A Brief History of México

I. Early history

The first Mexicans are believed to have migrated from northwest Asia across the Bering
Strait many thousands of years ago. By 900 B.C. they constructed their first urban
communities at San Lorenzo in southeast Veracruz state. Other prominent civilizations
later emerged in Valley of Mexico at Teotihuacan, in the Valley of Oaxaca at Monte
Alban, and at the dozens of cities built by the Maya in southeast.

Some thirty-one million people lived in Mexico when the Spanish invasion began on
February 18, 1519. Faced with the challenge of prevailing against such numbers with his
initial force of 508 soldiers and 100 sailors, Hernan Cortes decided to divide and
conquer. Fortunately for him, the Aztec Empire based in the Valley of Mexico had
created many powerful enemies through brutal rule and by refusing to allow even the
best and brightest of conquered subjects to rise into the imperial hierarchy. When
Cortes began his final assault on the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán (today Mexico City) in
1521, his army included some 250,000 Indian warriors and barely more than 1,000
Spaniards.

While the war of conquest resulted in heavy casualties, the diseases that the Europeans
carried on their bodies (small pox, influenza, and the bubonic plague) proved far
deadlier. Between the violence and the germs, an estimated ninety per cent of the
native population died. Even so, the remaining Indians outnumbered the colonists.

The Spanish recognized the necessities of coexistence imposed by their minority status
and consequently gave legal title and protection to many loyal Indian villages. However,
at no point did they or their criollos (native-born white offspring) consider the Indians
and those of mixed ancestry (mestizo) their equals. The economic and social practices of
colonial México reflected that sentiment and created a colony divided along lines of
ethnicity as well as socioeconomic class.

Throughout this period, the Indians retained a strong sense of identity, territoriality, and
resentment towards the criollos. As the colonial period drew to a close, the Spaniards
constituted a mere two per cent of the population and the criollos only ten. The royal
officials and the laws they administered derived their authority from the king, who ruled
from Madrid. When a monarch died, another took his place. This left unresolved the
question of who would exercise authority if by some unforeseen circumstance no
monarchy existed. That hypothetical issue became a real one in 1808.
 In that year, Napoleon Bonaparte decided to add Spain to the growing number of
nations under French dominion and to which the ideas of the French Revolution would
be exported. He waited until the followers of the King and Crown Prince began openly
fighting over the issue of whether to resist or appease France and then invited the
monarch and his son to a French palace for mediation. There, he arrested them and
soon moved to install his own government in Madrid.

Given these circumstances, the predominantly criollo municipal council of Mexico City
contended that in the absence of a king, authority should revert to the cites as per
medieval Spanish custom. However, royal officials in Mexico believed that the king
remained sovereign even though he was captive. As such, these Spanish administrators
and officers considered themselves under no obligation to acknowledge any group of
colonists as sovereign over Mexico or over the Spaniards who administered the colonial
government. Instead, royal officials placed colonists who had advocated this change of
authority under arrest. Also, the Spanish intensified their surveillance of literate
Mexicans in an effort to find more opponents of imperial sovereignty.

II. The National Period (1810-1910)

Father Miguel Hidalgo was one such foe. In early September of 1810, he learned that
the Spanish knew of his opposition and planned to arrest him. Facing with the choice of
fleeing of fighting, he proclaimed independence on September 16, 1810 from the
balcony of his church in the village of Dolores. As he marched towards Mexico City,
many of the poor and the resentful and the hungry joined his ranks. He soon found
himself leading a motley-armed group of some 60,000 southwards. En route, many of
the Indians and poorer mestizos took the opportunity to loot and burn rural estates
(haciendas and plantaciones) and kill their owners. In response, criollos and Spanish
colonists closed ranks against Hidalgo. Although his forces met defeat at the battle of
Monte de Cruces and Hidalgo himself subsequently was captured and executed, the war
continued for more than a decade.

