This post is brought to you by Edcamphere History. Mexico is a land of mystery and magic. Without influence from other societies, the ancient people of Mexico developed a system of writing, advanced mathematics, astronomy, and calendars. They constructed great cities out of stone, soaring temples, and well-built roads. But they also practiced human sacrifice to appease their gods. From pre-history until the invasion of Spaniards from Europe upended their way of life, Mexico’s cultures flourished.
Contrary to popular belief, the ancient Mayans did not die out. Mayan blood still courses through the veins of modern Mexico, a country that – despite its modern-day problems – still clings proudly to its amazing heritage. More than likely, the ancient people who settled in what is now Mexico were descended from the people who walked across the Bering Land Bridge to populate the western hemisphere.
The Olmecs, who established a civilization in southern Mexico, were contemporaries of ancient Asia’s Babylonians. Archeologists know little about the Olmecs and their way of life. What we do know comes from sources written about them long after the culture had died out, and what researchers have been able to glean from the giant head statues they left behind. Hidden from view for centuries in the dense jungle, the Olmec heads are assumed to be likenesses of key Olmec leaders, but anthropologists have noted that the faces have uniquely African features. Perhaps the Olmec people arrived in Mexico via a different route than previously thought!. Some researchers have proposed that the ancient Olmecs migrated across the ocean from sub-Saharan Africa. Many of the greatest cities of ancient Mexico, including Teotihuacan, grew to prominence at about the same time as Jesus was spreading the word of Christianity across the Middle East.
Established in 300 BCE, Teotihuacan’s builders remain unknown. Some historians point to the Olmecs while others believe the Toltecs were responsible, but the timing is off. What is known is that the great city was in ruins when other rising cultures – the Mayan, the Mixtec, the Aztec, and the Zapotec – claimed the city and its magnificent temples and buildings as their own. Regardless of its origins, Teotihuacan was a center for commerce and worship for the various groups who made it their home. Its central location was allowed for goods, communications, and troops to be easily sent to outlying areas. It was also a center for culture. The arts flourished there, as did architecture. Every home in Teotihuacan had a built-in drainage system and courtyards. Some had multiple levels. While the great cities of Mexico rose and fell over centuries and – thanks to famine, drought, war, and disease – populations ebbed and flowed, and the region’s entire indigenous culture was on the cusp of near-total annihilation from a threat they had no way of predicting … Europeans.
On April 22, 1519 – Good Friday for Christians – Hernan Cortez and the men of his expedition landed in Mexico, encountering indigenous people – tribes in constant conflict with the powers to be at Teotihuacan. Taking note of the Spaniard’s weapons, the chieftains of these tribes sought to ally themselves with the newcomers hoping to enlist them to help in their next siege of the great city and its leader, Montezuma. They had grown weary of life under Montezuma and fed the eager Spaniards information about caches of gold. Intrigued and hungry for gold, Cortez and his men set off for Teotihuacan. They were in awe of the great city when they first set their eyes on the place. With its monstrous pyramids, lush fields, and efficient canals, the city was much more advanced than the Europeans thought possible of the natives. There were also thousands of people living in the city, giving Cortez a true glimpse at the empire’s size. Cortez had little time to admire the city. He, his men, and over 200,000 of their new allies attacked Teotihuacan with deadly force. Montezuma was killed. A drawing in an ancient codex depicts a defeated Montezuma with a rope around his neck being led out of the city by Cortez on horseback, as the people of Teotihuacan lay stabbed and the iconic buildings of the city burned. According to legend, the water of Lake Texcoco, the body of water on which the city was built, was red with the blood of the fallen. Mexico’s colonial era began with the defeat of Teotihuacan by Cortez. In the three centuries that followed, the native people of Mexico were subjugated. Their ancestral way of life was stripped from them as they were forced to adopt European traditions. Their language, writing system, religion, and art were all suppressed to make way for the Spanish colonies. Along with introducing a new religion and new language, the Spaniards brought with them European disease for which the native people had no natural immunities. By some estimates, when Cortez sacked Teotihuacan, over twenty million people were living in the region. A few centuries later, that number had dropped to six million. Miguel Hidalgo, a priest, rallied a small army to protest against Spain’s political and economic control over the colony of New Spain.
As the grassroots effort took hold, thoughts of independence were considered. Efforts to quell the rebellion by Spain were met with violence, but the seeds had been planted. Another priest, Jose Maria Morelos, took up the cause after Hidalgo. Morelos came from a military background and was more of a revolutionary than Hidalgo. When Morelos and a group of his supporters met to discuss a proclamation of independence, Morelos raised his glass and said, “Long live Spain, but a sister Spain, not one dominating America.” Under the first Mexican flag, depicting an eagle on a cactus, Morelos led the Mexican War for Independence. An early constitution, called Feelings of the Nation, was presented to Spain in 1813. In this document, Morelos removed the King of Spain’s authority over the colony, abolished slavery, outlawed the payment of tributes, reserved jobs for non-Europeans, and instituted programs to help the poor. On September 27, 1821, the former New Spain colony became an independent nation – Mexico. The early days of independence were rough for Mexico.
