Mexico

From the Olmec mother-culture and the lake-city of the Mexica to a republic forged in conquest, reform, and revolution.

Mexico's history spans more than three millennia of indigenous civilisation, beginning with the Olmec of the Gulf coast and rising through the Maya city-states, the metropolis of Teotihuacan, and the Mexica (Aztec) empire centred on Tenochtitlan. The Spanish conquest of 1521 inaugurated three centuries of colonial rule as New Spain, a society of profound inequality and Catholic transformation. A war of independence (1810-1821) gave birth to a sovereign nation that endured invasion, civil war, and dictatorship before the Reform under Benito Juarez and the Revolution of 1910-1920 redefined its politics. The twentieth century was dominated by the long single-party rule of the PRI, broken only by the democratic alternation of 2000.