Timeline Mexico (A) to 1969
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Mexico is about 3 times the size of Texas.
(SSFC, 10/9/05, Par p.27)
Mexico has 31 states and one federal district. These include: Aguascalientes; Baha California; Baha California Sur; Campeche; Chiapas; Chihuahua; Coahuila; Colima; Durango; Guanajuato; Guerrero (Chilpancingo); Hidalgo; Jalisco; Mexico; Michoacan; Morelos (Cuernavaca); Nayarit; Nuevo Leon; Oaxaca; Puebla; Queretaro (Queretaro); Quintana Roo; San Luis Potosi; Sinaloa; Sonora (Hermosillo); Tabasco; Tamaulipas; Tlaxcala; Veracruz; Yucatan; Zacatecas; and the Federal District (Mexico City).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Mexico)
Mexico Online: http://www.mexonline.com/history.htm
Travel Docs: http://www.traveldocs.com/mx/index.htm
Native Mexican Indian Groups include:
Maya; Tzeltal; Tzotzil
Native Indians in Baha included the Cucapa, Kaliwi, Kumiai and the Pai Pai. The Cochimi were part of the Kumiai.
(SFC, 10/17/98, p.A16)
An Aztec legend states that the hummingbird god told ancient Aztecs to build their city at the spot where they find an eagle eating a snake on a cactus. The site at Lake Texcoco met the requirement and there Mexico City was found.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.E3)
The Aztecs spoke Nahuatl. By 2006 it was the native language of just 1.5 million Mexican Indians.
(WSJ, 2/24/06, p.A1)
80Mil BC Caverns at the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa National Park south of Mexico City date to this time.
(SFC,11/3/97, p.A10)
72Mil BC A helmet-crested, duck-billed dinosaur lived about this time in northeastern Mexico. In 2008 the species was named Velafrons coahuilensis.
(AP, 2/12/08)
66.038Mil BC About this time a comet struck the area of the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula and created a crater, known today as Chicxulub, about 150-180 miles (200 km) in diameter. The area at this time was covered by ocean. The asteroid was initially believed to have been 6-12 miles (10 km) in diameter. It left a thin layer of iridium in rock strata around the world. Evidence for this was gathered by Luis Alvarez. The asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, about 80% of the world’s plants species and all animals bigger than a cat. In 2002 it also was estimated to have wiped out 55-60% of the plant-eating insects. A high oxygen level may have contributed to a worldwide firestorm. In 1997 Walter Alvarez published "T. Rex and the Crater of Doom," an account of this critical event. The impact was estimated at 5 billion times greater than the atomic bombs of WW II. In 2007 US and Czech researchers used computer simulations to calculate that there was a 90 percent probability that the collision of two asteroids in 160 Mil BC was the event that precipitated the Chicxulub disaster. In 2008 new research using an osmium isotope indicated that the responsible asteroid was about 2.5 miles wide. In 2013 scientists said this date was accurate to give or take 11,000 years.
(SFC, 2/18/96, p.A3)(SFEC, 8/17/97, BR p.7)(NH, 9/97, p.85)(SFC, 2/25/02, p.A4)(WSJ, 3/2/04, p.B1)(Reuters, 9/5/07)(SFC, 4/12/08, p.A4)(SFC, 2/8/13, p.A1)
15Mil BC The Baha Peninsula began separating from the Mexican mainland.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T8)
10Mil BC Oceanic spreading began a process of mountain building in southern California, including formation of the San Andreas Fault, migration of the Baja California peninsula away from the mainland of Mexico, the loss of summer rainfall and the diversification of species.
(Fremontia, 4/2009, p.20)
50,000BC In 2017 scientists in Mexico discovered microbial life trapped in crystals in caves in Naica that dated to about this time.
(SSFC, 2/19/17, p.A2)
c38,000BC In 2003 British scientists found 40,000-year-old human footprints in central Mexico, shattering theories that mankind arrived in the Americas tens of thousands of years later from Asia. The footprints were found in an abandoned quarry close to the Cerro Toluquilla volcano and were subsequently studied and dated by a multinational team of scientists.
