The history of Mexico, a country located in the southern portion of North America, covers a period of more than three millennia. First populated more than 13,000 years ago, the territory had complex indigenous civilizations before being conquered by the Spanish in the 16th century.
From 1519, the Spaniards absorbed the native peoples into Spain's vast colonial empire, and fused Mexico's long-established Mesoamerican civilizations with European culture. Perhaps nothing better represents this hybrid background than Mexico's languages: the country is both the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world and home to the largest number of Native American language speakers in North America. For three centuries Mexico was part of the Spanish Empire, whose legacy is a country with a Spanish-speaking, Catholic and largely Western culture.
After a protracted struggle (1810-1821) Mexico declared its independence from Spain in 1821 via the Treaty of Cordoba. A brief period of monarchy (1821–23), called the First Mexican Empire, was followed by the founding of the Republic of Mexico, established under a federal constitution in 1824. Mexico continues to be constituted as a federated republic.
The period of the late 1820s to the early 1850s was dominated by criollo military man turned president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. In 1846, the Mexican American War was provoked by the United States, ending two years later with Mexico ceding almost half of its territory via treaty to the United States. Even though Santa Anna bore significant responsibility for the disastrous defeat, he returned to office. He was overthrown by Mexican liberals, ushering in the period of the La Reforma or Liberal Reform. The Constitution of 1857 codified the principles of liberalism in law, especially separation of church and state, equality before the law, that included stripping corporate entities (the Catholic Church and indigenous communities) of special status. The Reform sparked a civil war between liberals defending the constitution and conservatives, who opposed it. The War of the Reform saw the defeat of the conservatives on the battlefield, but conservatives remained strong and took the opportunity to invite foreign intervention against the liberals in order to forward their own cause.
France invaded Mexico (1861), nominally to collect on defaulted loans to the liberal government of Benito Juarez, but it went further and at the invitation of Mexican conservatives seeking to restore monarchy in Mexico set Maximilian I on the Mexican throne. The US was engaged in its own Civil War (1861–65), so did not attempt to block the foreign intervention. Abraham Lincoln consistently supported the Mexican liberals. At the end of the civil war in the US and the triumph of the Union forces, the US actively aided Mexican liberals against Maximilian's regime. France withdrew its support of Maximilian in 1867 and his monarchist rule collapsed in 1867 and Maximilian executed.
With the end of the Second Mexican Empire, the period often called the Restored Republic (1867-1876) brought back Benito Juarez as president. Following his death from a heart attack, Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada succeed him. He was overthrown by liberal military man Porfirio Diaz, who after consolidating power ushered in a period of stability and economic growth. The half-century of economic stagnation and political chaos following independence ended.
Porfirio Díaz held power from 1876-1911, promoting "order and progress" that saw the modernization of the economy and the flow of foreign investment to the country. The period is generally called the Porfiriato, which ended with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. Under Díaz, Mexico's industry and infrastructure was modernized by a strong, stable but autocratic central government. Increased tax revenues and better administration brought dramatic improvements in public safety, public health, railways, mining, industry, foreign trade, and national finances.
Although little had been done for the nation's poor, the sparking forces of the Mexican Revolution were elites outside Díaz's inner circle, such as Francisco Madero, a member of one of the richest land owning families in Mexico, plus liberal intellectuals, and industrial labor activists. The fraudulent election of 1910 keeping 80 year old Díaz in power brought opposition elements together, unleashing a 10 year civil war known as the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). The conflict was not a unified one, but took place mainly in Mexico's north with organized armies of movement under leaders such as Pancho Villa and Alvaro Obregon and in the center of Mexico, particularly the state of Morelos with guerrilla peasants fighting under the leadership of Emiliano Zapata. The war killed a tenth of the nation's population and drove many northern Mexicans across the U.S. border to escape the fighting. The Revolution ended the system of large landed estates, or haciendas that had originated with the Spanish Conquest.
Following the formation in 1929 of the precursor to the center-left Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), this single party controlled national and state politics after 1929, and nationalized the oil industry in the 1930s. Following World War II, where Mexico had been a strong ally of the United States and had benefited significantly by supplying metals to build war materiel as well as guest farm workers, who freed U.S. American men to fight in the two front war. Mexico emerged from World War II with wealth and political stability and unleashed a major period of economic growth, often called the Mexican Miracle. It was organized around the principles of import substitution industrialization, with the creation of many state-owned industrial enterprises. The population grew rapidly and became more urbanized while many others moved to the United States. Mexico's economy was further integrated with the U.S. after the NAFTA agreement began lowering trade barriers in 1994. Seven decades of PRI rule ended in the year 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox of the Partido Accion Nacional (PAN). In the face of extremely violent drug wars, the PRI returned to power in 2012, promising that it had reformed itself.
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Guanajuato officially Free and Sovereign State of Guanajuato (Spanish: Estado Libre y Soberano de Guanajuato), is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, are the 32 Federal entities of Mexico. It is divided into 46 municipalities and its capital city is Guanajuato. The largest city in the state is Leon.
It is located in North-Central Mexico. It is bordered by the states of Jalisco to the west, Zacatecas to the northwest, San Luis Potosí to the north, Queretaro to the east and Michoacan to the south. It covers an area of 30,608 km2 (11,818 sq mi).
Guanajuato is located between the arid north of the country and the lusher south, and it is geographically part of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, the Mexican Plateau and the Sierra Madre Oriental. It was initially settled by the Spanish in the 1520s due to mineral deposits found around the now capital city of Guanajuato, but areas such as the Bajío region also became important for agriculture and livestock. Mining and agriculture have been the traditional mainstays of the state's economy, but today, about 30% of the state's GDP is accounted for by industry, which includes metals, automobiles, leather goods, processed foods and more.
The state is home to several historically important cities, especially those along the "Bicentennial Route", which retraces the path of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's insurgent army at the very beginning of the Mexican War of Independence. This route begins at Dolores Hidalgo, and passes though the Sanctuary of Atotonilco, San Miguel de Allende, Celaya and the capital of Guanajuato. Other important cities in the state include Leon, the most populous, and Irapuato.
Guanajuato is a city and municipality in central Mexico and the capital of the state of the same name. It is part of the macroregion of Bajío. It is in a narrow valley, which makes its streets narrow and winding. Most are alleys that cars cannot pass through, and some are long sets of stairs up the mountainsides. Many of the city’s thoroughfares are partially or fully underground. The historic center has numerous small plazas and colonial-era mansions, churches and civil constructions built using pink or green sandstone.
The origin and growth of Guanajuato resulted from the discovery of minerals in the mountains surrounding it. The mines were so rich that the city was one of the most influential during the colonial period. One of the mines, La Valenciana, accounted for two-thirds of the world’s silver production at the height of its production.
The city is home to the Mummy Museum, which contains naturally mummified bodies that were found in the municipal cemetery between the mid 19th and 20th centuries. It is also home to the Festival Internacional Cervantino, which invites artists and performers from all over the world as well as Mexico. Guanajuato was the site of the first battle of the Mexican War of Independence between insurgent and royalist troops at the Alhondiga de Granaditas. The city was named a World Heritage Site in 1988.