By 1821, the royalists believed their victory to be imminent. The rebel forces has been
reduced to two groups totaling no more than four thousand soldiers, However,
unforeseen developments in Europe once more disrupted the political and military
equations. At that time, royalist commanders in México learned that rebellious subjects
had overthrown the restored king of Spain and that the new government intended to
grant suffrage to all men except Spanish subjects of African descent. In Mexico, that
consequence of such a change would have meant a loss of criollo power to a vengeful
populace. Consequently, a majority of the criollo officers in the Royal Army switched
sides and joined with their former foes to proclaim an independent nation. The war
ended with the criollos in control of all of Mexico’s institutions.
From 1821 to 1855, the question of who would participate in the political and economic
life of the nation dominated the national dialogue to the exclusion of almost all else.
Divisions proved so bitter that the presidency of the nation changed hands, often
violently, forty-seven times during those twenty-four years. In this type of environment,
no effective government existed for very long. Activities essential for national
development such as the maintenance of public order, the defense of the national
territory, the construction of public works, and the collection of taxes did not take place.

To create a barrier to American migration, the Mexican government allowed immigrants

In 1846 President James Knox Polk ordered U.S. troops into the disputed territory
between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. Following a clash between soldiers of the
two armies, war began. In the subsequent peace treaty, the Americans gained the two
provinces of Mexico (Nuevo Mexico and Alta California) whose acquisition Polk deemed
the primary goal of his administration. The loss of approximately half of the national
territory to the U.S. left Mexicans embittered. However, internal strife continued to
consume their nation.

In 1855, Liberal General Juan Alvarez successfully led an army in defeating Conservative
President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s forces. The victorious Liberals promptly
abolished legal privileges of the Church and Army, ordered the seizure and subsequent
sale of all Church property other than the churches themselves, and proclaimed
universal male suffrage. In turn, this led to a second war between Liberals and
Conservatives, known as the War of the Reforma (1858-1861). This too ended in a
Liberal victory. However, disgruntled conservatives then allied themselves with the
French, whose emperor, Napoleon II, invaded Mexico in 1862. This third war between
Liberals and Conservatives ended with another Liberal victory in 1867.

At the head of the victorious Liberal coalition stood Benito Juárez, Mexico’s first and
only Indian president, Born into poverty in the state of Oaxaca, he overcame great odds
to obtain a law degree and soon entered politics. His steadfast dedication to the rule of
law, to civil liberties and to equality assured him of a major place in Mexico’s history as
did his critical role in placing these principles at the core of the Constitution of 1857. But
his role during the French invasion ensured that he would be the most revered of
Mexican presidents to this day. As the invaders and their domestic allies prepared to
enter Mexico City, Juárez left the capital with a little more than an escort and fled to the
remote northwest city of El Paso (today Ciudad Juárez). There, he remained for five
years as resistance to the occupier slowly grew and the invaders eventually left. His
 persistence probably saved the national cause and ever since then he has been a symbol
of the struggle against adversity.

The order that so many sought for Mexico came with the administration of President
Porfirio Diaz. He seized power in 1876 and ruled Mexico until 1910, a period known as
the Porfiriato. Although production of industrial and agricultural commodities increased
during these decades, Diaz’ model for national development model proved deficient. In
essence, he focused on the gross national product while neglecting to develop the most
important resource of all: the people. By 1910, so many Mexicans had lost their land
through evictions designed to create vast agricultural estates that only four per cent of
the population owned the ground upon which they lived. More than ninety per cent of
the population remained illiterate. Concurrently, Diaz’ decision to repress all meaningful
political opposition by lethal as well as non-violent means alienated the slowly growing
middle class. Lastly and in spite of Diaz’s mixed ancestry, the Porfirians, like the Spanish
and the criollos who led post-independence Mexico, held the majority of the nation’s
population in contempt. The result was the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

III. The Modern Era (1910-2014)

The Mexican Revolution began with the war to overthrow Diaz (1910) and ended with
the adoption of the Constitution of 1917. Three factions contended for power. The
largest, led by Francisco (Pancho) Villa, sought to create a nation that socially and
economically resembled the largely self-sufficient rural communities of northern México
owned and controlled by their inhabitants. In this scenario, the nation’s cities and
industries would produce primarily for a domestic market and would be subordinate to
the rurally-based majority of the population. Villa’s support came mainly from northern
Mexico.