(AFP, 7/5/05)
29,000BC Scientists in 2020 reported on artifacts found in a mountain cave in the state of Zacatecas in north-central Mexico. Limestone tools found at the site spanned from 31,000 to 12,500 years old, said archaeologist Ciprian Ardelean of Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas in Mexico, lead author of one of two studies published in the journal Nature.
(Reuters, 7/22/20)
c21000BC The Popocatepetl volcano erupted with a force equal to the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.8)
20000 BC-15000 BC In 2019 archaeologists in Mexico found the bones of about 60 mammoths at an airport under construction just north of Mexico City, near human-built ’traps’. The bones were found in sediment layers corresponding to 15,000 to 20,000 years ago.
(AP, 5/22/20)
c11000BC Scientists in 2001-2002 discovered skeletons in caves along Mexico’s Yucatan coast that dated to about this time.
(SFC, 9/10/04, p.A2)
c11000BC Peñon Woman, found in central Mexico in 1959, dated to this time. She shared many of the features found in the Kennewick Man (1996) of Washington State.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.77)
11000BC-10000BC In 2014 scientists reported on a female skull, dating to about this time, found by divers at the Hoyo Negro Yucatan cave. They described her as Palaeoamerican, part of a small group whose remains do not resemble modern native Americans.
(Econ, 5/17/14, p.75)
c7975BC Humans lived in a cave near Oaxaca, Mexico, named Guila Naquitz (White Cliff). Scattered remains of tools, seeds and plants were found in 1966 by archeologist Kent Flannery and some of the seeds were dated to this time. The squash seeds showed signs of cultivation.
(SFC, 5/9/97, p.A2)
c5100BCE In 2001 evidence in Mexico was reported for corn cultivation from sediments of this time.
(SFC, 5/18/01, p.A7)
2700BCE Domesticated maize in Mexico goes back to this time.
(SFEC, 4/18/99, Z1 p.2)
2500BC In 2006 researchers reported a 4,500-year-old burial in Mexico that showed front teeth ground down so they could be mounted with animal teeth. It was the oldest example of dental work in the Americas.
(SFC, 6/14/06, p.A2)
1600BC The Paso de Amada site of Chiapas, Mexico, was first settled about this time in the Soconusco region, which extended down the Pacific coast into Guatemala. The town numbered about 2,000 people, who were later dubbed the Mokaya (maize people).
(Arch, 1/06, p.48)
1600BC-1250BC An earthen mound on the southern Mexico-Guatemala border dated to this period and was considered part of a chiefdom center of the Mokaya people.
(Arch, 1/06, p.43)
1500BC A court to play ulama was built about this time in Chiapas, Mexico. Olmecs used latex balls for the game. The Olmecs processed rubber using latex from rubber trees mixed with juice from the morning glory vine. The rubber was used to make a bouncy ball for their ball games.
(SFC, 6/19/99, p.A9)(Econ, 4/24/04, p.81)
1500BC-1100BC Evidence found in 1998 revealed terraced farming for corn back to this time in northeast Mexico on a hilltop overlooking the Rio Casa Grandes.
(SFC, 3/13/98, p.A11)
1400BC-400BC The Olmecs, who called themselves Xi, were the earliest known civilization of Mesoamerica. They influenced the subsequent civilizations of the Maya and Aztec. They inhabited the Gulf Coast region of what is now Mexico and Central America. Their capital was San Lorenzo, near the present day city of Veracruz. In 1968 Michael D. Coe authored “America’s First Civilization: Discovering the Olmec."
(WSJ, 1/16/96, p. A-16)(SFC, 8/2/05, p.A2)(WSJ, 5/11/06, p.D6)
1250BC-1150BC This time frame is referred to as the Initial Olmec Period of southern Mexico.
(Arch, 1/06, p.42)
1200BC The tradition of the Mokaya people at coastal Chiapas and Guatemala came to a sudden end about this time. This appeared to coincide with the rise of the Olmec people.
