km) of land, including all or part of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Mexico's government is left in shambles.

1853 Santa Anna returns from retirement again, this time to become dictator. He raises $10 million by selling what's now southern Arizona and southern New Mexico to the United States in what U.S. historians call the Gadsden Purchase.

1854 Fed up with "His Most Serene Highness," liberal rebels drive Santa Anna from power yet again. They launch La Reforma ("the Reform"), an effort to rein in the military, separate church from state, seed economic development, and establish the rule of law.

1857 The reformers enact a new constitution. Conservatives revolt, and the "War of the Reform" (1858-60) is on, with Spain supporting the conservatives and the United States supporting the reformers. The reformers prevail, and their leader, Benito Juárez, becomes president.

1861 Hoping to repair his beleaguered and bankrupt nation, Juárez stops payment on foreign debts. Conservatives, who've been plotting a return to power with help from France's Napoleon III, see their chance. France, Spain, and Britain send an army to Mexico to force debt repayment. Spain and Britain quickly pull out, but not France.

1862 The French march on Mexico City, but meet stiff resistance at the town of Puebla on May 5--the original "Cinco de Mayo"--and have to retreat.

1863 French forces finally overwhelm the Mexicans. The following year a new emperor arrives, courtesy of Napoleon III. He is Maximilian, archduke of Austria, and before long he manages to annoy nearly everyone in Mexico.

1867 The French decide that Mexico isn't worth the trouble and pull out. Maximilian tries to make a stand against a resurgent Juárez but winds up in front of a firing squad. Juárez is reelected president and charts a course for "Liberty, Order, and Progress."

1872 Juárez dies in office and, surprisingly, peace ensues. His constitutional successor, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, takes office and largely continues the reform program.

1876 Porfirio Díaz leads a revolt and seizes power. Díaz is a former general--one of the men who helped win Mexico back from Maximilian. But he's not interested in restoring the republic. After passing the presidency to a puppet in 1880, he takes it back in 1884 and doesn't relinquish it until 1911. He builds a powerful political machine, preserving the forms of democracy without the side effect of real opposition.

1888 Mexico works out a debt consolidation plan that puts its fiscal house in order. Foreign capital pours in, and Díaz begins to modernize and industrialize the nation. But most of the return flows to foreigners or lines the pockets of Mexico's wealthy few. Many others sink further into poverty.

1900 Labor activist Ricardo Flores Magón founds Regeneración, a newspaper that opposes Díaz. Before long, Magón is banned from publishing in Mexico, but the reform movement gains momentum. As criticism of the regime increases, so does political repression.

1908 In an interview with a U.S. magazine, Díaz suggests that Mexico is ready for true democracy and that he's willing to have other candidates compete in the 1910 election. Francisco Madero, scion of one of Mexico's wealthiest families, soon emerges as a leading opposition candidate.

1910 Díaz has Madero arrested and triumphs in the phony election that follows. While out on bond, Madero escapes to Texas, declares the election invalid, and calls for armed rebellion against Díaz. He gets it, with revolutionaries like Emiliano Zapata and Francisco "Pancho" Villa leading the fight. The "Mexican Revolution" begins.

1911 After revolutionary forces capture Ciudad Juárez, Díaz resigns and sails for Europe. Madero becomes president but soon finds himself besieged from both sides. Revolutionaries say he's too conservative. Conservatives say he's too revolutionary. Both sides attempt to overthrow him.

1913 Victoriano Huerta, the commander of government forces, betrays Madero--who is promptly arrested, then shot "while trying to escape." Huerta assumes the presidency, but has to fight the old revolutionaries plus a new "Constitutionalist Army" led by Venustiano Carranza.

1914 Various revolutionary factions combine to unseat Huerta then fall to fighting among themselves. The following year, Carranza and his general, Álvaro Obregón, prevail.

1917 A constitutional convention, called by Carranza, drafts a new constitution that protects labor, nationalizes key natural resources (like oil), promises social welfare programs, places limits on the Catholic Church, and prevents the president from serving consecutive terms. Carranza becomes president but implements few reforms.

1920 Obregón ousts Carranza with help from another general, Plutarco Elías Calles. He then assumes the presidency and defuses opposition with a clever combination of carrots and sticks. Over the next few years Obregón institutes land and education reforms. He then chooses Calles to be his successor. Calles continues Obregón's programs and steps up anti-church reforms.

