Main article: History of Mexico
Chichen Itza.
View of the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan, a large pre-Columbian city, which had as many as 150,000 inhabitants at its height in the 5th century.
An Aztec jade mask from the 14th century depicting the god Xipe Totec.
Ancient cultures
Archaic period
The earliest human remains in Mexico are chips of stone tools found near campfire remains in the Valley of Mexico and radiocarbon-dated to circa 23,000 years ago. Mexico is the site of the domestication of maize and beans which caused a transition from paleo-Indian hunter-gatherers to sedentary agricultural villages beginning around 7000 BCE.
Classic periods (1500 BC–700 AD)
In the subsequent formative eras, maize cultivation and cultural traits such as a complex mythological and religious complex, a vigesimal numeric system, were diffused from the Mexican cultures to the rest of the Mesoamerican culture area. In this period villages began to become socially stratified and develop into chiefdoms, and the development of large ceremonial centers.
Among the earliest complex civilizations in Mexico was the Olmec culture which flourish on the Gulf Coast from around 1500 BCE. Olmec cultural traits diffused through Mexico into other formative era cultures in Chiapas, Oaxaca and the Valley of Mexico. The formative period saw the spread of distinct religious and symbolic traditions, as well as artistic and architectural complexes.
In the subsequent pre-classical period, the Maya and Zapotec civilizations developed complex centers at Calakmul and Monte Albán respectively. During this period the first true Mesoamerican writing systems were developed in the Epi-Olmec and the Zapotec cultures, and the Mesoamerican writing tradition reached its height in the Classic Maya Hieroglyphic script.
In Central Mexico, the height of the classic period saw the ascendancy of Teotihuacan, which formed a military and commercial empire whose political influence stretched south into the Maya area as well as north. At its peak, Teotihuacan, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas, had a population of more than 150,000 people. At the collapse of Teotihuacán around 600 CE, competition between several important political centers in central Mexico such as Xochicalco and Cholula ensued. At this time during the Epi-Classic Nahua peoples began moving south into Mesoamerica from the North, and became politically and culturally dominant in central Mexico, as they displaced speakers of Oto-Manguean languages.
Post-classic period (700–1519 AD)
During the early post-classic Central Mexico was dominated by the Toltec culture, Oaxaca by the Mixtec and the lowland Maya area had important centers at Chichén Itzá and Mayapán. Towards the end of the post-Classic period the Aztecs of Central Mexico built a tributary empire covering most of central Mexico. The Aztecs were noted for practicing human sacrifice on a large scale. The distinct Mesoamerican cultural tradition ended with the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, and over the next centuries Mexican indigenous cultures were gradually subjected to Spanish colonial rule.
Colonial period
Taxco, Guerrero
Conquest (1519)
Hernán Cortés and Xicotencatl II as depicted in the History of Tlaxcala
The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire began in February 1519 when Hernán Cortés arrived at the port in Veracruz with ca. 500 conquistadores, and later moved on to the Aztec capital. On his search for gold and other riches, Cortés decided to invade and conquer the Aztec empire.
The ruler of the Aztec empire upon the arrival of the Spaniards was Moctezuma II, who was later killed; his successor and brother Cuitláhuac took control of the Aztec empire, but was among the first to fall from the smallpox epidemic a short time later. Unintentionally introduced by Spanish conquerors, smallpox ravaged Mesoamerica in the 1520s, killing more than 3 million Aztecs. Other sources, however, mentioned that the death toll of the Aztecs might have reached up to 15 million (out of a population of less than 30 million). Severely weakened, the Aztec empire was easily defeated by Cortés and his forces on his second return.
Smallpox was a devastating and selective disease—it generally killed Aztecs but not Spaniards, who as Europeans had already been exposed to it for centuries and were therefore much more immune to it. The deaths caused by smallpox are believed to have triggered a rapid growth of Christianity in Mexico and the Americas. At first, the Aztecs believed the epidemic was a punishment from an angry god, but they later accepted their fate and no longer resisted the Spanish rule. Many of the surviving Aztecs blamed the cause of smallpox to the superiority of the Christian god, which resulted in the acceptance of Catholicism and yielding to the Spanish rule throughout Mexico.
The territory became part of the Spanish Empire under the name of New Spain. Mexico City was systematically rebuilt by Cortés following the Fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521. Much of the identity, traditions and architecture of Mexico were created during the colonial period.
Independence from Spain (1821)
The Territorial evolution of Mexico after independence, noting losses to the US (red, white and orange), Chiapas annexed from Guatemala (blue), the annexation of the Republic of Yucatan (red) and the secession of Central America (purple).
On September 16, 1810, independence from Spain was declared by priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, in the small town of Dolores, Guanajuato. The first insurgent group was formed by Hidalgo, the Spanish viceregal army captain Ignacio Allende, the militia captain Juan Aldama and "La Corregidora" Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez. Hidalgo and some of his soldiers were captured and executed by firing squad in Chihuahua, on July 31, 1811. Following his death, the leadership was assumed by priest José María Morelos, who occupied key southern cities.
In 1813 the Congress of Chilpancingo was convened and, on November 6, signed the "Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of Northern America". Morelos was captured and executed on December 22, 1815.
In subsequent years, the insurgency was near collapse, but in 1820 Viceroy Juan Ruiz de Apodaca sent an army under the criollo general Agustín de Iturbide against the troops of Vicente Guerrero. Instead, Iturbide approached Guerrero to join forces, and on August 24, 1821 representatives of the Spanish Crown and Iturbide signed the "Treaty of Córdoba" and the "Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire", which recognized the independence of Mexico under the terms of the "Plan of Iguala".
Juárez reforms and territorial losses
President Benito Juárez, resisted the French occupation, dissolved the Empire, restored the Republic and established the separation of Church and State.