(Arch, 1/06, p.43)
1200BC-400BC The Olmecs built impressive cities and established trade routes throughout Mesoamerica, that included settlements at La Venta and Tres Zapotes.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1200BC-300BCE The Olmec people ruled southern Mexico and northern Central America.
(WSJ, 7/2/96, p.A12)
1150BC-1000BC This time frame is referred to as the Early Olmec Period of southern Mexico.
(Arch, 1/06, p.42)
1000BC The settlement at Canton Corralito on the southern Mexico-Guatemala border covered at least 60 acres by this time and was believed to be a colony of the Gulf Olmec people. About this time the nearby Coatan River began to rise and engulfed the settlement.
(Arch, 1/06, p.44)
900BC In 2006 Mexican archeologists discovered a stone block in Veracruz state inscribed with 62 distinct signs that dated to about this time. The Cascajal stone was attributed to the Olmecs, who civilization lasted from about 1200BC-400BC.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.A3)
900BC-500BC This time frame is referred to as the Late Olmec Period of southern Mexico, which featured pyramids for the first time in ceremonial centers. La Venta, the 2nd major Olmec capital dates to this period.
(Arch, 1/06, p.42, 49)
800BC-500BC Zazacatla in central Mexico covered less than one square mile between during this period. Inhabitants of Zazacatla adopted Olmec styles when they changed from a simple, egalitarian society to a more complex, hierarchical one. Much of it was later covered by housing and commercial development extending from Cuernavaca.
(AP, 1/25/07)
600BCE The great Olmec Ceremonial Center in Tabasco, Mexico, was abandoned about this time.
(RFH-MDHP, p.241)
c600BCE The Zapotec city of Monte Alban was founded in the Oaxaca valley.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.A24)
c200BCE Migrations began toward the area north of Lake Texcoco where the urban center of Teotihuacan developed.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T8)
c100BCE The area around Palenque was 1st occupied.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C5)
c0-1500 Paintings were made on rock surfaces in the central mountain ranges of the Baha Peninsula by unknown native Indians. In 1997 Harry W. Crosby published "Cave Paintings of Baha California."
(WSJ, 3/5/98, p.A20)
100-150 Archeologists in 1998 uncovered evidence of a pre-Columbian civilization from under the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan that was dated to this time. The skeleton of a man was found by a team led by Saburo Sugiyama. The most important and largest city of pre-Colombian central Mexico, the Nahuatl meaning of Teotihuacan was "Where Men Become Gods" or "The City of Gods." Just north of Mexico City, Teotihuacan was planned at about the beginning of the Christian era and was sacked and burned by invading Toltecs in 650.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C2)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T10)(HNQ, 4/24/99)(SFEC, 9/19/99, p.A22)
150-200AD The Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan (City of the Gods) was built near what later became Mexico City. Quetzalcoatl was considered as the origin of all human activities on earth, the creator of land and time and its divisions.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T9)(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.C7)
200-300 Campeche (Mexico), from the 3rd century, was the principal town of the Maya kingdom of Ah Kin Pech (place of serpents and ticks).
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.E4)
200-650 Yohualichan was a ceremonial site for the Totonac Indians over this period. The town of Cuetzalan was later established a few miles away.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C10)
300 Mayans began building on Cozumel Island off Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula about this time. The town of San Gervasio was built and inhabited through 1650. Cozumel covers 189 square miles, about the size of Lake Tahoe.
(SSFC, 9/25/05, E4)
c350 In Teotihuacan 3 men were buried amid lavish goods. Their graves were discovered in 2002 in a tomb at the top of the 5th of 7 layers of the Pyramid of the Moon near Mexico City.
(SFC, 11/22/02, p.J2)
431 A great Mayan dynasty arose at Palenque and soon began trading with communities hundreds of miles away.
(SSFC, 12/7/03, p.C10)
440-790 Palenque flourished.
(AM, 5/01, p.49)
500 Teotihuacan people built a 60-foot pyramid about this time in what later became known as Iztapalapa, Mexico. It was abandoned after about 300 years, when the Teotihuacan culture collapsed. Archeologists began to unveil the site in 2004.
