HISTORY24 - Timeline of Mexican History
This article is about the
history of Mexico, from just before the country secured its independence from
Spain in 1821, through today, presented in timeline fashion. The article is a follow-on to my recent blog
posts on Mesoamerican Ancient History, the Spanish Conquest, Spanish Expansion
to the North, and Territorial Evolution of the United States.
My principle source and
starting point for the article is “The History of Mexico” at history.com, from
which I steal liberally, supplemented by many other online sources.
The setting: Spain started the conquest of Mexico in 1521
with the defeat of the indigenous Aztec civilization and began their North
American colony that they called New Spain, ruled by a Viceroy from their new
capital in Mexico City. Almost 300 years
later, by the early 1800s, they had conquered and colonized lands that reached
south to Central America and north to the western United States.
Independence Era
1808
Napoleon Bonaparte occupied Spain, deposed the monarchy, and installed his
brother, as head of state. The ensuing Peninsular War between Spain and France
led almost directly to the Mexican war for independence, as the colonial
government in New Spain fell into disarray and its opponents begin to gain
momentum.
September 16, 1810
In the midst of factional
struggles within the Spanish Colonial government, Father Miguel Hidalgo, a
priest in the small village of Dolores, issued a call for Mexican independence.
The Cry of Dolores set off a flurry of revolutionary action by
thousands of natives and mestizos (those of mixed Spanish and indigenous
descent), who banded together to capture Guanajuato and other major
cities west of Mexico City. Despite its initial success, the Hidalgo rebellion
lost steam and was defeated quickly, and the priest was captured and killed
at Chihuahua in 1811. His name lives on in the Mexican state of
Hidalgo, however, and September 16, 1810, is still celebrated as Mexico’s
Independence Day.
Father Miguel Hidalgo set off a flurry of revolutionary action in Mexico in 1811.
1814
Another priest, Jose Morelos, succeeded Hidalgo as the leader of Mexico’s independence movement and proclaimed a Mexican republic. He was defeated by the royalist forces of the mestizo General Agustín de Iturbide, and the revolutionary banner passed to Vicente Guerrero.
1821
After revolt in Spain ushered in a new era of liberal reforms there,
conservative Mexican leaders began plans to end the Spanish Crown’s rule and
separate their country from the mother land on their own terms. Iturbide met with Guerrero and they jointly issued
the Plan of Iguala, by which Mexico would become an independent country
ruled as a limited monarchy, with the Roman Catholic Church as the official
state church and equal rights and upper-class status for the Spanish and
mestizo populations, as opposed to the majority of the population, which was indigenous,
or of African or mulatto (mixed) descent. On September 27, 1821, the last
Spanish Colonial leader signed the Treaty of Córdoba, marking the
official beginning of Mexican independence.
Mexico gained all Spanish lands in North America.
Mexico at independence in 1821, having taken over all Spanish lands in North America.
The newly independent nation of Mexico was in dire straits
after eleven years of fighting its War of Independence. There were no
clear plans or guidelines established by the revolutionaries, and internal
struggles by different factions for control of the government ensued. Mexico suffered a complete lack of funds to
administer the country and faced the threats of emerging internal rebellions
and of invasion by Spanish forces from their base in nearby Cuba.
The Age of Santa Anna
1823
General Iturbide, who
earlier declared himself emperor of the new country, was deposed by his former
aide, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who declared a Mexican republic.
Guadalupe Victoria became Mexico’s first elected president, and during his
tenure, Iturbide was executed, and a bitter struggle began between conservative
(centralist) and liberal (federalist) elements of the Mexican government that continued
for the next several decades.
Central America, which
had also gained its independence from Spain in 1821, agreed to be annexed by
Mexico in 1822, but 18 months later, after Mexico became a republic in 1823, Mexico
supported Central America’s declaration of independence.
1824
The state of Chiapas,
along the Mexican border with Guatemala, was formally annexed by Mexico.
