The few, the proud, the work of Juan Rulfo (1917-1986)
In the darkest days of the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill said of the RAF that "never has so much been owed by so many to so few." To paraphrase the great statesman, it could be said of the Juan ...
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Aquiles Serdan: Madero's first martyr
Few movements have ever started out less auspiciously than Francisco Madero's rebellion against Porfirio Diaz, the man who had held Mexico in an iron grip for 35 years. The maderis...
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Jews in Mexico. a struggle for survival: Part Three
Survivors.
The very word has connotations of persecution, repression, hardship and escape. It also describes people with courage, stamina, the ability to adapt and almost always a moral strength and c...
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Tragedy and triumph: The drama of Jose Clemente Orozco (1883 - 1949)
A great ideological struggle is never a day at the beach. Whether its matrix is race, nationality or economic inequality, the fight of the oppressed against the oppressor is always a somber affair. Nob...
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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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Jews in Mexico, a struggle for survival: Part Two
The vast majority of the approximately 50,000 Mexican citizens who practice Judaism via organized congregations are descendents of people who, from 1881 to 1939, found life-saving refuge in this countr...
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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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Jews in Mexico, a struggle for survival: Part One
The survival of Judaism in Mexico is a tale of tenacity and tolerance. The story begins in Spain with the "Conversos", Jews who had converted to Christianity, always under duress.
It starts in 600 AD,...
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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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History of Oaxaca: The Modern Era
History of Oaxaca
Part 3 - Modern Era
By Maria Diaz
Her Bio
Her email: maria@oaxacalive.com
Part 1 Pre-Hispanic Era - Part 2 Colonial Era
Let us continue our...
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Nicolas Bravo: Liberator – yes, liberal – no! (1786-1854)
Of the leaders of the Mexican independence movement, the one who most resembled Nicolás Bravo was Ignacio de Allende. In my coverage on Allende, I described him as a "law-and-order" rebel, one who bel...
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Mexico's Name
hi! does anyone know how Mexico got its name and when the people as a whole were first called Mexicans? does it have something to do with the Aztecs whom I think were also called the Mexias or Mexicas or something along those lines?
read moreGlorious 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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History of Oaxaca: The Colonial Era
History of Oaxaca
Part 2 - Colonial Era
By Maria Diaz
Her Bio
Her email: maria@oaxacalive.com
Part 1 Pre-hispanic Era
Welcome to the continuation of an overview o...
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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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History of Oaxaca: The Pre-hispanic Era
History of Oaxaca
Part 1 - Pre-hispanic Era
By Maria Diaz
Her Bio
Her email: maria@oaxacalive.com
In three installments we will present a history of Oaxaca, its pe...
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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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Black gold, fool's gold: The oiling of Mexico's petroleum crisis (1938-1988)
Lázaro Cárdenas, the most left-wing president in Mexican history, became an international bogey man but a national hero by expropriating the foreign oil companies in 1938. Though even such political ...
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High hopes, baffling uncertainty: Mexico nears the millennium
The election that brought Miguel de la Madrid's successor to power was clearly fraudulent. On July 6, 1988, when the first results began to arrive at the interior ministry's office on Avenida Bucareli,...
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The Mexican Red Cross, it's different
The Cruz Roja Mexicana functions 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Like the American and Canadian Red Cross, it assists at disasters, but additionally acts as an Emergency Medical Service. By Mexican la...
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Mexico's Lincoln: The ecstasy and agony of Benito Juarez
Since it is the near unanimous verdict of authorities on American history that Abraham Lincoln was our greatest president, it has become a facile formula among historians of other nations to describe t...
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La Malinche, unrecognized heroine
It is time that women discover the Aztec Indian woman called Doña Marina by the Spaniards and La Malinche by her fellow Indians and demand recognition of her as a true heroine. She certainly had as gr...
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