(AP, 4/6/06)
562 Tikal in Guatemala was conquered possibly by the Mayans of Calakmul city in Mexico. Calakmul is one of the largest of Mayan cities with more than 6,000 structures. It was the capital of a widespread hegemony of Lowland Maya kingdoms during the Late Classic (600-900).
(AM, May/Jun 97 suppl. p.G)(Arch, 9/00, p.27)
600-900 A three hundred year dynasty ruled over Palenque. In the Pyramid of Inscriptions is the tomb of Pakal, the greatest king of the dynasty.
(SFC, 5/19/96, T-9)
615 Pakal (12) became the Mayan ruler of Palenque. His reign ended with his death in 683.
(SSFC, 12/7/03, p.C10)(WSJ, 9/16/04, p.D12)
620 The town of Cholula was founded in central Mexico. It was later said to be the oldest continuously occupied town in all of North America.
(SSFC, 2/26/06, p.F10)
650-750 The Teotihuacan culture began declining and was almost abandoned by the end of this period.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C2)
650-850 Tepanapa, the first pyramid of the Teotihuacan culture, was built in Cholula (Mexico). Over the next 800 years a nested series of 4 pyramids were constructed in Cholula.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T10)(HNQ, 4/24/99)(SSFC, 2/26/06, p.F10)
662 By 2004 Simon Martin, Mayan scholar, worked out an almost day-by-day account of events from this year in the plain of Tabasco, Mexico.
(Econ, 5/22/04, p.79)
683 Pacal, Mayan ruler of Palenque, died. His sarcophagus, found in 1952, has the intricately carved lid later suggested to represent an extra-terrestrial visitor.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C5)(WSJ, 9/16/04, p.A1)
c700 The Zapotec city of Monte Alban was abandoned.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.A24)
c750 Teotihuacan, the 1st major urban center of Mesoamerica, fell about this time. It was burned, deserted and its people scattered. It contained the Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of the Sun.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T8)
850 The Chicanna temple in the Mayan city of Calakmul was built about this time.
(SSFC, 4/25/10, p.M1)
1000-1260 The Popoloca Indians of Mexico's Puebla state built the Ndachjian-Tehuacan temple complex during this period. In 2018 archeological excavations found the first temple of the Flayed Lord, Xipe Totec, depicted as a skinned human corpse, at the complex. The Popolocas were later conquered by the Aztecs.
(SFC, 1/4/19, p.A2)
1200 In 2007 Mexican archeologists discovered the ruins of an Aztec pyramid in the heart of Mexico City that dated to about this time.
(Reuters, 12/27/07)
1325 The Aztecs founded Tenochtitlan, later known as Mexico City, about this time.
(www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/expedmus.html)
1450 In Mexico City an Aztec cornerstone ceremony took place about this time intended to dedicate a new layer of building. In 2005 archeologists found a child found at the Templo Mayor ruins who was apparently killed as part of a ceremony dedicated to the war god Huitzilopochtli.
(AP, 7/23/05)
1466-1520 Montezuma II, Aztec emperor. He amassed great wealth through taxation in Mexico and Central America. He used his wealth to build his capital at Tenochtitlan.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R8)
c1500s Zapotec Indians founded the town of San Antonino after Spaniards took over Ocotlan in Oaxaca. The residents later came to be called Tonineros.
(WSJ, 4/13/99, p.A1)
1502 Ahuizotl, ruler of the Aztecs, died and was cremated on a funeral pyre about this time at the foot of the Templo Mayor pyramid. In 2007 Mexican archeologists found underground chambers in Mexico City they believed to contain his remains.
(AP, 8/4/07)(AP, 6/17/10)
1502 Moctezuma Xocoyotl (Montezuma II), an Aztec prince, inherited the Aztec throne becoming the 9th ruler of the Aztecs.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.8)(ON, 10/00, p.1)(Econ, 9/26/09, p.99)
1517 Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba, Spanish explorer, sailed from Cuba and discovered the Mayan civilization in the Yucatan, southeast Mexico.
(TL-MB, p.11)(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1518 An Indian from the Gulf coast reported to the royal court at Tenochtitlan the sighting large vessels.
