Chameleon adventurer: The astonishing career of Agustin de Iturbide (1783 - 1824)
Probably the individual in history who most resembled Agustin de Iturbide was Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the French statesman who managed to hold high positions in the pre-revolutionary a...
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Mexico's Daumier: Jose Guadalupe Posada (1852 - 1913)
José Guadalupe Posada is in the great tradition of cartoonists who double as political and social commentators. That tradition includes Honoré Daumier, whose merciless portraits of bourgeois society ...
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Orderly rebel: The life and thought of Ignacio de Allende (1779 - 1811)
Rebels, we know, can range from wild-eyed anarchists to sober and judicious opponents of an established order who make a considered decision that the system under which they live is no longer viable.
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Glorious innocent: The tragedy and triumph of Francisco Madero (1873–1913)
Francisco Madero was a man who was too good for his own good. Naive, trusting, merciful toward those who deserved no mercy, he was in the end betrayed and murdered by those in whom he had mistakenly pl...
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Sexenios in a changing world: Mexican Presidents Lopez Mateos and Diaz Ordaz
Adolfo López Mateos (1909–1970) and Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1911–1970)
In 1958, the year Adolfo López Mateos became president of Mexico, the world was relatively tranquil. The Korean War was over ...
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Mexican priest, poet and educator: The multiple talents of Manuel Ponce (1913-1994)
From Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Catholic cleric who is also a poet is an unending subject of interest. Given the poet's traditional role as a free spirit and the Church's ...
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Alone at the top: The achievement of Mexico's Alvaro Obregon
Revolution is the ultimate test for survival of the fittest. In times of stormy social change, intense competition is generated among leaders of forces seeking that change and, inevitably, one man emer...
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Mexico's Voltaire: Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi (1776-1827)
Because of the many fables he wrote, there are those who may wish to compare José Joaquin Fernández de Lizardi to La Fontaine. Such a comparison fails to do justice to both writers. Apart from the Co...
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'Bloody Guzman'
Sealed off by mountains to both the East and West, and arid, desert-like land to the North, Mexico’s central altoplano, for eons was home to Nahua, Otomi, Huichol, Cora, Tepehua and Coyutec Indi...
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Zapata
In 1952, John Steinbeck won an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay of the movie, Viva Zapata! Many years later, however, a manuscript was found in UCLA Library in which it was discovered he had...
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The Post Classic Period ( 900 - 1521 ) Part 1
While data on early Mesoamerican cultures has been deduced primarily from archaeological evidence, historians have utilized the written records of later cultures to produce the final chapters of pre-hi...
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