The only thing that is definitely known about Subcomandante Marcos, the ski-masked mystery man who leads the Zapatista rebels in the jungles of Chiapas, is that he is an intellectual. Conflicting sources who assure us that they know the true identity of the man behind the mask have variously identified him as a disillusioned government […]
Continue ReadingIf Diogenes, wielding his famous lamp, ever came into a gallery of Mexican presidents, he wouldn’t come away completely empty-handed. In his quest for an honest man, he would snare at least two for his collection: Benito Juárez and Lázaro Cárdenas. Since Juárez is the subject of another profile in this series, the focus here will be on […]
Continue ReadingIt is hardly coincidence that the Chiapas rebels under Subcomandante Marcos call themselves Zapatistas and not Villistas or Carrancistas or Obregonistas or even Maderistas — to name other illustrious figures from the Mexican Revolution. Of all the revolutionary leaders, Emiliano Zapata was the most radical and the most committed to social justice. Detractors say that […]
Continue ReadingNote: Click images for summary biographies of the key individuals Mexico in September 1910 could be compared to a shiny apple whose glossy skin conceals a putrifying interior. But the corruption underneath was still a secret to the rest of the world. Porfirio Díaz, the old dictator who had held power since 1876, was probably […]
Continue ReadingOf the major figures in the 1910-20 phase of the Mexican Revolution, only Alvaro Obregón and Pancho Villa remained. In a strange twist of fate, the counterrevolutionaries –Porfirio Díaz and Victoriano Huerta– had died in bed while the revolutionaries Francisco Madero, Emiliano Zapata and Venustiano Carranza all perished violently. Violent death –at the hands of […]
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(Synopsis & Photo) Victoriano Huerta was a man almost too bad to be true. Described by one historian as an “Elizabethan villain,” he was a drunkard and repressive dictator who guaranteed himself a permanent spot in Mexico’s hall of infamy by overthrowing and then conniving at the murder of the liberator Francisco Madero. Yet one can go […]
Continue ReadingFew people have ever less fitted the conventional image of a revolutionary than Venustiano Carranza. He was a country squire rather than an intellectual, he had been part of a ruling establishment and he took up revolution at an age when most men are contemplating retirement. Yet history placed him among the leading figures in […]
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As the world’s environment deteriorates, some of Mexico’s streets and plazas are stepping back toward better ecosystems by going native. Curiously, most ornamental plant species in many Mexican cities are not at all Mexican, but rather, introduced, or exotic, species. However, that’s changing as some Mexican city planners are going native and helping their cities […]
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Squatting on the rocky cliff high above the bay, two young boys watched the man below who, knee deep in water, held his net ready. Suddenly, the boys yelled and pointed to a school of fish swimming behind the fisherman. As the man cast his small net, the boys clamored down the hill and flipped […]
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Mexico City in the 1920s stood on the threshold of a new era. Although the country had won its independence from Spain in 1821, it became obvious by the early 1900s that the economic gap between rich and poor—and the social gap between the Spanish-descendant and Amerindian-descendant—had only increased following the departure of the Spanish. […]
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