A second faction, led by Emiliano Zapata, sought to dissolve the plantations and
haciendas by giving their lands to peasants. In this scenario, lands and natural resources
would be communally owned and controlled. Zapata did not devote great attention to
larger issues such as the role of industry and urbanization. Although often branded a
modern Marxist, he in reality was a reactionary who sought to return the Indian
population to the autonomy they had enjoyed centuries before.

The victors, led by Venustiano Carranza, sought to create an industrially based urban
society and stressed modernity as one of their main goals. Aided by substantial U.S.
material support supplied through the American-occupied port of Veracruz, the
Carrancistas won. However, the new constitution embodied concepts advocated by the
defeated as well as by the victors. For example, the new constitution declared null and
void all legal proceedings by which the Porfirians had seized hundreds of millions of
acres of land.

The Carrancistas hoped that all elements of Mexican society would join a single ruling
party to eliminate the factionalism that had plagued Mexico since the Spanish began
sorting Mexicans in castes. After changing names on several occasions during the 1920s
and 1930s, the party adopted the name by which it is known today: the Partido
Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). The PRI held
power from 1917 to 2000. They accomplished this goal not only by bringing a wide
range of groups into the party, but by employing a combination of bribery, exclusion,
intimidation and lethal violence to curtail opposition.

From 1920 to 1968, the party maneuvered as necessary to master the political winds of
the day. During the Great Depression, the administration of President Lazaro Cardenas
turned sharply leftwards, returning more than fifty million acres of land seized by the
Porfirians and funneling loans to communal Indian villages. From 1940 onwards, the
party instead chose to emphasize industrial development and encouraged of the private
sector with infrastructure projects and interpretations of law favorable to the business
community. During the 1950s and much of the 1960s, the economy grew at an annual
rate of six per cent. PRIistas pointed with pride to such growth as well as to the fact that
the life span of the average Mexican increased from forty years in the early part of the
century to sixty years as proof of their success.

However, by 1968, the party’s unity crumbled. The socialist and progressive wings had
long argued that the PRI leadership had abandoned the duty of returning lands to the
poor; denied credit to farms and communes in the interest of serving industry, allowed
foreigners to again dominate certain Mexican industries, fostered a polarized
distribution of income reminiscent of the Porfiriato, and sought to repress opponents.
The PRI’s leaders argued that their accomplishments stood without parallel in Mexican
history. An additional, if often unspoken argument, was that if the repression of
opponents on either side of the political spectrum was the price of such progress; that
price remained well worth paying.

When several hundred leaders of the protest movement rallied at Mexico City’s
Tlaltelolco Plaza on October 2, 1968, army helicopters and marksmen opened fire. At
least four hundred people perished. In the following days, more executions took place.
President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (no relation to Porfirio Diaz) No formal investigation of
the events of that week ever took place. The PRI now split.

The Leftists formed a number of successive parties, the most recent of which is the PRD.
Concurrently, many of the more conservative PRIistas, disillusioned by the government’s
violence, joined the PAN.
Diaz'’ successor, Luis Echeverria Alvarez, vainly tried to restore party unity by expanding
social welfare programs, by visiting communities throughout the country, and by striking
a strident leftist and nationalist tone in his foreign policy. His criticism of the United
State’s role in Latin America and his support of the anti-Zionism resolution at the United
Nations were part of this effort. Also, he welcomed refugees, such as Isabel Allende,
fleeing dictatorships in Latin America just as Lazaro Cardenas had welcome tens of
thousands of Spaniards fleeing the victorious General Francisco Franco in 1936. But the
wounds opened at Tlaltelolco could not be closed.