(ON, 10/00, p.1)
1519 Mar 13, Spaniards under conquistador Hernan Cortes (1485-1547) landed at Vera Cruz, Mexico with 10 stallions, 5 mares and a foal. Smallpox was carried to America in the party of Hernando Cortes.
(SFC, 9/2/96, p.A3)(HN, 3/13/98)(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1519 Mar 27, A truce was arranged with Cortes when Mayan caciques brought food and gold as well as 20 female slaves. Among these was a young woman from Jalisco named Marina, who had been stolen from a noble family when small and sold into slavery, where she learned the language of Yucatán. As a bilingual translator from Aztec to Mayan, Marina played a major role in the eventual conquest of Tenochtitlán.
(http://www.athenapub.com/cortes1.htm)
1519 Apr 21, Hernan Cortes landed at Veracruz, Mexico, on Holy Thursday.
(www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/timeline/1.html)
1519 Apr 24, Envoys of Montezuma II attended the first Easter mass in Central America.
(HN, 4/24/98)
1519 Apr, Montezuma received a message that white strangers had reappeared and attacked a Mayan coastal village south of the Aztec border. Hundreds of Mayans were killed and the strangers sailed north.
(ON, 10/00, p.2)
1519 Aug, Montezuma learned that Cortez was marching toward Tenochtitlan with an army of 300 soldiers and 2000 non-Aztec Indians. Cortez was accompanied by Malinche, his Indian mistress and interpreter.
(ON, 10/00, p.2)
1519 Sep 5, In the 2nd Battle of Tehuacingo, Mexico, Hernan Cortes faced the Tlascala Aztecs.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1519 Nov 8, The Aztec and their leader, Moctezuma, welcomed Hernando Cortez and his 650 explorers to their capital at Tenochtitlan. Spanish adventurer Hernando Cortez and his force of about 300 Spanish soldiers, 18 horses and thousands of Mexico's native inhabitants who had grown resentful of Aztec rule marched unmolested into Tenochtitlán, the capital city of the Aztec empire. The Aztec ruler Montezuma, believing that Cortez could be the white-skinned deity Quetzalcoatl, whose return had been foretold for centuries, greeted the arrival of these strange visitors with courtesy--at least until it became clear that the Spaniards were all too human and bent on conquest. Cortez and his men, dazzled by the Aztec riches and horrified by the human sacrifice central to their religion, began to systematically plunder Tenochtitlán and tear down the bloody temples. Montezuma's warriors attacked the Spaniards but with the aid of Indian allies, Spanish reinforcements, superior weapons and disease, Cortez defeated an empire of approximately 25 million people by August 13, 1521.
(ATC, p.16)(SFC, 9/2/96, p.A3) (HNPD, 11/8/98)
1519 Nov 14, Cortez took Montezuma hostage due to the killing of Spanish soldiers along the Gulf Coast by Aztec warriors. The accused warriors were later burned to death in front of Montezuma and the Aztec people.
(ON, 10/00, p.3)
1519 Domenico de Pineda, Spanish navigator, explored the Gulf of Mexico.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.11)
1519 Cortez discovered a plot by some Cholulans to assassinate him and ordered some 6,000 Cholulan men executed.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T10)
1519 Francisco de Montejo, a captain under Cortez, set about subjugating the Maya.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1519 Spanish soldiers in Mexico learned that the shipwrecked sailor Gonzalo Guerrero had drifted there in 1511. Guerrero married a Maya woman and raised the first mestizo children.
(Econ, 11/10/07, p.102)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Guerrero)
1519 Cortes found the court of Moctezuma to have a ravenous appetite for turkeys. The gobblers, later served for Thanksgiving, returned to North America only after their Mexican ancestors had crossed the Atlantic twice, first to Spain and then back from England.
(Econ, 12/20/14, p.78)
1520 Apr, Cortez left Tenochtitlan to travel along the Gulf Coast.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1520 May 16, In Tenochtitlan a religious festival turned bloody when Spanish soldiers attacked a frenzied crowd. Several weeks of street fighting followed.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1520 May 20, Hernando Cortez defeated Spanish troops sent to punish him in Mexico.
