A Brief Introduction to Mexico's History

1. Mexico before Columbus and Cortez: Mesoamerica During the period from 1400 to 1521, the Aztecs, based in the city of Tenochtitlan (the future Mexico City) built an empire based on tribute that extended throughout central Mexico. The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan is believed to have had a population of 250,000 in 1519, larger than any European city at the time. The Aztecs studied astronomy, practiced irrigation, built great pyramids, temples and cities, and had a written language. Their religion required human sacrifices to pleas the gods of the sun, rain and warfare, among others.
2. Spanish Conquest of Mexico Cortez formed alliances with the subject people of the Aztecs, and those subject people provided him with thousands of troops. European diseases to which the natives had no immunity also played an important part in the conquest. Between 1519 and 1521, Cortez succeeded in conquering the Aztecs and then in the next decade he and his men extended their control over most of the other native people.                                                                                         
3. Colonial Mexico The Spanish conquest devastated the indigenous population which dropped from a peak as high as 25 million in 1519 to as little as 2.5 million in 1600. Thousands of Spaniards immigrated into Mexico. The Spanish rulers gradually took control of the land, wealth and labor of the country; they eventually established great haciendas, plantations, ranches, and mines.
4. Independent Mexico The first independence movement was led by radical Roman Catholic Priests, father Miguel Hidalgo y Castillo and by Morelos y Pavon. But the radicals were defeated by the Spanish, and independence was eventually won under the leadership of conservative land owners. For most people, Mexico's independence did not change their lives very much.
5. Mexico Loses Almost Half of its Territory Agustin de Iturbide, a Spanish military leader who had switched sides to fight for the creoles, set himself up in Mexico City as Emperor. During his Empire, Central America accepted an offer to join Mexico. Many Central Americans chafed at Mexican rule, and there were several battles between Mexican forces and Central American patriots. In 1823, Iturbide's empire dissolved, and the chaotic situation that followed in Mexico led tCentral America to strike out on its own. Between 1836 and 1854, the United States took more than half of Mexico's territory, first through the secession of Texas from Mexico, and then through the U.S. - Mexican War of 1847. In 1853, Santa Anna, the dictator of Mexico, sold the Mesilla Valley, in what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico, to the United States for 10 million dollars -the Gadsden Purchase - and he used much of the money for political ends.
6. Benito Juarez Years and the French Occupation In 1858, Benito Juarez, an indigenous Liberal lawyer from Oaxaca, became president. In 1859, he implemented the Ley Lerdo -- separating church and state, abolishing monastic orders, and nationalizing church property. In the 1860's, the Conservatives invited the French Emperor Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) to come to their aid in their battles with the Liberals. Louis Napoleon's French troops invaded Mexico and established the Austrians Maximilian and Carlotta as the King and Queen of Mexico. Benito Juarez led the Mexican people in their struggle against the Conservatives and the French conquerors. May 5 (Cinco de Mayo) celebrates a Mexican victoy over the French at the city of Puebla during those wars.
7. The Porfirio Dictatorship Porfirio Diaz became president in 1877 and, except for four years, ruled as an absolute dictator until 1910. During his reign, Diaz encouraged foreign investment and attempted to modernize the nation. He expanded both exports and imports, and built more than 15,000 miles of railway. He also gave away huge concessions of land to friends and foreign speculators. Eventually the Diaz dictatorship became identified in the minds of the Mexican people with those forces: Federal Army, rural police, Mexican landowners, the Roman Catholic Church, and U.S. and other foreigh corporations. By 1910 more than 95 percent of rural families had become landless--debt peons because of government expropriation of communally held farm villages.