Those events of 1968 marked the beginning of a series of crises. The first of these was
economic. During his 1976-1982 presidency, Jose López Portillo sought to stimulate the
economy by undertaking infrastructure projects using money obtained from loans based
upon future oil revenue. When the price of petroleum collapsed, the nation was left
with massive federal debts and a weakened private sector. As bankruptcies increased,
López Portillo nationalized the country’s banks. This action angered the business
community. Simultaneously, spiraling inflation and rising unemployment destroyed
loyalty to the PRI across a wide segment of Mexican society.

From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, inflation accelerated to the point at which the
number of pesos required to buy a single United States dollar increased from eight to
3,300. The life savings of many Mexicans as well innumerable business large and small
were lost.

By 1988, dissatisfaction with the PRI had become so widespread that a leftist opposition
grouping of three small parties led by Cuauhtémoc Cardenas seriously challenged the
PRI in the presidential elections. The victory of his opponent, Carlos Salinas de Gortari,
probably rested upon vote fraud. At the state and local levels, the PAN and PRD began
winning more and more elections.

Then on January 1, 1994, the largest Indian rebellion since the 1847 Caste War erupted.
Led by four Maya commanders, they seized the capital of the state of Chiapas and other
areas of that southern state. Three intertwined factors led to the revolt: poverty,
corruption, and official indifference. Chiapas ranked as the poorest state in Mexico and
the majority of its Indian citizens eked out a meager living from the little land they
owned. Over the preceding decades, the Federal government made little effort to
change this. Chiapas’ remoteness from the demographic, political, and economic
centers of power ensured that the state’s development needs would receive a low
priority. Also, the unspoken but powerful opinion that Indians were determined to
remain poor played a factor. Lastly, the political syndicates that ran the state for their
own benefit regularly produced large majorities for the PRI and in return did not fear
interference from the Federal government. Levels of corruption proved extraordinary. In
one case, a town’s airport was built twenty miles from the city so that construction
could take place on a political boss’ land.
The rebels called their army the Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion Nacional (National
Zapatista Liberation Army). They chose as their spokesman Subcomandante Marcos, a
non-Indian history professor at a suburban Mexico City campus of the National
Autonomous University of Mexico. Although he spoke and wrote of concepts such as
neolibralism and imperialism, the core of this rebel movement proved to be regional
and Indian. The federal government confined the rebels to a small area and
subsequently diffused the situation with prolonged negotiation involving some
concessions.

From 1968 onward, the violence, the inflation, the consequent loss of employment and
savings, and the economy’s chronic inability to generate jobs at a rate equal to the
growth of the population catalyzed a massive migration of Mexicans to the United
States. The most reliable estimates are that some 12,000,000 Mexicans have sought
permanent or temporary residence on the north side of the Rio Grande since the first of
the economic crises began in the late 1970s. The wages sent back to Mexico by these
workers now constitute Mexico’s second largest source of revenue.

A far more violent migration also developed during these decades as criminal syndicates
within Mexico sought to satisfy the demands of the United States’ millions of substance
abusers. Cocaine, heroin, marijuana, methamphetamines, and any other illicit substance
that could be sold to Americans was processed, transported and vended by these gangs.
The billions of dollars in profits financed the expansion of these syndicates into groups
capable of bribing, intimidating, or and killing police and judges who obstructed them.

So massive were the losses of wealth and confidence and public order that the PRI's
defeat became inevitable. In 2000, PAN candidate Vicente Fox Quesada won the
presidential election even though the PRI and PRD retained joint control of both the
Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. There, they blocked Fox’ major proposals. His
successor, PANista Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, significantly increased the involvement of
the armed forces in combatting the drug syndicates (narcotraficantes). The new
president believed that only the federal government possessed the power to prevent
the narcotraficantes from emerging as a parallel government.
These efforts have not resulted in the eradication of the trafficking syndicates. Several
factors account for this failure.

