The "virreinato" of New Spain
This is page 5 of seven on MexConnect which come originally from the website of CEDEX (Center for Historic Studies of Public Works and Town Planning) in Madrid, Spain. (Links to the other six pages ar...
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The "cuadricula"
This is page 6 of seven on MexConnect which come originally from the website of CEDEX (Center for Historic Studies of Public Works and Town Planning) in Madrid, Spain. (Links to the other six pages ar...
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Sailing on and on
This is page 2 of seven on MexConnect which come originally from the website of CEDEX (Center for Historic Studies of Public Works and Town Planning) in Madrid, Spain. (Links to the other six pages ar...
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The Pacific route to the Orient
This is page 7 of seven on MexConnect which come originally from the website of CEDEX (Center for Historic Studies of Public Works and Town Planning) in Madrid, Spain. (Links to the other six pages ar...
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Ships, galleons, frigates and corvettes
This page is number 3 of seven pages on MexConnect which come originally from the website of CEDEX (Center for Historic Studies of Public Works and Town Planning) in Madrid, Spain. (Links to the other...
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The longest transoceanic route
This page is number 1 of seven pages on MexConnect which come originally from the website of CEDEX (Center for Historic Studies of Public Works and Town Planning) in Madrid, Spain. (Links to the other...
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Reluctant revolutionary: the rocky road of Venustiano Carranza (1859–1920)
Few people have ever less fitted the conventional image of a revolutionary than Venustiano Carranza. He was a country squire rather than an intellectual, he had been part of a ruling establishment and ...
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The indelible imprint of Father Kino (1644–1711)
Even by the rigorous standards of the Jesuit order, Father Francisco Eusebio Kino was an overachiever. During the three-century colonial period between the Conquest in 1521 and the end of the Independe...
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Democrat to autocrat: The transformation of Porfirio Diaz
It is an ancient principle of politics that a revolution devours its children. Danton and Robespierre began as rebel leaders against France's ancien régime but Robespierre ended by cutting off Danton'...
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Antonio López de Santa Anna (1794–1876) - Master of chutzpah
In Norman Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish, the term "chutzpah" is defined as "gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts'; presumption-plus-arrogance such as no other word ... can do justice to." As...
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Priest, poet, 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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Javier Mina (1789–1818)
While most of the leaders of Mexico's War of Independence were Mexican-born creoles, an exception was Francisco Javier Mina, whose name today appears on street signs and monuments throughout Mexico. Li...
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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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Bartolome de las Casas: father of liberation theology
Mention liberation theology and images that immediately come to mind are those of 1960s-style antiwar, anti-establishment priests like the Berrigan brothers or, more recently, Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcí...
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Fighting liberal: the stormy career of Santos Degollado
(18?? - 1856)
Those who characterize liberals as wimps or ineffective bleeding hearts would think twice if they lived in the era of a fiery and committed jurist and reformer named Santos Degollado...
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Cuauhtemoc: winner in defeat (1495–1525)
One of history's recurring ironies is the spectacle of figures who die in defeat or disgrace, but emerge in future generations as heroes while the people who defeated them are downgraded to villains. M...
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Mariano Azuela
Where does one draw the line between iconoclastic satire and cynicism? It is commonly said that the purpose of satire is correction and this seems as useful an explanation as any. No matter how brutall...
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Chameleon adventurer: the astonishing career of Agustín de Iturbide
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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Guadalupe Victoria - Presidente desconocido
History has rarely furnished a more striking example of high-profile-low-profile than that of the first presidents of the United States and Mexico. George Washington was and is the quintessential house...
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Octavio Paz: Nobel winner and noble man (1914–1998)
1998 witnessed the passing of such diverse figures as Frank Sinatra, legendary boxer Archie Moore, two-term Florida Governor Lawton Chiles, cowboy star and entrepreneur Gene Autry, and Clayton ("Peg Le...
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Lerdo de Tejada: Jacobin to liberal elitist
Timothy Dwight, the fervently reactionary and comically pompous head of Yale University, was a strong Federalist supporter who predicted that the accession of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency would l...
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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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Vicente Guerrero: a study in triumph and tragedy (1782–1831)
Vicente Ramón Guerrero Saldaña was the second president of Mexico and the first to come from las clases populares (the "popular" classes), which in Spanish is a euphemism for an individual of ...
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The Quetzalcoatl "Trinity"
It is entirely correct to think of the Aztec legend Quetzalcoatl in three contexts -- as historical personality, as divinity and as literary subject. In the first incarnation he is a 10th century pries...
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Rebel, internationalist, establishmentarian: Carlos Fuentes
Carlos Fuentes was an internationalist from birth. Though one of Mexico's best-known citizens, he was born on November 11, 1928, in Panama, where his father represented the Mexican government. Mexico p...
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