Mexico

The Olmec, flourishing on the Gulf coast in what are now Veracruz and Tabasco from roughly 1200 to 400 BCE, were the first elaborate civilisation of Mesoamerica. Often called a mother culture, they established patterns inherited by later peoples: monumental sacred precincts, colossal carved stone heads, ritual ball games, and an early iconography of animal deities. Their influence radiated far across central and southern Mexico through trade and shared belief.

In the Valley of Mexico, the city of Teotihuacan rose to become one of the largest urban centres of the ancient world. Built between the first and seventh centuries CE and laid out along its great Avenue of the Dead, it was dominated by the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. At its height it may have held more than a hundred thousand inhabitants and projected cultural and commercial power across Mesoamerica before its monumental core was sacked and burned around 550 CE.

To the south and east, the Maya developed the most sophisticated literate culture of the pre-Columbian Americas. During their Classic period, roughly 250 to 900 CE, dozens of competing city-states produced an intricate hieroglyphic script, a refined mathematics that used the concept of zero, and calendrical and astronomical systems of remarkable precision. The Classic Maya centres of the lowlands declined and were largely abandoned between about 800 and 900 CE.

Turning points

1. c. 1200 BCEFormation

   Olmec civilisation flourishes

   The Olmec arise on the Gulf coast as the first complex society of Mesoamerica, carving colossal stone heads and shaping a cultural template inherited by later peoples.

   [1]

2. 1st-7th c. CECulture & Ideas

   Teotihuacan, city of the gods

   Teotihuacan grows into a metropolis of monumental pyramids and a planned ceremonial axis, dominating central Mexico before its decline around 550-650 CE.

   [2] [3]

3. c. 250-900 CECulture & Ideas

   Classic Maya civilisation

   Maya city-states reach their height, producing hieroglyphic writing, advanced calendars, and astronomy, before the southern lowland centres are abandoned by about 900 CE.

   [4]

According to tradition the Mexica founded Tenochtitlan on an island in Lake Texcoco in 1325, fulfilling a prophecy of an eagle perched on a cactus. The city grew through engineering ingenuity, raised causeways, dykes, and chinampa garden plots, into one of the great urban centres of its age, linked to the mainland and supplied by an elaborate system of agriculture and tribute.

In 1428 Tenochtitlan joined with the neighbouring city-states of Texcoco and Tlacopan to form the Triple Alliance, the political foundation of what is conventionally called the Aztec empire. Through conquest and the exaction of tribute, the alliance, dominated by the Mexica, came to control much of central and southern Mexico, sustaining a stratified society of warriors, priests, merchants, and commoners bound by an intricate religion that demanded human sacrifice.

At its height under Moctezuma II, who reigned from 1502, the empire stretched from the Gulf to the Pacific. Its dominance ended abruptly with the arrival of Spanish forces under Hernan Cortes in 1519, whose alliance with subject peoples resentful of Mexica rule would prove decisive within two years.

Turning points

1. 1325 CEFormation

   Founding of Tenochtitlan

   The Mexica establish their capital on an island in Lake Texcoco, the site of present-day Mexico City.

   [5] [6]

2. 1428 CEPolitics & Power

   The Triple Alliance

   Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan ally, inaugurating the tribute empire of the Aztecs across central Mexico.

   [5] [6]

3. 1502 CEPolitics & Power

   Reign of Moctezuma II

   Moctezuma II ascends as huey tlatoani, ruling the empire at its territorial peak until the Spanish arrival.

   [6]

Figures of the era

Hernan Cortes landed on the Gulf coast in 1519 and, exploiting divisions among the indigenous peoples, forged a powerful alliance with the Tlaxcalans and other states subject to the Mexica. After being expelled from Tenochtitlan, the Spanish and their allies laid siege to the city. Aided by superior weaponry and a devastating smallpox epidemic, they captured it street by street until its fall on 13 August 1521, marking the end of the Aztec empire.

Upon the ruins of Tenochtitlan the Spanish founded Mexico City, capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Colonial society was organised around the encomienda and later the hacienda, the extraction of silver, and a rigid hierarchy of caste in which peninsular Spaniards stood above American-born criollos, and indigenous and mixed-race peoples below. Catholic missionaries pursued mass conversion, and the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe became a unifying devotion across the colony.

For three hundred years New Spain was among the wealthiest possessions of the Spanish crown, its silver financing empire and its institutions shaping language, religion, and law. Yet the exclusion of the criollo elite from power, alongside the burdens borne by the indigenous and mestizo majority, generated the tensions that would erupt into the struggle for independence.

Turning points

1. 1519 CEColonisation

   Cortes lands in Mexico

   Hernan Cortes arrives on the Gulf coast and marches inland, allying with peoples opposed to Mexica rule.

   ↗See the data

   [7] [8]

2. 13 Aug 1521War & Rupture

   Fall of Tenochtitlan

   After a siege of some three months, the city falls to Cortes and his indigenous allies, ending the Aztec empire.

   ↗See the data

   [8] [7]

3. 1535 CEColonisation

   Viceroyalty of New Spain established

   Spain formalises colonial government under a viceroy, with Mexico City as the capital of a vast realm.