(HN, 5/20/98)
1520 Jun 24, Montezuma, under orders by Cortez to calm his people, was showered with "stones, darts, arrows and sticks" from a jeering crowd.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1520 Jun 29, Montezuma II was murdered as Spanish conquistadors fled the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan during the night. Montezuma died from wounds inflicted by his people. Conquistadors under Cortez plundered gold from Aztecs.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moctezuma_II)
1520 Jul 10, The explorer Cortez was driven from Tenochtitlan, Mexico, by Aztec leader Cuauhtemoc, and retreated to Tlaxcala.
(HN, 7/10/98)
1520 Jul 14, Hernando Cortes fought the Aztecs at the Battle of Otumba, Mexico.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1521 Jan, Cortez returned to Tenochtitlan and destroyed the city. Thousands of Aztecs were killed. The surviving children of Montezuma were sent to Spain and were granted compensatory titles to the Spanish nobility.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1521 May 22, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez began the siege of Tenochtitlan.
(SFC, 5/20/21, p.A4)
1521 Aug 13, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez conquered the Mexican city of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) after an 85-day battle. Emp. Cuauhtemotzin was taken prisoner. Cortez had an Indian mistress named La Malinche.
(AP, 8/13/97)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 4/24/98, p.A15)(SFC, 5/20/21, p.A4)
1521 Aug 31, Spanish conqueror Cortez (1485-1547), having captured the city of Tenochtitlan, Mexico, set it on fire. Nearly 100,000 people died in the siege and some 100,000 more died afterwards of smallpox. In 2008 Buddy levy authored “Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs."
(HN, 8/31/98)(WSJ, 7/10/08, p.A13)
1521 Andres de Tapia, a Spanish soldier who accompanied Cortes in the conquest of Mexico, counted tens of thousands of skulls at what became known as the Huey Tzompantli in Tenochtitlan, later Mexico City. Archeologist later identified crania of women and children among the hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure.
(Reuters, 7/2/17)
1522 Oct 15, Emperor Charles named Hernan Cortes governor of Mexico.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1522 Martin Cortes (d.1569), son of Hernando Cortes, was born in Mexico to an Amerindian woman named Malinche. Cortes also named a 3rd son Martin, who was born in Spain. Both brothers were arrested in 1566 for purportedly fomenting a rebellion against the Spanish crown.
(SSFC, 7/11/04, p.M3)
1525 City officials tried to control the street vendors in Mexico City.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A19)
1528 The fortress of San Juan de Ulua was built on a coral reef in Vera Cruz. It was later estimated that half-million slaves died in the process.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1530 The San Francisco Church and monastery in Valladolid, Mexico, was begun.
(SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C11)
1531 Dec 12, Legend held that a dark-skinned Virgin Mary appeared to a peasant outside Mexico City and left an imprint on his cactus-fiber poncho. The poncho became an icon for the Virgin of Guadalupe. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, an Indian peasant, had visions of the Virgin Mary. In 2002 Pope John Paul II planned to canonize him. The Vatican’s main source was a religious work that dated to 1666.
(SFC, 2/1/99, p.A9)(WSJ, 2/27/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/17/02, p.A1)(AP, 7/30/02)
1531 The Spaniards founded Puebla, on the route from Vera Cruz to Mexico City, to house demobilized conquistadors.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T8)
1531 In Mexico Queretaro was designated the third city of New Spain.
(SSFC, 1/27/08, p.E5)
1533 Spaniards arrived at Zaci, the capital of the Cupul Maya, in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula and were pushed out.
(SSFC, 6/29/08, p.E5)(http://tinyurl.com/4o62ox)
1535 Apr 17, Antonio Mendoza was appointed first viceroy of New Spain.
(HN, 4/17/98)
1535 Emissaries of Cortez discovered La Paz, in Baha, Mexico.
(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.C10)
1536 cJan, Spanish castaways Don Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca with 3 companions reached the Pacific Coast in northern Mexico under Indian escort and encountered Spanish troops engaged as slave hunters.
