A Quick History of Mexico
Mexico’s history is as alive and well as ever – and learning a little about it is one of the great joys of discovering Mexico herself. In fact, many of the people we meet and talk – when they are considering a move to Mexico tell us that learning more and more becomes one of the great pass-times that make a Mexico lifestyle worth pursuing.
With that said, this is just the briefest of introductions to a field we hope you’ll enjoy as much as we do.
Ancient Mexico:
Just when the first human beings arrived in Mexico remains a mystery. About 30,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers probably migrated south to Mexico after having crossed the Bering Strait from Asia, and from around 8000 BC, these clans cultivated crops, established several important agricultural civilizations and endured through the age of the Spanish Conquest.
The Olmecs are the earliest known civilization, remembered for the colossal carved stone heads and other carvings still found today in the state of Tabasco. They dominated the southern jungles near the Gulf of Mexico, at the southeast end of Mexico from about 1200 to 500 BC.
After the Olmecs, the Toltec civilization, centered on their great cities of Teotihuacan and Cholula, built many of the fantastic pyramids that one can still see today, near Mexico City and the city of Puebla. They reached their peak at around the year 500 AD, and declined within a century or two thereafter. The mythical feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl, was a god whose story originated with the Toltecs, but which was also taken up by the Maya and the Aztec peoples.
From the 3rd through the 10th century AD, the Mayan culture flourished, in what is now known as the Yucatan peninsula and across southern Mexico to Chiapas and into Guatemala. This very rich culture boasted cities with a multi-tiered division of labor and a well-developed and highly sophisticated calendar. Combining their astronomical science with their complicated religious astrology, magnificent pyramids, temples and entire cities sprang up in the jungles.
The Aztec culture, which also boasted a rich cosmology, built great cities such as Tenochtitlán. Founded in 1325 and today called Mexico City, it is the longest continuously inhabited city in the hemisphere. The Aztecs grew and prospered in southern and central Mexico, until the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors.
Colonial Mexico:
In 1492, when Columbus arrived in the West Indies the Aztecs were a thriving, advanced agricultural civilization. In 1519, Hernan Cortés of Spain led an expedition from Cuba to conquer and settle the mainland. Cortés vanquished the Aztec emperor, Moctezuma II, and the native population lost all political power and more than half the population succumbed to smallpox within 10 years. The Spaniards then built an empire, New Spain, the remnants of which can be seen everywhere in Mexico today, especially in central Mexico. These remains include the great Baroque cathedrals, such as the one in the city of Morelia, and many stunning colonial houses and governors’ palaces.
The years of the Spanish conquest saw great achievement and tremendous tumult in Mexico. The “Indians,” the indigenous people of Mexico were nearly destroyed by smallpox and severe labor exploitation, though several of the Spanish friars spoke out against such outrages. Meanwhile, Spain grew very rich from the silver, chocolate, and sugar that poured out of New Spain. The Spanish conquest of Mexico had world-wide implications. Silver was a major contributing factor to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, on the opposite side of the world. With cheap New World silver flooding the Mediterranean, the Ottoman silver akçe was devalued until Ottoman finances were in ruins.
Nevertheless, Spain’s prosperity, like any nation’s, was ephemeral. Following Spain’s decline during the 18th century, Napoleon Bonaparte I of France occupied Spain. Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Mexican criollo priest, chose this moment to move for independence from Spain. Though Hidalgo was killed by the Spanish, along with many other revolutionaries of his time, his movement led eventually to Mexican independence in 1821. The tumultuous decades that followed saw revolts against Mexico from the Yucatan, California, and Texas, the latter declaring itself an independent republic in 1836, eventually becoming an American following the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. This war also led to the United States’ acquisition of Nevada, Utah, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado and after which Mexico settled into its present borders.
Modern Mexico:
In the 1860s, France tried to install the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian of Austria on the Mexican throne. France, under the leadership of Napoleon III, who was sometimes charmed and often showed diplomatic genius, but who was ultimately ill-fated, masterminded what proved to be a calamitous conquest of Mexico. Mexico had found itself in debt to France, Britain, and Spain. Thus Napoleon III of France sought to install Maximilian as a puppet dictator, albeit one with a spotless pedigree.
19th-century colonialism was in full flower, the idea of Balance of Power was being weighed in Europe and there was some thought in European circles that Mexico could be used as a counterweight to the growing power of the US. The defeat of this monarchical experiment by President Benito Juárez (whose name still graces many avenues in Mexico today) and Texas-born General Ignacio Zaragoza is remembered at the Cinco de Mayo holiday. The would-be conqueror, Maximilian, was executed. His wife, Carlota was broken by his death, and the Austrian House of Habsburg began their most star-crossed decades, until their final dissolution following World War I.
The machinations of France and Austria coming to naught meant both that Mexican independence was assured and that North America would be free of European interference after the mid-1800s. There would be no military counterweight to the United States in the Americas. The part that Mexico played in asserting her own independence also helped to ensure that, especially after the Civil War, the United States would be unchallenged in the north, and could build its own commercial and industrial empire unhindered.
General Porfirio Díaz, following Maximilian’s attempt at conquest and President Benito Juárez’s eventual death, became the undisputed ruler of Mexico. His rule lasted more than 3 decades, but after his fraudulent election in 1910 his continued rule and further corruption became intolerable to the Mexican people. A final revolution took place and some have argued that, though contained entirely within Mexico, these were the first battles of World War I which was to quickly consume the rest of the globe. This revolution saw hundreds of thousands of Mexicans die and remains a moment of tragedy and heroism in Mexican history.
After this second revolution, Mexico was, at last, a stable nation. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century, until historic electoral shakeups in the last two decades allowed other parties fuller participation.
Today, Mexico has signed and is part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has bound it ever more closely to Canada and the United States. This economic cooperation seems to herald more communication and trade between Mexicans and North Americans and boom times for Mexican development, as more and more northerners discover the beauties of this multifaceted and fascinating nation.