1926 Government moves against the Catholic Church lead to a Catholic insurgency, the Cristero War, which lasts three years and claims some 90,000 lives.

1928 Obregón is elected president again, but a Catholic radical assassinates him before he can take office. Faced with a succession crisis, Calles devises an ingenious solution: he creates a political party through which he can continue to rule through puppet presidents. The party comes to be known as the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI).

1934 Lázaro Cárdenas, a new president picked by Calles, proves to be no puppet. He vigorously pursues the old revolutionary goals, especially land reform. He also drives Calles into exile, without violence. The party has outgrown the man. But it soon grows into "The Man"--a political machine that exploits revolutionary rhetoric and a vast patronage system to dominate Mexico for decades.

Steve Sampson
September 8, 2006

The Ancient Mayans

Before the Aztecs, there were the Maya. Lose any image of small tribal villages led by elders and sustained by simple agriculture. Yes, that's how the Maya got started--and how many Maya live today.

But during a so-called classic period from AD 250 to 900, Mayan kings ruled city-states. These cities were fed by farms that used canals to bring water to dry regions and canal muck to raise beds of rich soil that yielded corn, squash, and beans year after year.

For the ancient Maya, life was an epic struggle between creation and apocalyptic chaos. Almost every aspect of their society was thus geared to staying in the good graces of their gods. Socially powerful priests governed time, learning, and ritual. They presided over an accurate calendar, the most sophisticated system of reading and writing created in Mesoamerica, mathematics (with zero, no less), and the determination of festival and unlucky days.

They taught that human and animal sacrifice, bloodletting, and ritual drama and sport nourished the gods and were essential to society's continued existence. As Mayan civilization began to decline around AD 900, kings reportedly rushed from city to city performing bloodletting ceremonies in an effort to retain control over their crumbling domains.

When they weren't catering to their gods, farming, trading, or warring, the Maya managed to build about 40 cities, dotting the map from the arid northern Yucatan in Mexico to the tropical rainforests of Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. At the height of the classic period, the cities and their agricultural environs were home to as many as 2 million Maya.

Without the help of the wheel, metal tools, or beasts of burden, the Maya built towering step pyramids and long low palaces to serve as temples and ceremonial city centers. The walls of these structures provide a stone canvas for much of the Mayan art that survives today.

Murals, sculpture, and even the Mayan creation story all record the importance of the Mesoamerican ball game in Mayan society. The first team sport in recorded history, the game likely originated when the Olmecs (an earlier Mesoamerican culture) discovered how to make balls from the products of the native rubber tree nearly 4,000 years ago.

Two teams of up to six players attempted to advance this heavy rubber ball down a narrow court and into the opposing team's end zone. The catch? The ball had to be struck with the hips, without hand or foot contact. In some versions of the game, teams could score by hitting the ball through a ring attached to the wall. Winners were praised and richly rewarded, but losers paid with their lives-–priests sometimes sliced out their hearts right on the court.

It sounds unbelievable, but being sacrificed was actually a compliment. The Maya believed that a sacrifice was only as good as the quality of the object offered, and ballplayers were pretty valuable commodities. They were so revered that the Mayan word for ballplayer was also a ceremonial title taken by kings. Cities poured vast resources into constructing stadiums, players sported elaborate uniforms, and people lost their shirts gambling on the game.

--Laura Kane

The Aztecs

Archaeologists in Mexico City have dug up the remains of an 800-year-old Aztec pyramid--a structure so old it may force scholars to revise their understanding of the Aztecs' origins.

Sometime before the 14th century, an alliance of tribes emerged in central Mexico that collectively came to be known as the "Aztecs." Chief among the tribes was the Mexica, from whose name "Mexico" derives.

Over the next several centuries, the Aztecs and their allies built an empire that spanned much of modern Mexico. They followed a sophisticated calendar and cooked up lots of cocoa-filled treats. Yet their empire crumbled quickly when the Spanish conquistador Hernándo Cortés invaded in 1519.

