Aquiles Serdan: Madero’s first martyr

Few movements have ever started out less auspiciously than Francisco Madero’s rebellion against Porfirio Diaz, the man who had held Mexico in an iron grip for 35 years. The maderista movement’s unpromising start had a great deal to do with the background and personality of its founder. Where revolutionary leaders are usually disaffected middle-class intellectuals like Lenin and Robespierre or […]

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The indelible imprint of Father Kino (1644 – 1711)

Even by the rigorous standards of the Jesuit order, Father Francisco Eusebio Kino was an overachiever. During the three-century colonial period between the Conquest in 1521 and the end of the Independence War in 1821, the Spanish overseas empire produced such great religious activists as Bartolomé de las Casas and Vasco de Quiroga. Yet for pure energy Father […]

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Jose Morelos y Pavon: Saga of a warrior priest (1765 – 1815)

It is inevitable that comparisons will be drawn between José Morelos y Pavón and his mentor and predecessor, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. Both were Roman Catholic priests of casual vocation who fathered illegitimate children, both were intensely drawn to political activism and both were charismatic leaders of Mexico’s independence movement. Yet it would be unfair to […]

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Plutarco Elias Calles: Crusader in reverse

1877–1945) President: 1924-28 Mexico is a land of intense faith. The cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the saints on automobile dashboards, the vast crowds making pilgrimages on their knees — all attest to the depth of religious feeling in a land where the culture of the Spanish conquistadores clashed and then melded with that of terrifying […]

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Vicente Guerrero: A study in triumph and tragedy (1782–1831)

Vicente Ramón Guerrero Saldaña was the second president of Mexico and the first to come from las clases populares (the “popular” classes), which in Spanish is a euphemism for an individual of peasant or working class background. This circumstance of birth is important because it would have a decisive effect on both Guerrero’s life and death. Born […]

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Jim Tuck’s homepage, biography and published works

Editor’s Note: Jim Tuck died in 2005. Jim approached his Mexico with a particular love of history that was strongly colored by his political and social beliefs. His articles on the various periods of Mexico’s development and the significant individuals who played a part in creating those times provides a perspective that is quite different […]

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Affirmative action and Hernán Cortés (1485–1547)

Affirmative action can be defined as a process in which members of a certain ethnicity are compensated for the discrimination and second-class citizen status that their ancestors have endured in the past. In recent Mexican history, there have been strenuous efforts to glorify Mexico’s indigenous heritage while at the same time downplaying the achievements of […]

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Mexico’s Niños Heroes (“heroic children”): reality or myth…

On March 5, 1947 President Harry S. Truman was on the next to last day of a three-day whirlwind visit to Mexico. Departing from his prepared agenda, he announced that he wanted to make a stop at Mexico City’s historic Chapultepec Castle. As the motorcade came to a halt by a grove of trees, Truman […]

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Vasco de Quiroga: notes on a practical Utopian (1470–1565)

The term “Utopia” generally has the connotation of a society that is hopelessly visionary and impractical. This is because most of these societies — Plato’s Republic, St. Augustine’s City of God and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia — never existed outside the minds and published works of their creators. However, a real-life Utopia existed in Mexico […]

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