8.  The Mexican Revolution Francisco I. Madero, a wealthy landowner and industrialist, but part of a group which had been excluded from power by the Diaz dictatorship, attempted to run for president; but Diaz had him jailed. Escaping from Mexico to the U.S., Madero then launched the revolution on Novemeber 20, 1910. Madero's rebellion attracted support of small ranchers, poor peasants, small ranchers, railroad workers and miners, who were fighting not only for democracy, but also for land. Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, and Madero were the principal leaders of the revolution, and altogether succeeded in overthrowing Diaz. An election was held and Madero was elected president. Madero was overthrown and murdered by the counter-revolutionary Victoriano Huerta. Once again the revolutionary forces rose, this time under Venustiano Carranza, Alvaro Obregon, Villa and Zapata, and once again they were victorious by 1915. Zapata was killed shortly after Carranza came to power, but his ideal of agrarian reform (demanding land and liberty for the peasantry) became a cornerstone of the revolution. The major accomplishment of Carranza period was the Constitution of 1917, which sout to destroy the feudalism that had existed in Mexico for 400 years. After more fallin outs, with more murders and betrayals among the revolution leaders, Alvaro Obregon became president in 1920, ending the most violent phase of the revolution. It is estimated that the war killed 900,000 of the 1910 population of 15 million.
9. The Results of the Mexican Revolution Between 1920 and 1940, particularly under President Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940), the Mexican revolutionary government radically altered the economic and social system in Mexico. First, haciendas' land was divided up and distributed to Indian communities and to peasants in the form of "ejidos." Second, the Mexican government recognized the labor unions and peasants organizations. Third, Cardenas expropriated the foreign-owned oil industry and created the Mexican petroleum company (PEMEX). Fourth, a new Mexican business class grew up more based in banking and manufacturing than in land.
10. One-party Rule: the modern Mexico In 1928, the president Plutarco Elias Calles founded the National Revolutionary party, the predecessor of the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), which ruled the country until 2000. In 1942, the Bracero Program was launched for the exportation of temporary contract laborers from Mexico to United States. By the time it ended in 1964, more than 4 million Mexican farm-workers arrived in the U.S. under this guest worker program. Scandals over the exploitation of guest workers led the Department of Labor officias overseeing the program to denounce it as "legalized slavery" In 1953 Mexican women are granted the right to vote in national elections. On October 2, 1968, the government used its forces (military and police) to suppress political opposition. The massacre occurred 10 days before the opening of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. More than 1300 students and civilians were arrested. There has been no consensus on how many were killed that day in the plaza area. In 1982, Mexico faced a severe economic crisis. Mexico had fallen heavily in debt and was now unable to afford the interest repayments. The debt repayments were rescheduled but only at the price of an austerity program. There was rapid inflation (at its peak it was over 100%) and wages rose much more slowly than inflation, cutting living standards. In 1985 unemployment stood at 25% of the workforce. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank became key players in Mexico, and the new technocratic presidents--Miguel de la Madrid, Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo--imposed a new economic order on Mexico based on privatization and deregulation, free trade and foreign investment, and cutbacks in government spending for social programs. European, Japanese, Korean and most important U.S. multinational corporations expanded investments in Mexico. Between 1988 and 1994, Carlos Salinas sold off about 1,000 of Mexico's 1,100 state firms. Under president Zedillo, the financial end of the Social Security pension system was privatized, as were the railroads.
11. Unrest in Chiapas and End of One-party Rule President Salinas embarked on a program of neoliberal reforms which culminated with the signing of the 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. EZLN staged an uprising throughout Chiapas in protest against the Mexican government{s treatment of Mexico{s large but impoverished Indigenous community. The 1994 uprising left at least 140 people dead, and it sparked an ongoing struggle that raged througout the southern state of Chiapas and claimed between 300 and 600 lives in the ensuing years. In 2000, after 71 years, the PRI lost a presidential election to Vicento Fox of the opposition National Action Party (PAN). In the 2006 presidential election, Pelipe Calderon from PAN was declared the winner, with a very narrow margin over leftist politician Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Calderon's government ordered massive raids on drug cartels upon assuming office in December 2006 in response to an increasingly deadly spate of violence in his home state of Michoacan. The decision to intensify drug enforcement operations has led to an ongoing conflict between the federal government and the Mexican drug cartels.
12. PRI: Again Enrique Peña Nieto was sworn in as president of Mexico on December 1, 2012. H won with 38.12% of the votes, followed by Andres Lopez Obrador, the left-wing candidate, with 31.59%. Obrador claims that the PRI handed out gifts to lure voters to cast their vote in favor of them.