1833
Santa Anna became
president of Mexico after leading the successful resistance against Spain’s
attempt to recapture Mexico in 1829. His strong controlling policies raised the
ire of American residents of Texas, then still part of Mexico, who declared
their independence in 1836. After attempting to quell the rebellion in Texas,
Santa Anna’s forces were decisively defeated by the rebels at the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836.
1842
After
Santa Anna sent troops, Mexico annexed the region of Soconusco in the southwest
corner of the state of Chiapas.
1846
As a result of the
continuing dispute over Texas, frictions between the U.S. and Mexican residents
of the region, and a desire to acquire additional lands, the U.S. declared war
on Mexico. The U.S. quickly smothered Mexico with superior force, launching an
invasion of northern Mexico while simultaneously invading New Mexico and
California and blockading both of Mexico’s coasts. Despite a series of U.S.
victories and the success of the blockade, Mexico refused to admit defeat, and
in the spring of 1847, the U.S. sent forces to capture Mexico City. Though
Santa Anna had been forced to resign after the Texas Revolution, Mexico brought
him back to lead their defense of Mexico City, but he was soundly defeated.
A formal peace was
reached in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2,
1848. By its terms, the Rio Grande became the southern boundary of Texas, and the
U.S. paid Mexico $15 million for
all of today’s California; Nevada; and Utah; most of Arizona, down to the Gila
River; roughly half of New Mexico; and parts of Colorado and Wyoming -
amounting to about a half of Mexico’s territory. The U.S. also agreed to pay
off $3.25 million of claims of American citizens against Mexico.
Santa Anna was president of Mexico 11 times from 1833 to 1855.
1848
The Mexican state of
Yucatán had declared its independence from Mexico in 1840. After eight years of turmoil, including
invasion by Santa Anna’s troops, Yucatán agreed to be reannexed by Mexico in
1848.
1853
Following defeat in the
Mexican-American War, Santa Anna went into exile, but in 1853 was invited back
by conservatives, who had overthrown a weak liberal government. Santa Anna was elected president again in
March 1853, where he made the major miscalculation of selling to the U.S.,
lands in northern Mexico (Gadsden Purchase) for an American southern
transcontinental railroad. His actions
provoked outrage among Mexicans for the loss of still more territory, and in
1855, liberals finally coalesced and forced Santa Anna into exile again.
Santa Anna was president
of Mexico 11 times from 1833 to 1855. He
was a disastrous president, losing first Texas and then much of the current
American West to the United States.
Still, he was a charismatic leader, and, in general the people of Mexico
supported him, begging him to return to power time and again. He was by far the most important figure of
his generation in Mexican history.
Road to Revolution
Defeat in the war against
the United States served as a catalyst for a new era of conflict and reform in
Mexico.
1857
Regional resistance to
the strict conservative regime of the aging Santa Anna led to guerrilla warfare
and the rise to power of rebel leader Juan Álvarez. He and his liberal cabinet,
including Benito Juárez, instituted a series of reforms, culminating in 1857 in
a new constitution, establishing a federal, as opposed to centralized, form of
government and guaranteeing freedom of speech and universal male suffrage,
among other civil liberties.
Additional reforms
curtailed the power and wealth of the Catholic Church. Conservative groups
bitterly opposed the new constitution, and in 1858, a three-year-long civil war
began that devastated an already weakened Mexico.
1861
Benito Juárez, a Zapotec
Indian, emerged from the War of the Reform as the champion of the victorious
liberals. One of Juárez’s first acts as president was to suspend payment on all
of Mexico’s debts to foreign governments. France, Great Britain and Spain
intervened to protect their investments in Mexico, occupying Veracruz with
military forces. The British and Spanish soon withdrew, but Napoleon III sent
French troops to occupy Mexico City, forcing Juárez and his government to flee
in June 1863. Napoleon III installed Maximilian, archduke of Austria, on the throne
of a Mexican Empire.
