Agustín de Iturbide Was Agustín Iturbide a hero or a villain? An opportunist or a patriot? As with so much of Mexican history, it depends whom and when you ask. Iturbide distinguished himself early in his military career. A gifted horseman and courageous leader, he scored repeated victories against larger forces, earning him the nickname …
José María Morelos y Pavón Morelos was the most successful of all the Mexican revolutionaries, both militarily and politically. A Mestizo priest (mixed Spanish and Native), he studied under Father Miguel Hidalgo at the College of Saint Nicolas. After the revolution began, he joined Hidalgo, who sent him to foment an uprising in the south …
El Camino Real El Camino Real, or “The Royal Road,” a.k.a “The King’s Highway,” referred to any major road in New Spain (present-day Mexico and the American Southwest) since, at least in theory, everything then belonged to the King. There were four major Camino Reales, the most famous and longest being El Camino Real de …
Vicente Guerrero Vicente Guerrero lived by the coup, and so died by it. Of African, Native, and Spanish blood (he went by the nickname of “El Negro” as a child), his mixed heritage probably spelled his doom. During the war for independence (1810-1821), when his father and uncle insisted he present his sword to the …
Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes For half a century after La Revolución (1910-1917), two writers dominated Mexican literature. Octavio Paz became the preeminent poet, and Carlos Fuentes the outstanding novelist. The two were close friends, exchanging more than a thousand letters, but were eventually estranged. Paz wrote, “A flower without a stem is beauty waiting …
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán Just how bad was “Bloody” Guzmán? One of his biographers, Santana, claimed he was known for “cruelty of the highest order, ambition without limit, a refined hypocrisy, great immorality, ingratitude without equal, and a fierce hatred for Cortés.” Guzmán went down in history as, by far, the worst of all the …
“So, what’s it all about?” my Uncle Fred used to ask me over the sumptuous meals we shared at yearly reunions. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to tell me,” I responded, laughing. Uncle Fred had been a Catholic priest. But when told by the bishop to abandon his ministry to alcoholics in order to say …
Javier Mina and Pedro Moreno In 1808, at the age of 18, Javier Mina abandoned his law studies to defend his homeland, Spain, from Napoleon’s invasion, and to restore King Ferdinand VII to his rightful throne. Mina became a guerilla fighter who was so successful that he soon commanded a force of nearly 1,400 soldiers …
La Princesa Purépecha Eréndira, whose name means “Smiling Morning,” was a 17-year old princess of the Purépecha people, Natives who lived in the current Mexican state of Michoacán at the time of the Spanish conquest. Eréndira’s father, King Tangaxoán II, and her fiancé, the commander of all Purépecha armies, both overawed by the Spaniards’ conquest …
Teresa Urrea She was the Mexican Joan of Arc. In 1889, when she was 16 years old, Teresa Urrea suffered an acute case of catalepsy, which left her in a death-like coma for nearly two weeks. When she recovered in an apparently miraculous resurrection, she claimed that she’d had heavenly visions and that the Virgin …