   ↗See the data

   [7]

Figures of the era

On 16 September 1810 the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla rang the bell of his church in the town of Dolores and called the people to revolt against Spanish colonial rule. This Grito de Dolores ignited a popular insurgency; Hidalgo was captured and executed in 1811, but the cause was carried on by Jose Maria Morelos and others through a long and bitter war.

Independence was finally achieved through an alliance of the royalist officer Agustin de Iturbide and the insurgent Vicente Guerrero, who united behind the Plan of Iguala of February 1821, with its three guarantees of religion, independence, and unity. The Treaty of Cordoba of 24 August 1821 recognised these terms, and on 27 September 1821 the Army of the Three Guarantees entered Mexico City, consummating independence.

Iturbide briefly proclaimed himself emperor, but his rule collapsed, and the Constitution of 1824 established a federal republic, the United Mexican States, with Guadalupe Victoria as first president. The decades that followed were marked by chronic instability, repeated coups, and the recurring figure of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. The young nation suffered the secession of Texas and then catastrophic defeat in the war with the United States (1846-1848), losing roughly half its territory under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Turning points

1. 16 Sept 1810Independence

   Grito de Dolores

   Miguel Hidalgo calls for rebellion against Spanish rule, beginning the Mexican War of Independence.

   ↗See the data

   [9]

2. 27 Sept 1821Independence

   Independence consummated

   The Army of the Three Guarantees enters Mexico City following the Treaty of Cordoba, ending Spanish rule.

   ↗See the data

   [10] [9]

3. 1824 CEPolitics & Power

   First federal republic

   The Constitution of 1824 founds the United Mexican States as a federal republic, with Guadalupe Victoria as first president.

   [10]

4. 1846-1848War & Rupture

   Mexican-American War

   Defeat by the United States costs Mexico roughly half its territory under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

   ↗See the data

   [11]

Figures of the era

La Reforma, the liberal movement led by Benito Juarez, sought to dismantle the privileges of the church and army and to build a secular, federal republic. Its Constitution of 1857 curtailed clerical power and granted Mexicans their first genuine bill of rights, provoking civil war. When France, under Napoleon III, exploited Mexican division to install the Austrian archduke Maximilian as emperor, Juarez led the resistance; the French withdrew, Maximilian was captured and executed in 1867, and the republic was restored.

From 1876 the general Porfirio Diaz dominated Mexico for more than three decades, a period known as the Porfiriato. It brought railways, foreign investment, and economic modernisation, but at the cost of authoritarian rule, the concentration of land, and the impoverishment of the rural majority.

In 1910 Francisco Madero's call for free elections and an end to Diaz's perpetual re-election triggered the Mexican Revolution. Madero's victory in 1911 gave way to civil war among the forces of Venustiano Carranza, Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata, who championed land reform under the banner of land and liberty. The conflict, which cost more than a million lives, produced the radical Constitution of 1917, with its provisions for agrarian reform, labour rights, and education. The revolution is generally held to have ended with the presidency of Alvaro Obregon in 1920.

Turning points

1. 1857 CEPolitics & Power

   Constitution of the Reform

   The liberal Constitution of 1857 limits church and army privileges and establishes a bill of rights, deepening conflict between liberals and conservatives.

   [12] [11]

2. 1867 CEWar & Rupture

   Fall of the Second Empire

   Mexican forces under Juarez defeat the French intervention; Emperor Maximilian is captured and executed, restoring the republic.

   ↗See the data

   [11] [12]

3. 1876-1911Politics & Power

   The Porfiriato

   Porfirio Diaz rules Mexico for over three decades, modernising the economy while entrenching authoritarian government and land inequality.

   [11]

4. 1910-1920War & Rupture

   Mexican Revolution

   A decade of revolution and civil war overthrows Diaz, costs over a million lives, and produces the Constitution of 1917.

   ↗See the data

   [13]

Figures of the era

Out of the revolution emerged the party that, from its founding in 1929 and after later renamings, became the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. It would govern Mexico without interruption for more than seven decades, presiding over land redistribution, the nationalisation of the oil industry under Lazaro Cardenas in 1938, and a long period of industrial growth often called the Mexican miracle. The system blended genuine social reform with corporatism, patronage, and electoral control.

The later twentieth century brought economic strain and pressure for openness: debt and crisis in the 1980s, the entry into force of the North American Free Trade Agreement on 1 January 1994, the simultaneous Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, and a severe peso crisis at the end of that year. Gradual electoral reform widened the space for opposition parties.

In 2000 the victory of Vicente Fox of the National Action Party ended seventy-one years of unbroken PRI rule, a peaceful democratic alternation achieved through the ballot box. Since then Mexico has remained a competitive multiparty democracy, contending with the challenges of organised crime, migration, and economic inequality, while standing as one of the largest economies and most populous nations of the Americas.

Turning points

1. 1938 CEEconomy & Trade

   Oil nationalisation

   President Lazaro Cardenas nationalises the petroleum industry, creating Pemex and asserting economic sovereignty.

   ↗See the data

   [14]

2. 1 Jan 1994Economy & Trade

   NAFTA and the Zapatista uprising

   The North American Free Trade Agreement takes effect as the Zapatistas rise in Chiapas; a peso crisis follows that December.

   ↗See the data

   [15]

3. 2000 CEPolitics & Power

   End of one-party rule

   Vicente Fox's election ends 71 years of uninterrupted PRI government, marking Mexico's democratic alternation of power.

   [14]

Figures of the era