Cortés had just a few hundred men, but he cunningly exploited both his superior military technology (notably, guns and horses) and the troops of Aztec enemies (notably, the Tlaxcalan)--not to mention a smallpox epidemic that ravaged the Aztec population. He destroyed Tenochtitlan and built Mexico City in its place. That's why, today, the Mexican capital is an archaeological treasure trove--in addition to being one of the world's most populated places.

Of course, mention the Aztecs and many minds immediately picture fierce warriors, or priests practicing human sacrifice. It's true that valor was central to Aztec culture. And it's probably true that Aztec priests regularly engaged in ritual human sacrifice--though scholars argue over the details.

Still, the Aztecs' political success stemmed at least as much from skillful farming as it did from fierce fighting or repulsive rituals. Aztec agronomists developed sophisticated irrigation and crop rotation techniques, used dikes and ditches to reclaim swamplands, and terraced barren hillsides into productive fields.

Result: crop yields that fed the most densely populated place in Mesoamerican history--Tenochtitlan--and helped generate the wealth to build an empire. Behind every fierce warrior, in other words, was an even fiercer farmer.

--Steve Sampson

Irish in theThe Mexican-American War (1846-1848)

by Denis Mueller

The most devastating event in Mexican history was the war with the USA. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Montana were taken by military force from Mexico. This area is larger than Spain, Italy and France combined. Even Abraham Lincoln, then a young Congressman, and Ulysses S. Grant, the future Civil War victorious commander and US President, believed that the invasion of Mexico was not justified.

Mexico had just rejected a $15 million cash-for-land deal offered by the US. The area included what now covers the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Utah. Irritated at the rebuff, the US struck back in 1845 by annexing Texas, a territory long disputed and fought over by both countries. Mexico responded by severing diplomatic relations. US President James Polk, a no-nonsense backwoods lawyer from Tennessee, further provoked Mexico by moving troops south to the Rio Grande, a river that historically was considered well within Mexico.

The US-Mexican War is the pivotal chapter in the history of North America. It is the war that sealed the fates of its two participants. For the United States, the War garnered huge amounts of territory and wealth, bootstrapping the fledgling democracy onto the world stage. For Mexico, the war sent the emerging nation into a tailspin that it is still reckoning with today.

In the United States the US-Mexican War is virtually forgotten, and for good reason, as it is the clearest example of historical hypocrisy. One of the more remarkable parts of the story is that at the time of this unjust invasion of a peaceful Catholic neighbor, Irish immigrants fresh off the coffin-ships from the Potato Famine identified with Mexico's plight.

Over a hundred years before the conscientious objectors of Vietnam, the 'San Patricios' were true heroes who fought and died for their religion, their convictions, their brethren, and their adopted homeland, Mexico. While Henry David Thoreau invented civil disobedience in Massachusetts, refusing to pay his taxes to support this unjust invasion of Catholic Mexico, and while Abraham Lincoln stood in opposition to President Polk's scheme in Congress, the 'San Patricios' fought to the death in the front lines against the invading Yankees.

As the war progressed, the Irish grouped in the San Patricio battalion, under a green banner with St Patrick and the Mexican eagle, distinguished themselves as artillery specialists and inflicted heavy casualties on the US invaders at the battles of Monterey and Buena Vista. But the Mexican forces were being pushed back towards the capital as Santa Anna made a series of tactical blunders.

The US army, now under the command of a tough Virginian, General Winfield Scott (Old Fuss and Feathers), landed at Vera Cruz and marched on the capital.

The San Patricios, whose bravery and skill were noted by the Mexican officers, fell back with their allies on Mexico City.

Those who survived the Churubusco battle and were captured, were soon court-martialed for desertion. The historian, Michael Hogan, author of The Irish Soldiers Of Mexico, says the punishments inflicted on the Irish went beyond what was allowed by the military code of the day and that the whole episode was denied for years by the US army and still remains deeply hidden in USA history to this very day.

The hangings and brandings were particularly brutal. Thirty of the condemned were forced to wait for hours with the noose around their necks until the final Mexican surrender at Chapultepec Castle.

This mass hanging, according to Robert R. Miller, author of "Shamrock and Sword," was the largest group execution ever carried out in U.S. military history. Those few who were spared received 50 lashes and had their faces branded with hot irons. It was torture pure and simple, and an example of how war is often accompanied with lies and deceit.

Source: A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn.

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