The country went through a slew of short-lived presidencies and policy changes as Mexico experienced growing pains. Mexico’s landholdings were vast, extending into what is now Texas. The Mexican government, hoping to colonize Texas, offered a reward for the scalps of Native Americans – members of the Comanche, Cherokee, Apache, Wichita, and Tonkawa tribes – to clear the way for Mexican settlers. Besides competition from the indigenous people, the Mexican colonists had to compete with settlers from the United States who wanted to claim the territory for their own. When American, Stephen Austin, for whom the city of Austin is named, brought over 300 families to settle in Texas in 1825, the Mexican governor of Texas, Antonio Martinez, granted his permission with a few conditions.
One of them was that the Americans could not bring slaves with them. Austin and his followers ignored that rule and brought their slaves along, counting on the vast distance between Texas and the Mexican capital to make the rule unenforceable. Tensions arose between the white American settlers and the Mexican and Native American inhabitants. A few years later, when Mexican president Vicente Guerrero outlawed slavery in Texas and all of its territories, Austin’s colony was in a panic. The group had grown to about six thousand people, with an additional two thousand Black slaves used to work the fields. In 1836, Stephen Austin and his colonists plotted to oust the Mexicans from the region and, together with groups of German and Swiss settlers, declaring independence from Mexico. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, was so angry at the Anglo settlers’ defiance, that he, himself, led the Mexican army to suppress the uprising. Santa Anna and his men arrived at El Alamo, a Spanish mission in what is now San Antonio, Texas. The Anglo rebels had sought refuge in the Alamo and fought to the death against Mexican troops’ overwhelming numbers.
The rallying cry of “Remember the Alamo” helped Texas later win its independence from Mexico, but after much bloodshed. Losing the Texas territory and, to a lesser extent, some other regions of the former Mexican empire, left Mexico with an identity crisis. Under Santa Anna’s leadership, however, Mexico gained the Baja region and the Yucatan Peninsula. More importantly, it gained a sense of national unity. He instilled pride in the shared heritage of Mexico’s different regions, and even hosted a contest to pick the country’s national anthem. Santa Anna, however, was not beloved by all of his people. Differences in political ideology led to clashes between conservative and liberal groups. Despite its strides in developing its own national identity, Mexico was still considered prime territory, and European nations had their eyes on that portion of the Americas. In 1862, the French attempted to seize Mexico for the second time. The Mexican army met the French army near Puebla City on May 5th of that year. The smaller, less-equipped Mexican army defeated the French, and the victory was the shot in the arm that the Mexican people needed to boost their sagging morale. Even though the French beat the Mexicans in subsequent battles, the Battle of Puebla has been commemorated in the annual Cinco de Mayo celebration. Archduke Maximilian of Hapsburg and his young bride, Princess Charlotte of Belgium, were selected to receive the Mexican commission, and serve as the monarch of Mexico.
The Austrian-born Maximilian tentatively accepted the position. He was naturally concerned about how a European outsider would be received in Mexico; still, he also strongly believed that Mexico needed strong guidance from a European power to guide its growth and development. With tensions between the conservative and liberal factions still high, Maximilian found himself on the outs. Charlotte returned to Europe to appeal to Napoleon for intervention and, while she was gone, Maximilian was arrested and sentenced to death by firing squad. Beginning in 1877, Porfirio Diaz, a hero of the Battle of Puebla, took the helm as Mexico’s president. He served seven terms as president, becoming the longest-serving president in Mexican history. Under his leadership, Mexico moved into the modern era.
Trade, agriculture, industry, and commerce all improved. He encouraged science, technology, academics, and the arts. He commissioned building projects to give Mexico the infrastructure it needed, from highways and railways to bridges and seaports. Diaz kept foreign armies away from Mexico’s borders and worked on establishing foreign relations with its allies. Despite these advances, Diaz’s rule was also a controversial one. There were problems that arose among the different ethnic groups in Mexico, and Diaz was seen as a dictator. In 1910, the Mexican Revolution began, and the fighting lasted the entire decade. While the revolution tried to remove Diaz from power, the cause shifted from political to social reform. Mexican peasants demanded that their collective voices be heard.
One of the key figures in the Mexican Revolution was Pancho Villa, a peasant from the Mexico’s northern region, with charisma and leadership abilities. He helped to shake up Mexican politics and shining a spotlight on the plight of the working class. When the Mexican Revolution ended in 1920, it had toppled the elite class that had led Mexico for so long and helped the middle and lower classes become a political force in the country. During World War II, Mexico and the United States patched up their differences and began an alliance. The aftermath of World War II set the stage for Mexican workers’ migration to the United States in search of farm laborer jobs, an escape from violence, and a better way of life. Initially, the U.S. begged Mexico to send workers to help fill a worker shortage in agriculture; however, the flow of workers across the Rio Grande River has not slowed.
Although Mexico had entered the world stage and had created its national identity, some of the country’s indigenous people wanted to retain their cultural identity and force the Mexican government to acknowledge their needs. One such group claimed to be descendants of a 1910 peasant revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata, and they took their name from his. The Zapatista Army marched on the tourist town of San Cristobal, a community that had banned indigenous people because it wanted to keep the town tourist-friendly. The Mexican government responded to the uprising by launching a propaganda war against the Zapatistas and then by using military force.
The result of the Zapatista Uprising was that Mexico was, once again, forced to recognize its own diversity and differing cultural heritage. The people of Mexico are not as homogeneous as outsiders think, but those cultural differences make Mexico a land rich in history, ideas, and legacy. To learn more about History Subscribe Educamphere
