The first people to inhabit this land may have arrived 20,000 years before Columbus. Their descendants, including the Mayan and Aztecs, built a succession of highly developed civilizations that flourished from 1200 BC to 1521 AD.

Hernán Cortés landed on the coast near modern-day Veracruz on 21 April 1519. Primary sources suggest that the Aztecs were accommodating because, according to their calendar, 1519 promised the god Quetzalcóatl's return from the east. The Spaniards met their first Indian allies in towns that resented Aztec domination. With 6000 Indians, they approached the Aztecs' island capital - a city bigger than any in Spain. King Moctezuma II invited them into his palace and the Spaniards promptly took him hostage. By 13 August 1521, Aztec resistance had ended. The position of the conquered peoples deteriorated rapidly, not only because of harsh treatment at the hands of the colonists but also due to introduced diseases. The Indian population fell from an estimated 25 million at the time of conquest to one million by 1605.

From the 16th to 19th centuries, a sort of apartheid system existed in Mexico. Spanish-born colonists were a minuscule part of the population but were considered nobility in New Spain (as Mexico was then called), however humble their prior status in Spain. By the 18th century, criollos (people born of Spanish parents in New Spain) had acquired fortunes in mining, commerce, ranching and agriculture and sought political power commensurate with their wealth. Below the criollos were the mestizos, of mixed Spanish and Indian or African slave ancestry, and at the bottom of the pile were the remaining Indians and Africans. The catalyst for rebellion came in 1808 when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied most of Spain - direct Spanish control over New Spain suddenly ceased and rivalry between the Spanish-born and criollos in the colony intensified. On 16 September 1810 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a criollo parish priest, issued his call to rebellion, the Grito de Dolores. In 1821 Spain agreed to Mexican independence.

Twenty-two years of chronic instability followed independence: the presidency changed hands 36 times. In 1845, the US congress voted to annex Texas, leading to the Mexican-American War in which US troops captured Mexico City. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), Mexico ceded modern Texas, California, Utah, Colorado and most of New Mexico and Arizona to the USA. By 1862, Mexico was heavily in debt to Britain, France and Spain, who sent a joint force to Mexico to collect their debts. France decided to go even further and colonize Mexico, sparking yet another war. In 1864, France invited the Austrian archduke, Maximilian of Hapsburg, to become emperor of Mexico but his reign was brief.

With the slogan 'order and progress,' dictator Porfirio Díaz (1878-1911) piloted Mexico into the industrial age and steered clear of the warfare that had plagued it for over 60 years. But peace came at a cost: political opposition, free elections and a free press were banned, and control was maintained by a ruthless army. Widespread dissatisfaction with Díaz's rule led to strikes that prefigured the Mexican Revolution.

The revolution was not a clear-cut struggle between oppression and liberty, but a 10-year period of shifting allegiances between a spectrum of leaders, in which successive attempts to create stable governments were wrecked by new skirmishes. The basic ideological rift was between liberal reformers and more radical leaders, such as Emiliano Zapata, who were fighting for the transfer of hacienda land to the peasants. The 10 years of violent civil war cost an estimated one and a half to two million lives - roughly one in eight Mexicans. After the revolution, political will was focused on rebuilding the national infrastructure. The Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI) took power in 1934, introducing a program of reform and land redistribution.

Civil unrest next appeared in 1966, when university students in Mexico City expressed their outrage with the conservative Díaz Ordaz administration. Discontent with single-party rule, restricted freedom of speech and excessive government spending came to a head in 1968 in the run-up to the Mexico City Olympic Games, and protesters were massacred by armed troops.

The oil boom of the late 1970s increased Mexico's oil revenues and financed industrial and agricultural investments, but the oil glut in the mid 1980s deflated petroleum prices and led to Mexico's worst recession in decades. The economic downturn led to an increase in organized political dissent on both the left and right. A September 1985 earthquake, which registered 8.0 on the Richter scale, caused more than US$4 billion in damage. Hundreds of buildings in Mexico City were destroyed, thousands of people were made homeless and at least 8000 people died.

President Carlos Salinas de Gortari began his term in 1988 after very controversial elections. He gained popular support by renegotiating Mexico's crippling national debt and bringing rising inflation under control. A sweeping privatization program and a burgeoning international finance market led to Mexico being heralded in the international press as an exemplar of free-market economics. The apex of Salinas' economic reform was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), effective 1 January 1994.

Fears that NAFTA would increase the marginalization of indigenous Mexicans led to the Zapatista uprising in the southernmost state of Chiapas. The day NAFTA took effect, a huge army of unarmed peasants shocked Mexico by taking over the state capital of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Their demands focused on improved social and economic justice. The uprising precipitated much social upheaval, with peasants forcibly taking over hundreds of estates, farms and ranches throughout the country. Today, the Zapatista movement (and the US government-sponsored, low-intensity warfare campaign) continues, and the rebels' leader, a balaclava-clad figure known only as Subcomandante Marcos, is now a national folk hero.

In March 1994, Luis Donaldo Colósio, Salinas' chosen successor, was assassinated. His replacement, 43-year-old Ernesto Zedillo, was elected with 49% of the vote. Within days of President Zedillo's taking office, Mexico's currency, the peso, suddenly collapsed, bringing on a rapid and deep economic recession. It led to, among other things, a huge increase in crime, intensified discontent with the PRI and large-scale Mexican immigration to the US. It's estimated that by 1997 more than 2.5 million Mexicans a year were entering the US illegally. Zedillo's policies pulled Mexico gradually out of recession. Despite a hiccup caused by international economic factors in 1998, by the end of his term in 2000, Mexicans' purchasing power was again approaching what it had been in 1994.

In the freest and fairest national election since the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20, National Action Party (PAN) presidential candidate and former Coca-Cola executive Vicente Fox beat Zedillo's hand-picked successor, PRI candidate Francisco Labastida. The 2 July 2000 elections ended the PRI's 71-year reign. The transition is expected to be smooth (once the nationwide fiestas die down) although the Chiapas question and issues about crime and the economy loom large, without a simple solution in sight.

DMC Companies

(the links below will open a new window and bring you to another website)

• Betanzos International
• Cabo Traveler Advisors
• Contactincentives D.M.C.
• Destination Mexico
• Eventos Turisticos Royale
• Go Mexico Groups & Incentives S.C.
• Terramar Travel Management
• Tropical Incentives DMC
• Unlimited Incentives

Summary|Culture|Acapulco|Mexico City
Puerto Vallarta|History