DISCOVER HISTORY

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MEXICAN HISTORY

The written history of Mexico spans more than three millennia. First populated more than 13,000 years ago, central and southern Mexico, (termed Mesoamerica), saw the rise and fall of complex indigenous civilizations. Uniquely in the Western Hemisphere, Mesoamerican civilizations developed glyphic writing systems, recording the political history of conquests and rulers. Mesoamerican history before Europeans arrived is variously called the prehispanic era and the precolumbian era.

The Spanish conquest of Mexico that toppled the Aztec Empire in 1521 with the aid of indigenous allies, created a political entity known as New Spain, now usually called "colonial Mexico." The Spanish victories were followed by expanded regions into the Spanish Empire. The Spanish crown established the Viceroyalty of New Spain with the site of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan becoming Mexico City. Mexico City became and remains the center of political rule. 

During the colonial era, Mexico's indigenous culture mixed with European culture, producing a hybrid culture perhaps best seen in the local use of language: the country is both the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world and home to the largest number of Native American language speakers in North America. The legacy of three centuries of Spanish rule (1521-1821) is a country with a Spanish-speaking, Roman Catholic, and largely Western culture. 

The three main institutions of the early colonial era were the Roman Catholic Church and the civil hierarchy of the State, both controlled by the Spanish monarchy. In the late eighteenth century, the crown created a standing military to protect its sovereignty over territory and prevent foreign invasions. 

The royal army and militias became a way for American-born Spaniards (criollos) to achieve upward mobility when other paths to advancement were blocked by the Spanish crown's preference for Iberian-born Spaniards (peninsulares) for high civil and ecclesiastical offices. Because of crown policies, Mexico had no tradition of leadership or self-government. After a protracted struggle (1810–21) for independence, New Spain became the sovereign nation of Mexico, with the signing of the Treaty of Córdoba.

At independence in 1821, the Mexican economy was in ruins, the treasury was empty, and the brief Mexican unity against Spanish rule disappeared. A brief period of monarchy (1821–23), the First Mexican Empire, which was overthrown in 1823. 

The Republic of Mexico, established under the federal constitution of 1824 that enshrined Roman Catholicism as the sole religion, and retained special privileges for the church and the military, both of which were conservative in their political outlook. The early republic was a period of economic stagnation, political instability, and conflict between conservatives and liberals, with the military a prime force for conservative intervention in politics. 

As with other newly-independent Spanish American countries, a military strongman (caudillo), conservative General Antonio López de Santa Anna, dominated politics in a period conventionally called the Age of Santa Anna. The military defended the country's sovereignty when Spain attempted to reconquer Mexico, the French invaded to collect debts, and Anglo-American settlers in Texas fought for their independence. In 1846, the United States provoked the Mexican–American War, which ended two years later with Mexico ceding almost half its territory via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to the United States. 

Mexican liberals overthrew him in 1854, initiating La Reforma, a liberalizing movement. The Mexican Constitution of 1857 codified the principles of liberalism in law, especially the separation of church and state and individuals' equality before the law, stripping corporate entities (the Catholic Church and indigenous communities) of special status. This reform sparked a civil war between liberals, who defended the constitution, and conservatives, who opposed it. The War of the Reform saw the defeat of the conservatives on the battlefield, but they remained strong and took the opportunity to invite foreign intervention against the liberals to forward their own cause. 

France invaded Mexico in 1861 on a pretext of collecting on defaulted loans to the government of Benito Juárez, but at the invitation of Mexican conservatives seeking to restore monarchy in Mexico, set Maximilian I on the Mexican throne. The United States, engaged in their own civil war at that time (1861–65), did not attempt to counter the French invasion. France withdrew its support of Maximilian in 1867; his monarchist rule quickly collapsed, and he was executed.[2] The Restored Republic (1867–76) brought back liberal Benito Juárez as president, but liberals engaged in fierce ideological struggles among themselves between supporters of the radical Constitution of 1857 and moderate liberals. 

Following Juárez's death, moderate Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada succeeded him but was overthrown by General Porfirio Díaz, a hero of the Mexican victory over the French. Díaz led Mexico to a period of stability and economic growth. During the Porfiriato (1876-1911), Díaz promoted order and progress, suppressing violence, modernizing the economy, and inviting an inflow of foreign investment, while maintaining the liberal constitution of 1857, but he reneged on his promise to step down from power in 1910, leading to widespread protests and violence.

The outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 initiated a chaotic period of civil war that lasted until 1920. Wealthy estate-owner Francisco I. Madero united groups opposed to Díaz, including liberal intellectuals, industrial labor activists and peasants seeking land. Díaz was forced into exile in May 1911. Madero was democratically elected later in the year, but was overthrown in February 1913 by reactionaries, as General Victoriano Huerta seized power. Anti-Huerta forces in the north unified under Venustiano Carranza, a local politician and landowner and the leader of the Constitutionalist faction. In Morelos, peasants under Emiliano Zapata independently also opposed Huerta. 

The conflict was not politically or militarily unified, and violence did not occur in all parts of the country. In the north, conflict took place with organized armies under Constitutionalist generals such as Pancho Villa and Alvaro Obregón; and in the center, particularly the state of Morelos, peasants pursued guerrilla warfare. The Constitutionalist faction won the civil war, and Carranza was elected president in 1917. The war killed a tenth of the nation's population and drove many Mexicans across the norther border into the United States. 

A new legal framework was established in the Constitution of 1917, which reversed the principle, established under Díaz, that gave absolute property rights to individuals. Northern revolutionary generals Alvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles each served a four-year presidential term following the end of the military conflict in 1920. The assassination of president-elect Obregón in 1928 led to a crisis of presidential succession, solved by the creation of a political party in 1929 by Calles, now called the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held presidential power continuously until 2000.

The postrevolutionary era is generally marked by political peace whereby conflicts are not resolved by violence. This period has been marked by changes in policy and amendments to the 1917 Mexican Constitution to allow for neoliberal economic policies. 

Following the formation in 1929 of the precursor to the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), this party controlled most national and state politics after 1929, and nationalized the oil industry in the 1930s. During World War II, Mexico was a strong ally of the United States, and benefited significantly by supplying metals to build war material as well as guest farm workers, who freed US American men to fight overseas. 

Mexico emerged from World War II with wealth and political stability and unleashed a major period of economic growth, often called the Mexican Miracle. It was organized around the principles of import substitution industrialization, with the creation of many state-owned industrial enterprises. The population grew rapidly and became more urbanized, while many Mexicans moved to the United States seeking better economic opportunities.

A new era began in Mexico following the 1988 presidential elections. The Institutional Revolutionary Party barely won the clearly fraudulent election. President Carlos Salinas de Gortari began implementing sweeping neoliberal reforms, which required the amendment of the Constitution, especially curtailing the power of the Mexican state to regulate foreign business enterprises, but also lifting the suppression of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. 

Mexico's economy was further integrated with that of US and Canada after 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) began lowering trade barriers. Seven decades of PRI rule ended in the year 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox of the conservative Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). His successor, conservative Felipe Calderón, also of the PAN, embarked on a war against drug mafias in Mexico that is still continuing, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. 

In the face of the drug wars, the PRI returned to power in 2012, under Enrique Peña Nieto, promising that the party had reformed itself. Violence and corruption, however, continued, and uncertainty about the fate of the NAFTA complicated the situation. In July 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, candidate of the newly formed MORENA party, won the presidency in a landslide.

And as always have a chilled day from the Viking