Present-day Mexico was conquered by the Spanish in 1519-1521 after they landed at San Juan de Ulua off what is today the Port of Veracruz. The conquest itself wasn't easy, but finally Cortés delivered this huge, rich territory to the King of Spain. In the country that is today Mexico the Spanish found large, settled populations; an empire; sophisticated education, great architecture, technology, art, etc. etc. In fact, Spanish observers at the time thought that Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire, rivaled any city that could be found in Europe. And they found it cleaner. And Mexicans cleaner. Mexicans found the Spanish disgustingly dirty. This is true. But the Spanish succeeded in battle and imposed their rule over the land. Remember, this was in the first half of the 16th century. There were no Europeans in what was to become the United States in any number at all until a hundred years later. And those Europeans pretty much wiped out the Indians in the Eastern U.S., an area that was, when they found it, much less populated than Mexico in any event.
A reconstruction of Tenochtitlán-- Imagine it filled with people
as in this mural of Tenochtitlán by Diego Rivera (notice Frida Kahlo standing lower right):
The defeat of the Aztecs in their capital of Tenochtitlán was dreadful. A city with 200,000 people before the arrival of the Spanish was left with less than 70,000. All was destroyed: canals and streets ran with blood.
That is for another post. Or book. Here are two book suggestions for non-Spanish readers. The first, Aztec, is a fine, fat, historical novel written by Gary Jennings and published in I think 1980. It is pretty accurate historically and a great read. It covers the period from just before to just after the Conquest. Another is La Capital, The Biography of Mexico City by Jonathan Kandell. This is a riveting book, a great introduction to Mexican history.
After
he decided to build on the ruins of Tenochtitlán, Cortés went at it with a
vengeance, and soon Mexico City was born. To compress, now, hundreds
of years of colonial history, the economic development of Nueva España
was not a straight line, but was characterized by, among other things,
exporting Mexican raw materials, notably silver, which is said to have
paid for the wealth of Europe. From the point of view of trying to
understand Pemex, what has to be understood is that it was outsiders who made
the money from Mexican resources for hundreds of years. This is, of
course, way oversimplified, but the idea is important, however
incomplete its articulation.
Now we'll jump ahead almost 300 years to 1821 when Mexico sort of achieved independence from Spain. Unlike the US after the American Revolution, Mexico staggered. Victory was ambiguous. Spain refused to concede and kept men on San Juan de Ulua until, if I remember, 1824. The first government was really no more than a mini-Spain: rich, conservative Mexican Spaniards took over. Everyone else was unhappy (yes I know I'm overgeneralizing.) The Mexican economy was a shambles, unable to construct for itself on such short notice the manufacturing and mercantile systems of the Spanish in order to take advantage of its own resources. Much of Mexico, many, many Mexicans, continued to struggle not only economically, but politically, Mexico faced continuing upheavals for the next fifty years: revolts, uprisings, banditry. economic disarray, foreign invasion.
Enter Porfirio Díaz.
Young Porfirio:
And not so young
nto the scene strode Porfirio Díaz, a one-man Mexican Revolution. He brought law and order to the country, modernized ports, built railways. Extracted resources now including oil. He balanced the budget and attracted tons of foreign investment. Industry flourished. There was a lot of money being made. Mexico City became the rival of great European cities.
For me, the Porfiriato should be a lesson to the United States. It was all done in the name of the philosophy of positivism: it was supposed to create economic growth and social change the scientific way. All this modernization and wealth-making was supposedly going to trickle down from the rich to the poor, but it never did. The rich just got richer and richer and richer, the poor, poorer and more numerous.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, international economic downturns and crises led to downturns and collapses in various sectors of the Mexican economy. Hostility to foreigners blossomed, since foreigners owned most of the companies in Mexico and made most of the money. It was common for these foreign-owned companies to import their own citizens to occupy higher-level positions, thus blocking Mexican advancement. Or these companies had their own citizens occupy the same level of job as Mexicans but paid them more. Labor unrest grew. Jonathan Kandell (La Capital,Biography of Mexico City, Random House, NY,1988 p. 391) records the fact that Porfirio Diaz allowed one American firm to bring in its own law enforcement from the US and allowed them to shoot down rioting employees.
Diaz apparently didn't get that he wasn't popular anymore.
NEXT: The revolt against Porfirio Díaz ....