Vasco de Quiroga After a long, illustrious career, at an age when most today consider retirement, Vasco de Quiroga arrived in Mexico in 1531 to serve as judge, priest, and finally the first bishop of Michoacán. Quiroga found Michoacán in turmoil, having been ravaged by the vicious conquistador “Bloody” Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán. Quiroga served […]
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Constitución Mexico’s Constitution of 1917 redeemed the otherwise horrific, sometimes even apparently-pointless Mexican President Venustiano Carranza called for a constitutional convention in 1916 hoping to legitimize his post-Revolution government. Carefully excluding the liberal supporters of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, he’d hoped merely to tweak the Reforma’s Constitution of 1857 (which had replaced the Constitution
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La Reforma The liberal Constitution of 1857 defined The Reform, a tumultuous two-decade period (yet another one!) between the fall of Santa Anna and the rise of Porfirio Díaz. Melchor Ocampo was its philosophical architect, Ignacio Zaragoza and Ramon Corona its military defenders, and Benito Juárez its political leader. In 1854, Mexican liberals overthrew Santa
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Tenochtitlán The Aztecs (Mexica), a wandering, Nahuatl-speaking people, claimed the island in the middle of Lake Texcoco as their own in the early 1300s. (Their god, Huitzilopochtli, had led them there, identifying the island with the long-awaited sign: an eagle perched on a cactus devouring a snake—now featured on the Mexican flag.) They enlarged the
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Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” If Miguel Hidalgo was the Father of Mexican Independence, then Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez was its mother. Josefa married Miguel Domínguez who became the corregidor (chief magistrate/mayor) of Querétaro; and soon she was known (and still is) as “La Corregidora.” Together they had fourteen children. Because
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De las Casas Bartolomé de las Casas began as an unlikely hero. In 1502, at the age of 18, he arrived on the island of Hispaniola and quickly reaped the benefits of the encomienda system Columbus had established there: Las Casas became a feudal lord of not only a land grant, but of all the
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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
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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
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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
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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
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