1867
Under pressure from the
United States, which had continued to recognize Juárez as the legitimate leader
of Mexico, France withdrew its troops from Mexico. After Mexican troops under
General Porfirio Díaz occupied Mexico City, Maximilian was forced to surrender
and was executed after a court-martial. Reinstated as president, Juárez
immediately caused controversy by proposing further changes to the constitution
that would strengthen executive power. In the 1871 elections, he narrowly won
reelection over a slate of candidates, including Porfirio Díaz, who led an
unsuccessful revolt in protest. Juárez died of a heart attack in 1872.
1877
After another revolt - this
time successful - against Juárez’s successor, the
liberal party’s Porfirio Díaz took control of Mexico. Except for one
four-year stretch from 1880 to 1884, Díaz ruled essentially as a dictator until
1911. During this period, Mexico underwent tremendous commercial and economic
development, based largely on Díaz’s encouragement of foreign investment in the
country. By 1910, most of the largest businesses in Mexico were owned by
foreign nationals, primarily American or British. The modernizing reforms made
by the Díaz government turned Mexico City into a bustling metropolis, but they
largely benefited the country’s upper classes, not its poor majority.
Except for one four-year period, Porfirio Diaz ruled Mexico from 1877 to 1911, essentially as a dictator.
Revolution
The fundamental
inequality of Mexico’s political and economic system bred growing discontent,
which led to revolution.
1910
Francisco Madero, a
landowning lawyer and a member of Mexico’s liberal, educated class,
unsuccessfully opposed Díaz in the 1910 presidential election. But Madero published
a book calling for free and democratic elections and an end to the Díaz regime.
Although fully 90 percent of the Mexican population at the time was illiterate,
Madero’s message spread throughout the country, sparking increasing calls for
change, and Madero himself became the acknowledged leader of a popular
revolution.
November 20, 1910
The Mexican
Revolution began when Madero issued the Plan of San Luis Potosí,
promising democracy, liberalism, agrarian reform and worker’s rights, and
declaring war on the Díaz regime. In 1911, Díaz was forced to step aside and
Madero was elected president, but conflict and violence continued for the
better part of the next decade. Popular leaders, like Emiliano Zapata in
southern Mexico and Pancho Villa in the north, emerged as the
champions of the peasant and working class, refusing to submit to presidential
authority.
1913
In the wake of a series
of bloody riots in the streets of Mexico City in February 1913, Madero was
overthrown by a coup led by his own military chief, General Victoriano Huerta.
Huerta declared himself dictator and had Madero murdered, but opposition from
the supporters of Villa, Zapata and the former Díaz ally (but political
moderate) Venustiano Carranza drove Huerta to resign in 1914. Carranza took
power, but Zapata and Villa continued waging war against him. Government forces
led by General Álvaro Obregón finally defeated Villa’s northern guerrilla
forces, leaving the rebel leader wounded but alive.
General Pancho Villa entering the town of Ojinaga in northern Mexico in 1913, during the Mexican Revolution.
1917
Carranza oversaw the
creation of a new liberal Mexican constitution. In his efforts to maintain
power, however, Carranza grew increasingly reactionary, ordering the ambush and
murder of Zapata in 1919. The following year, Carranza was overthrown and
killed by a group of his more radical generals, led by Obregón, who was elected
president in October 1920, effectively ending the Mexican Revolution.
Obregón faced the task of
reforming Mexico after ten years of devastating revolution and political
turmoil. During the conflict, nearly 900,000 Mexicans emigrated to the United
States, both to escape the violence and to find greater opportunities for work.
Rebuilding the Nation
Many historians regard
1920 as the end of the Mexican Revolution, but sporadic violence and clashes
between federal troops and various rebel forces continued until the reformist
president Lázaro Cárdenas, took office in 1934 and institutionalized the
reforms that were fought for during the revolution and were legitimized in the
constitution of 1917.
