Chapultepec: Mexico City's urban forest
City parks were not an important part of my life when I was a child. I was raised in the country on a farm which, for all practical purposes, was a park. Growing older, though, I learned to appreciate ...
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Mexico City's Revolution Monument: Monumento a la Revolucion
An icon in Mexico City, the Revolution Monument or Monumento a la Revolución is also known as the Arch of the Revolution. It is located on Plaza de la Republica between downtown Reforma and Insurgente...
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Ruins and memories of Mexico's El Amparo Mining Company
In 1916, the Amparo Mining Company had the most successful silver mines in Jalisco and was making money hand over fist. Although it was located pretty much in the middle of nowhere, 65 kilometers due w...
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Puente de Ojuela in Durango: a 19th century suspension bridge from Mexico's mining heyday
In a single second, excitement, awe, terror, and fascination passed through my mind, as I began the walk across Mapimi Municipality's Ojuela Bridge, in the Chihuahuan Desert, of eastern Durango, Mexico...
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The romance of the Mexico hacienda: El Carmen and La Labor near Guadalajara
Before the revolution, haciendas dotted the countryside of Mexico. With their classic architecture and splendid great houses, each Mexico hacienda is surrounded in an aura of romance.
Located 40 kilom...
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Listing of Mexico's Presidents and Heads of State
A timeline showing Presidents from Mexico's Independence in 1822 to the present day.
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Did tequila originate in the Mexican town of Amatitan, Jalisco?
All the world has been told that tequila, the drink was born in Tequila — the town located 45 kilometers northwest of Guadalajara — but is this really a fact? Curiously, the famed Tequila Express t...
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Afternoon in Yuriria: a 16th century convent in Guanajuato
It was a chance thing, really. We were heading for Patzcuaro, almost due south of Guanajuato where we had spent the past several days on a photography and business junket. While we were checking out of...
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Yaqui in exile: the grim history of Mexico's San Marcos train station
An old railway station at the western end of the train tracks in Jalisco, Mexico, bears witness to unspeakable cruelties perpetrated upon thousands of Yaqui Indians in the early 1900s.Yaquis were sold as slaves at the station "for 25 centavos a head."
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Night in Mina Dos Estrellas, a haunted mine in Mexico
The Dos Estrellas (Two Stars) mine has had a long and checkered history. It was a fabled producer of gold and silver in the 18th century. Then one night more than 70 years ago, the god of the mine vented its wrath, unleashing a tragedy on those who made a living from its veins.
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A quest for hidden treasure in Chihuahua
You might say that it all began on an ordinary day in New York - the treasure hunt, that is. My 23 year old daughter Elise was just back from Spain where she had been teaching English to grade school s...
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The Tecpan of Ocomo: largest indigenous palace in Mesoamerica
The tecpan, or pre-Hispanic palace in Oconahua, Jalisco, dates from between 500 and 1100 A.D. The only tecpan bigger than this one may have been the Palace of Moctezuma, but this can't be verified because it's buried underneath the Zócalo in Mexico City. That makes El Palacio de Ocomo the largest tecpan to be found anywhere.
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Busting ghosts at Xochicalco, Morelos: A UNESCO World Heritage Site
A ghostly aura emanates from the site - in part, perhaps, due to a lack of crowds. - The pyramid forms part of the archaeological zone of Xochicalco, which shimmers in heat and eerie solitude on a plateau among verdant surrounds in the southwest of the state of Morelos, 23 miles from Cuernavaca. A ghostly aura emanates from the site - in part, perhaps, due to a lack of crowds that permeate Xochicalco's more famous cousins elsewhere in Mexico.
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