Porfirio Díaz, president of Mexico with one interruption from 1876 to 1911
Agustín de Iturbide immediately proclaimed himself emperor of the First Mexican Empire. A revolt against him in 1823 established the United Mexican States. In 1824, a Republican Constitution was drafted and Guadalupe Victoria became the first president of the newly born country. In 1829 president Guerrero abolished slavery. The first decades of the post-independence period were marked by economic instability, which led to the Pastry War in 1836, and a constant strife between liberales, supporters of a federal form of government, and conservadores, proposals of a hierarchical form of government.
General Antonio López de Santa Anna, a centralist and two-time dictator, approved the Siete Leyes in 1836, a radical amendment that institutionalized the centralized form of government. When he suspended the 1824 Constitution, civil war spread across the country, and three new governments declared independence: the Republic of Texas, the Republic of the Rio Grande and the Republic of Yucatán.
Texas successfully achieved independence and was annexed by the United States. A border dispute led to the Mexican-American War, which began in 1846 and lasted for two years; the War was settled via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which forced Mexico to give up over half of its land to the U.S., including Alta California, New Mexico, and the disputed parts of Texas. A much smaller transfer of territory in what is today southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico — the Gadsden Purchase — occurred in 1854. The Caste War of Yucatán, the Mayan uprising that began in 1847, was one of the most successful modern Native American revolts. Maya rebels, or Cruzob, maintained relatively independent enclaves until the 1930s.
Dissatisfaction with Santa Anna's return to power led to the liberal "Plan of Ayutla", initiating an era known as La Reforma, after which a new Constitution was drafted in 1857 that established a secular state, federalism as the form of government, and several freedoms. As the conservadores refused to recognize it, the Reform War began in 1858, during which both groups had their own governments. The war ended in 1861 with victory by the Liberals, led by the Amerindian president Benito Juárez. In the 1860s Mexico underwent a military occupation by France, which established the Second Mexican Empire under the rule of the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria with support from the Roman Catholic clergy and the conservadores, who later switched sides and joined the liberales. Maximilian surrendered, was tried on June 14 and was executed on June 19, 1867.
Porfiriato (1876–1910)
Porfirio Díaz, a republican general during the French intervention, ruled Mexico from 1876 to 1880 and then from 1884 to 1911 in five consecutive reelections, period known as the Porfiriato, characterized by remarkable economic achievements, investments in the arts and sciences, but also of economic inequality and political repression.
Mexican Revolution (1910–1929)
Francisco I. Madero with Emiliano Zapata, in Cuernavaca during the Mexican revolution.
A likely electoral fraud that led to Diaz' fifth reelection sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution, initially led by Francisco I. Madero.
Díaz resigned in 1911 and Madero was elected president but overthrown and murdered in a coup d'État two years later directed by conservative general Victoriano Huerta. That event re-ignited the civil war, involving figures such as Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata, who formed their own forces. A third force, the constitutional army led by Venustiano Carranza managed to bring an end to the war, and radically amended the 1857 Constitution to include many of the social premises and demands of the revolutionaries into what was eventually called the 1917 Constitution. It is estimated that the war killed 900,000 of the 1910 population of 15 million. Assassinated in 1920, Carranza was succeeded by another revolutionary hero, Álvaro Obregón, who in turn was succeeded by Plutarco Elías Calles. Obregón was reelected in 1928 but assassinated before he could assume power.
PRI rule (1929–2000)
NAFTA signing ceremony, October 1992. From left to right: (standing) president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, president George H. W. Bush and prime minister Brian Mulroney; (seated) Jaime Serra Puche, Carla Hills and Michael Wilson
In 1929, Calles founded the National Revolutionary Party (PNR), later renamed the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and started a period known as the Maximato, which ended with the election of Lázaro Cárdenas, who implemented many economic and social reforms, and most significantly expropriated the oil industry into Pemex on March 18, 1938, but sparked a diplomatic crisis with the countries whose citizens had lost businesses by Cárdenas' radical measure.
Between 1940 and 1980, Mexico remained a poor country but experienced substantial economic growth that some historians call the "Mexican miracle". Although the economy continued to flourish, social inequality remained a factor of discontent. Moreover, the PRI rule became increasingly authoritarian and at times oppressive (see the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, which claimed the life of around 30–800 protesters).
Electoral reforms and high oil prices followed the administration of Luis Echeverría, mismanagement of these revenues led to inflation and exacerbated the 1982 Crisis. That year, oil prices plunged, interest rates soared, and the government defaulted on its debt. President Miguel de la Madrid resorted to currency devaluations which in turn sparked inflation.
In the 1980s the first cracks emerged in PRI's monopolistic position. In Baja California, Ernesto Ruffo Appel was elected as governor. In 1988, electoral fraud prevented the leftist candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas from winning the national presidential elections, giving Carlos Salinas de Gortari the presidency and leading to massive protests in Mexico City.
Salinas embarked on a program of neoliberal reforms which fixed the exchange rate, controlled inflation and culminated with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which came into effect on January 1, 1994. The same day, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) started a two-week-long armed rebellion against the federal government, and has continued as a non-violent opposition movement against neoliberalism and globalization.
Democratization
In December 1994, a month after Salinas was succeeded by Ernesto Zedillo, the Mexican economy collapsed, with a rapid rescue packaged authorized by the U.S. President, Bill Clinton, and major macroeconomic reforms started by President Zedillo, the economy rapidly recovered and growth peaked at almost 7% by the end of 1999.
In 2000, after 71 years, the PRI lost a presidential election to Vicente Fox of the opposition National Action Party (PAN). In the 2006 presidential election, Felipe Calderón from the PAN was declared the winner, with a very narrow margin over leftist politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). López Obrador, however, contested the election and pledged to create an "alternative government".