1923
After three years, the
U.S. recognized the Obregón government, but only after the Mexican leader
promised not to seize the holdings of American oil companies in Mexico. In
domestic affairs, Obregón put into place a series of agrarian reforms, and gave
official sanction to organizations of peasants and laborers. He also instituted
sweeping educational reform, enabling the Mexican cultural revolution that began
during this period - including astonishing work by such artists as Diego Rivera
and Frida Kahlo, the photographer Tina Modotti, the composer Carlos Chávez, and
the writers Martín Luis Guzmán and Juan Rulfo. After stepping down in 1924 to
make way for another former general, Plutarco Calles, Obregón was reelected in
1928, but was killed that same year by a religious fanatic.
Mexican President Alvaro Obregon lost his right arm during the Mexican Revolution at the Battle of Celaya in 1915 in Guanajuato.
The 1928 assassination of
Alvaro Obregon led in 1929, to the formation of the Institutional Revolutionary
Party (Partido Revolucionario Instituciona), PRI, with an ideology of
revolutionary nationalism, constitutionalism and social conservatism. Known by other names until 1946, the PRI held
uninterrupted political power in the country for 71 years, until 2000.
1934
Lázaro Cárdenas, another former revolutionary
general, was elected president. He revived the revolutionary-era social
revolution and carried out an extensive series of agrarian reforms,
distributing nearly twice as much land to peasants as had all of his
predecessors combined. In 1938, Cárdenas nationalized the country’s oil
industry, expropriating the extensive properties of foreign-owned companies and
created a government agency to administer the oil industry. He remained an
influential figure in government throughout the next three decades.
Lazaro Cardenas implemented many of the objectives of the 1917 constitution and was an influential figure in Mexican government for three decades.
From 1940 to 1970, Mexico
experienced impressive economic growth, an achievement that historians call the
“Mexican Miracle.” A key component of
this phenomenon was the relative political stability.
1940
Elected in 1940,
Cárdenas’ more conservative successor, Manual Ávila Camacho, forged a
friendlier relationship with the U.S., which led Mexico to declare war on the
Axis powers after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. During World
War II, Mexican pilots fought against Japanese forces in the Philippines,
serving alongside the U.S. Air Force. In 1944, Mexico agreed to pay U.S. oil
companies $24 million, plus interest, for properties expropriated in 1938. The
following year, Mexico joined the newly created United Nations.
1946
Miguel Alemán became the
first civilian president of Mexico since Francisco Madero in 1911. In the
post-World War II years, Mexico underwent great industrial and economic growth,
even as the gap continued to grow between the richest and poorest segments of
the population.
1968
As a symbol of its
growing international status, Mexico City was chosen to host the Olympic Games.
Economic Crisis
Although PRI
administrations achieved economic growth and relative prosperity for almost
three decades after World War II, the party’s management led to several
crises. Political unrest grew in the
late 1960s, with student demonstrations to draw attention to a perceived lack
of social justice and democracy, culminating in the “Tlatelolco
Massacre” on October 2, 1968, when
Mexican armed forces opened fire on unarmed civilizations, killing 350-400
people and injuring over a thousand more.
1976
Huge oil reserves were
discovered in the Bay of Campeche, off the shores of the states of Campeche,
Tabasco and Veracruz, at the southernmost end of the Gulf of Mexico. The
Cantarell oil field established there became one of the largest in the world,
producing more than 1 million barrels per day by 1981. Jose López Portillo,
elected in 1976, promised to use the oil money to fund industrial expansion,
social welfare, and high-yield agriculture. To do this, his government borrowed
huge sums of foreign money at high interest rates, only to discover that the
oil was generally of low grade. These policies left Mexico with the world’s
largest foreign debt.
1985
By the mid-1980s, Mexico was
in financial crisis. On September 19, 1985, an earthquake in Mexico City killed
nearly 10,000 people and caused heavy damage. The displaced residents,
dissatisfied with the government’s response to their situation, formed
grassroots organizations that blossomed into full-fledged human rights and
civic action movements during the late 1980s and 1990s. The country’s problems were
exacerbated by continuing accusations of electoral fraud against the PRI and
the devastation caused in the Yucatán by a massive hurricane in 1988.
