Mexico's marxist guru: Vicente Lombardo Toledano (1894–1968)
It is no more possible to discuss Marxism in Mexico without referring to Vicente Lombardo Toledano than it is to reminisce about Abbott without mentioning Costello. A teacher, writer, union leader and ...
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Melchor Ocampo (1814–1861)
Among critics of the Roman Catholic Church in a country where a vast majority of the citizens are nominal Catholics, the charges most frequently heard are those of worldliness and hypocrisy. Anticleric...
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Nuño de Guzmán: the Himmler of New Spain (14??–1550)
In 1984, his epic indictment of Stalinism, George Orwell writes that totalitarian man exercises power over others by making them suffer. Arthur Koestler, another great analyst and foe of Soviet communi...
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Aztec Hamlet: the tragedy of Moctezuma 2
In history, there are innumerable cases of dynasties toppling because of the weakness of incumbents. The incompetence of do-nothing rulers had much to do with the fall of the late Roman Empire. In Fran...
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Miguel Hidalgo: the Father who fathered a country (1753–1811)
Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla had the unique distinction of being a father in three senses of the word: a priestly father in the Roman Catholic Church, a biological father who produced illegitimate childre...
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Agustin Yañez: the engaged man (1904–1980)
This title has nothing to do with the state of affairs that precedes matrimony. It is intended in the sense of what the French call an homme engagé, literally, a man engaged in a cause or in so...
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Jeronimo de Aguilar: the marooned priest who speeded the conquest
This is a story that would have been laughed out of a Hollywood studio had it ever been submitted as script material: that a leading figure in the Spanish Conquest of Mexico was a shipwrecked priest wh...
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The Mexican Revolution: a nation in flux - part 2
Villa broke jail on Christmas Eve and was in El Paso when Huerta engineered the coup that overthrew Madero. In February 1913 Huerta staged a fake 10-day artillery duel with a fake rival, Felix Díaz, n...
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The first and the best: Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza
(Viceroy: 1530 - 1550)
The transition from military to civilian rule is not always an easy one. High ranking officers become entrenched in top positions of government and -- as the 1989 fall of th...
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The Mexican Revolution: a nation in flux - part 1 (1910-20)
Mexico in September 1910 could be compared to a shiny apple whose glossy skin conceals a putrifying interior. But the corruption underneath was still a secret to the rest of the world. Porfirio Díaz, ...
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Nezahualcoyotl: Texcoco's philosopher king (1403–1473)
In the Mesoamerican civilizations that preceded the Spanish Conquest, intellectuals usually derived from the priestly caste rather than from the ranks of warriors and statesmen.
But there was one exce...
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Maximilian and Carlota: the "Archdupe" and his tragic lady (1832-1867)
In any political struggle, the spectator's first instinct is to look for a hero and a villain. But you don't always encounter a good guy-bad guy matchup. Though the Soviet Union was our ally in the war...
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Zapata and the intellectuals
It is hardly coincidence that the Chiapas rebels under Subcomandante Marcos call themselves Zapatistas and not Villistas or Carrancistas or Obregonistas or even Maderistas -- to name other illustrious ...
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Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez: a politically correct "corrector" (1768–1829)
The term " corregidor" is normally associated with an island in the Philippines that witnessed one of the most dramatic and tragic episodes of the Second World War -- when a starving, outgunned, ...
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Rebel without a pause: the tempestuous life of Diego Rivera
In art as in life, Diego Rivera was a man constantly in rebellion. At 16, he left the prestigious San Carlos Academy in Mexico City in protest against the academy's emphasis on representational art. He...
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Mr. Clean: the phenomenon of Lázaro Cárdenas (1895–1970)
If Diogenes, wielding his famous lamp, ever came into a gallery of Mexican presidents, he wouldn't come away completely empty-handed. In his quest for an honest man, he would snare at least two for his...
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Vasco de Quiroga: notes on a practical Utopian (1470–1565)
The term "Utopia" generally has the connotation of a society that is hopelessly visionary and impractical. This is because most of these societies -- Plato's Republic, St. Augustine's City of God and S...
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Mexico's Niños Heroes ("heroic children"): reality or myth...
On March 5, 1947 President Harry S. Truman was on the next to last day of a three-day whirlwind visit to Mexico. Departing from his prepared agenda, he announced that he wanted to make a stop at Mexico...
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Affirmative action and Hernán Cortés (1485–1547)
Affirmative action can be defined as a process in which members of a certain ethnicity are compensated for the discrimination and second-class citizen status that their ancestors have endured in the pa...
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The Temascal: Traditional Sweat Bath
The medicine lodge or sweat bath dates from a very early period in the history of the Americas and, in some parts, continues to the present day. In Canada. Indians from the Atlantic coast to British C...
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Did you know? Many common garden flowers originated in Mexico.
Many common garden flowers were developed from samples collected in Mexico by a German botanist financed by Britain's Horticultural Society.
Karl Theodor Hartweg (1812-1871) came from a long line of g...
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Did you know? Mexico has 36 Magic Towns.
One of the Mexican Tourism Secretariat's flagship programs in recent years has been its Magic Towns designation. This is a program after my own heart, and one that was long overdue when it was finally ...
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Did you know? Mexico was once the world's major source of pearls.
This month's Did You Know column highlights the pearl, the beautiful birthstone associated with the month of June.
The history of pearl collecting in Mexico goes back a very long way. When Spanish exp...
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Did you know? An early Jules Verne story was set in Mexico.
An early story by Jules Verne, the science fiction and travel author, was set in Mexico.
What's more, he wrote it without ever setting foot in Mexico!
Most people know Jules Verne (1828-1905) as one ...
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Mesoamerican Religion and Multiverses: Part One
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" (Albert Einstein)
The idea of multiple universes or parallel worlds connected by "worm-holes" has long been a feature of modern science fiction and f...
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