First, the capture of syndicate leaders often results not in the disintegration of the
syndicate, but in the replacement of that leader. Second, the syndicates appear to be
coalescing rather than fracturing. Two cartels, the Sinaloa and the Zeta, now dominate
the drug trade in the majority of the nation. Third, the syndicates’ tactics make the task
of the armed forces more difficult. Instead of fighting stationary battles, they often
target a town’s police station, killing officers and then local elected officials. Although
the federal government will respond with troops, the narcotrafficantes usually are gone
by the time troops arrive and the local administration and population has been taught
that they can be assaulted at will. In this manner, federal authority has been destroyed
in many areas of the nation, particularly in the areas bordering the United States. Lastly,
the quality of training, equipment, and integrity of many of Mexico’s police forces leaves
much to be desired.

Calderon’s administration failed to crush the drug syndicates just as surely as did Fox’s.
In the twelve year period of PAN presidencies extending from 2000 to 2012, some
60,000 Mexicans lost their lives to drug-related violence. Crimes such as kidnapping and
robbery significantly increased. The PANista failure to remedy this rising tide of violence
constituted one of two factors in his party’s loss of power in the 2012 presidential
election. Economic problems were the other cause. For although Calderon could point
to increases in the gross domestic product in excess of those in the United States, these
improvements brought little change to the forty per cent of Mexicans living below the
poverty line.

Consequently, the PRI candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto won the presidency by a wide
margin in 2012. A question of major importance remains whether he indeed will bring a
new, honest, and effective administration to Mexico or whether the PRIistas will fall
back into their old corporatist pattern of corruption. Interestingly, the new president
does not publicly identify himself as a technocrat or a dinosaur.

Armed Forces

Mexico’s armed forces report to two separate cabinet-level officials. The army reports
to the Secretary of National Defense while the Navy, the Naval Air Force, and the
Marines report to the Maritime Secretary. The Mexican Air Force is considered a branch
of the army.

The primary objective of Mexico’s armed forces is the maintenance of domestic order.
Given this goal, the absence of external military threats, and no foreign commitments
other than the occasional humanitarian mission; Mexico probably does not need Mach
2+ jets or state-of-the-art tanks. However, this does not alter the unpleasant reality that
much of the counter-insurgency and counter-narcotrafficing equipment is obsolescent.
For example, the Vietnam-era Bell Huey helicopters and the more modern propeller-
driven planes that can be used for strafing are quite inferior to the range of more
platforms now available.

The armed forces budget currently totals a modest .05 per cent of the gross domestic
product and that level of spending is reflected in type of equipment used. Mexico
possesses no main battle tank, no jet fighter more recent that the ten F-5 and two F5-E
Tigers purchased from the United States in 1982, and no air defense missiles. Similarly,
the army’s tactical air support consists of middle and late Cold War era helicopters and
some propeller-driven aircraft such as the Swiss-made Pilatus P-7.
Since the civil conflict between powerful narcotics syndicates and the government
intensified, exact and recent figures about the size and disposition of the armed forces
are not as readily available as might be wished. Based upon the most recent
information, the air force consists of just under 12,000 personnel, including a 1,500 man
airborne brigade. The roster of combat aircraft includes the ten F-5 jets, T-33 trainer
jets, seventy Pilatus P-7 aircraft, seventy attack helicopters, and a transport fleet of
thirty-five aircraft including seven Lockheed C-130 planes.

The Mexican Navy reliably is reported to number some 37,000 personnel, of whom
8,600 are Marines. Although the general headquarters are in Mexico City, there are
separate headquarters for the Pacific forces (Acapulco) and the Atlantic forces
(Veracruz). The Navy confronts the same equipment problems as does the Air Force – a
mixture of platforms, many of which are quite old and rather obsolescent. Newer
equipment includes six Halcon (Falcon) class patrol boats purchased in 1983 with
platforms for helicopters. The most recently available figures list the principal forces as
three destroyers, eight frigates and 109 coastal combatants. In additional to traditional
responsibilities such as defense of territorial waters, the Navy also is responsible for
dredging the nation’s port facilities and for oceanographic research.