December 17, 1992
President Carlos Salinas
joined U.S. President George H.W. Bush. and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of
Canada in signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which went
into effect January 1, 1994. The agreement called for a phasing out of the
longstanding trade barriers among the three nations.
NAFTA signing ceremony on December 17, 1992. From left to right: (standing) Mexican President Carlos Salinas, U.S. President George Bush, and Canada's Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Salinas’ government was
plagued by accusations of corruption, and in 1995 he was forced into exile.
1994
The latest PRI candidate,
Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, was elected president and immediately faced a
banking crisis when the value of the Mexican peso plunged on international
markets. The United States loaned Mexico $20 billion, which, along with a plan
of economic austerity, helped stabilize its currency.
Mexico in the 20th
Century
Mexico remained
economically fragile and continued to struggle with social inequalities,
poverty, and extensive crime - including drug trafficking, and illegal
immigration into the United States.
2000
Vicente Fox, of the National
Action Party (Partido de Acción Nacional), PAN, won election to the Mexican presidency,
ending more than 70 years of PRI rule.
Fox entered office as a conservative reformer, focusing his early
efforts on improving trade relations with the United States, calming civil
unrest in areas such as Chiapas and reducing corruption, crime and
drug trafficking. Fox also strove to improve the status of millions of illegal
Mexican immigrants living in the United States, but his efforts stalled after
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. With reforms slowing and his
opponents gaining ground, Fox also faced large-scale protests by farmers
frustrated with the inequalities of the NAFTA system. Fox is regarded as an ineffective president
who was weakened by the PAN’s minority in both chambers of Congress.
From the mid-1960s on,
illegal immigration into the U.S. from Mexico increased dramatically, finally
peaking in 2000, and then decreasing steadily.
2006
In the presidential
election, the PAN’s Felipe Calderón took office after one of the most hotly
contested elections in recent Mexican history.
Despite imposing a cap on salaries of high-ranking public servants,
Calderón raised the salaries of Federal Police and the Mexican armed
forces. Calderón’s government also
ordered massive raids on drug cartels in response to increasing deadly
violence. This conflict resulted in the
deaths of tens of thousands of Mexicans and the drug mafia’s continued to gain
power, as Mexico became (and remains today) a major drug-producing and
drug-trafficking nation.
2012
Enrique Peña Nieto was
elected president, as a member of the PRI, after 12 years of PAN rule. He put together a cross-party alliance called
the Pact for Mexico that passed legislation for reform of education,
banking, fiscal policy, and telecommunications.
Most importantly, the Pact ended the state-owned PEMEX petroleum company
monopoly and allowed for foreign investment in Mexico’s oil industry.
2018
Andrés Manuel López
Obrador was elected president as the coalition candidate of the Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD), Labor Party, and Citizens’ Movement. The Agreement between the United States of
America, the Mexican States, and Canada - a free trade
agreement that is a successor to NAFTA, was implemented on July 1, 2020. Today, Obrador is contending with high crime
rates, political corruption, drug trafficking, a stagnant economy, and the
coronavirus pandemic.
Mexico Today
Mexico is the world’s 13th-largest
country with an area of 761,610 square miles and the 10th-most
populace country with a population of 129 million, including the world’s
largest population (approx. 93%) of Spanish speakers. Mexico is federation of 31 states and Mexico
City, its capital.
Mexico is a federation of 31 states and Mexico City, its capital.
Mexico ranks first in the Americas and 7th in the world for the number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including archaeological sites from ancient civilizations and buildings from the Spanish Conquest. In 2018, Mexico was the 6th-most visited country in the world, with 39 million international arrivals.
Mexico has the world’s 15th-largest
economy by nominal GDP of $2.715 trillion, with a dynamic industrial base, vast
mineral resources, and a wide-ranging service sector.
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