Although generally more entertaining than factual, Hollywood generated images of famous Spanish explorers discovering the land, subjugating the locals and Zorro coming to their rescue is unfortunately how most of the world has come to know Mexico. Mexico’s history is as long as it is fascinating. Depending on which experts’ theories you subscribe to, the presence of human inhabitants in the lands now called Mexico can be traced back some 21,000 years.
• Approximately 9000 years ago the hunter-gatherer tendencies of ancient indigenous peoples began to shift to domesticating corn and other crops and initiated an agricultural revolution, leading to the formation of many complex civilizations.
• These civilizations revolved around cities with advanced language & writing skills, monumental architecture, astronomical studies, mathematics and potent armies. For almost 3,000 years, Mesoamerica was the site of several advanced Amer-Indian civilizations.
• Highly developed cultures, including those of the Olmecs, Mayas, Toltecs, and Aztecs, existed thousands and thousands of years before the Spanish conquest.
• Hernan Cortes conquered the various indigenous tribes during the period of 1519-21 and founded a Spanish colony that spread throughout the landmass and whose power over the population lasted nearly 300 years.
• Independence from Spain was proclaimed by Father Miguel Hidalgo on September 16, 1810. Father Hidalgo's declaration of national independence, known in Mexico as the "Grito de Dolores", launched a decade long struggle for independence from Spain. Prominent figures in Mexico's war for independence were Father Jose Maria Morelos; Gen. Augustin de Iturbide, who defeated the Spaniards and ruled as Mexican emperor from 1822-23; and Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, who went on to dominate Mexican politics from 1833 to 1855.
• An 1821 treaty recognized Mexican independence from Spain and called for a constitutional monarchy. The planned monarchy failed and a republic was proclaimed in December 1822 and established in 1824.
• Throughout the rest of the 19th century, Mexico's government and economy were shaped by contentious debates among liberals and conservatives, republicans and monarchists, federalists and those who favored centralized government.
• During the two presidential terms of Benito Juarez (1858-71), Mexico experienced modern democratic and economic reforms.
• President Juarez' terms of office and Mexico's early experience with democracy were interrupted by the invasion in 1863 of French forces who imposed a monarchy upon the country in the form of Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria, who ruled as emperor. Liberal forces succeeded in overthrowing, and executing, the emperor in 1867 after which Juarez returned to office until his death in 1872.
• Following several weak governments, the authoritarian General Porfirio Diaz assumed office and was president during most of the period between 1877 and 1911.
• Mexico's severe social and economic problems erupted in a revolution that lasted from 1910-20 and gave rise to the 1917 constitution.
• Prominent leaders in this period -- some of whom were rivals for power -- were Francisco Madero, Venustiano Carranza, Pancho Villa, Alvaro Obregon, Victoriano Huerta, and Emiliano Zapata.
• The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), formed in 1929 under a different name, emerged from the chaos of revolution as a vehicle for keeping political competition among a coalition of interests in peaceful channels. For 71 years, Mexico's national government was controlled by the PRI, which won every presidential race and most gubernatorial races until the July 2000 presidential election of Vicente Fox Quesada of the National Action Party (PAN), in what were widely considered at the time the freest and fairest elections in Mexico's history.
• President Fox completed his term on December 1, 2006, when Felipe Calderon assumed the presidency.