The Mexican Army includes some 192,000 active-duty personnel and reserves of
559,000. The main maneuver units consist of three corps of three brigades each based
in the region of Mexico City. Also based in the capital area are elite units such as the
Special Forces Brigades and the Presidential Guard. Most of the remaining troops are
posted to each of the nation’s twelve military regions, which in turn are divided into
forty-five military zones. Both independent regiments and battalions are posted to each
of these zones.

The army’s equipment consists of a full range of light infantry equipment such as the
domestically manufactured FX-05 Xiuhcoatl battle rifle, the Heckler & Koch HK 33
Assault Rifle, and the Browning M2 machine gun. The artillery arm largely consists of
towed weapons, including 105 mm howitzers and light, medium, and heavy mortars.
The Army’s armored fighting vehicle is the French-built ERC 90F1 Lynx, which mounts a
ninety millimeter cannon.

Although Mexico’s Constitution requires all able-bodied men to undergo military

Recent U.S. – Mexican Relations

Relations between the two nations remain complex with mixed objectives and feelings
on both sides of the border. The considerable differences between the economic,
military and demographic power of the two countries gives rise to a natural suspicion
and resentment on the part of the Mexicans. Given the U.S. conquest of half of that
nation’s territory during the 1846-1848 war, the subsequent American economic
domination of Mexico in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and U.S.
intervention during the Mexicano Revolution; these concerns are not without
foundation.

But conversely, Mexicans of all socio-economc strata understand that the United States
can be of use to them. The Americans provide an adjacent and affluent market for
Mexican products. Imported U.S. capital and technology can be of use. Last but not
least, the money sent back to Mexico back expatriates working in the United States now
constitute the nation’s second largest source of foreign earnings and provide financial
sustenance to millions of Mexicans. México seeks a close relationship with the United
States in which Mexican sovereignty remains respected. For example, the considerable
American military equipment offered for anti-drug efforts under the Merida Plan
remains welcome while the presence of American advisors to go with that equipment
would be considered an unacceptable diminution of Mexican sovereignty.

In pursuit of traditional objectives, the United States seeks open global markets and
successfully obtained such access to Mexico with the passage of the 1994 North
American Free Trade Agreement. However, the United States remains concerned with
the migration of so many Mexicans into the United States. While this additional labor
proved welcome during periods of economic growth, the recent economic recession
resulted in many Americans viewing the migrants as competitors rather than fellow-
workers.

Also, the flow of drugs into the United States remains an issue of great concern and
ranks as perhaps the most critical unresolved issue. The Americans argue that without
this flow of drugs, the United States would not have a narcotics problem. The Mexicans
argue that if Americans would stop using these substances, the problem would vanish.
Ironically, as the two nations become more closely linked, some tensions seem to
become more acute.

This contrasts with earlier Cold War relations. Then, both nations accepted their
differences. The United States recognized that as a country that endured six invasions,
Mexico placed non-interference in the affairs of other nations at the top of her list of
global priorities. So while Mexico’s refusal to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
rankled some U.S. administrations, the Americans accepted the decision without
retaliating. Similarly, while the Americans resented the 1938 nationalization of México’s
petroleum, they accepted that reality and have continued to purchase Mexican oil.
Indeed, from the resumption of oil imports to United States in 1938 until the present
day, Mexicans never withheld a drop for political reasons.

(continued on the next page)

Although the events of the past four decades give pessimists much ammunition, there
also is some cause for optimism. During this same period of time, Mexico transformed
itself from a one party state to a multiparty democracy. The strong extended family
structure that has served as the bedrock of the nation and which has survived war and
famine remains largely intact. Most importantly, there remains a quiet and deep pride
in being Mexican. To quote a very Mexican phrase, Dios tu bendecirá (God will bless
you).

A Copyright Note

With the exception of a few sentences, most of the preceding material was published in
an entry entitled “México” that I wrote for the The Sage Encyclopedia of War. That
material is used here with the kind permission of Sage Press and may not be reprinted
without their permission.