(ON, 10/03, p.5)
1536 Jun 6, Mexico began its inquisition.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1536 Jul 24, Spanish castaways Don Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca with 3 companions arrived in Mexico City under escort from Culiacan.
(ON, 10/03, p.5)
1537 Aug, Castaway Don Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca returned from Mexico to Spain where he wrote an account of his 3,000 mile journey through North American and his experiences with the Indians. These narratives were collected and published in 1542 in Spain. They are now known as The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. The narrative of Cabeza de Vaca is the “first European book devoted completely to North America. In 2006 Paul Schneider authored “Brutal Journey: The True Story of the First Crossing of North America." Schneider used de Vaca’s original memoir as well as an official report prepared by survivors of the Narvaez expedition.
(ON, 10/03, p.5)(SSFC, 6/11/06, p.M3)(http://tinyurl.com/z36z9yk)
1540 Spaniards settled Campeche, Mexico. Montejo the Younger, the founder of Merida, gained a foothold at Campeche.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.D12)(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.E4)
1541 The "Codex Mendoza" was an Aztec pictorial manuscript of this time. It showed tribute received by the Aztecs from people like the Mixtec with turquoise shields and beads. It also showed 3 young people being stoned to death for drunkenness.
(NH, 4/97, p.24)(Arch, 1/05, p.29)
1541 Morelia, the capital of the Mexican state of Michoacan, was founded by the royal edict of Antonio de Mendoza. It was originally named Valladolid after a city in Spain. The name was changed in 1928 to honor the local village priest and revolutionary hero Jose Maria Morelos.
(Hem, Nov.'95, p.146)(SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C11)
1542 Jun 27, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo set out from the port of Navidad, Mexico, with 2 ships, the San Salvador and the Victoria, to "discover the coast of New Spain." Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo claimed California for Spain. [see Sep 28]
(NPS-CNM, 4/1/97)(MC, 6/27/02)
1542 Merida was founded by Francisco de Montejo at the holy Maya city of T’Ho. Montejo was the son of the captain under Cortez with the same name.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1542 In Mexico Catholic priest Miguel de Palomares died and was buried inside Mexico City’s first cathedral, near an altar. In 2016 engineers discovered a stone slab thought to cover his tomb.
(www.archaeology.org/news/4380-160414-mexico-spanish-priest)
1543 May 24, The city of Valladolid, Mexico, was founded in the Yucatan peninsula.
(SSFC, 6/29/08, p.E5)(www.valladolidyucatan.com/history.html)
1543 Sep, The Spanish survivors of the de Soto expedition reached Spanish settlements in Mexico.
(ON, 4/01, p.5)
1543-1773 The Palacio de los Capitanes in Antigua, Guatemala, was the center for Spanish rule over Chiapas, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua during this period.
(SFEM, 6/13/99, p.32)
1545 Bishop Fray Bartolome de las Casas championed the Indians in the area of Chiapas.
(WSJ, 1/15/98, p.A1)
1546 A coalition of eastern Maya laid siege to Valladolid, in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Spanish conquistadores brutally crushed a major Mayan rebellion in New Spain.
(http://tinyurl.com/4o62ox)(TL-MB, 1988, p.17)
1547 The Spaniards arrived at Cuetzalan, an area inhabited by Nahua and Totonac Indians.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C10)
1547 Hernando Cortes, the conquistador who subdued Aztec king Montezuma and stole his wife, died in Spain. His remains were brought to Mexico in 1836.
(WSJ, 12/14/00, p.A8)
1553 The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) was founded as a royal, pontifical university.
(WSJ, 9/1/99, p.A1)
1555 Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun wrote down "The War of Conquest: The Aztec’s Own Story."
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1555 In Ocotlan, Oaxaca, a church was built.
(WSJ, 4/13/99, p.A1)
1557 The Spanish enslaved local Indians around Guanajuato, Mexico, to work a silver mine. A major vein was struck in 1768.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.D7)
1561-1598 In Merida the Cathedral de San Idelfonso was constructed on the site of a Mayan temple by Spanish conquistadors. It was designed as a stronghold in their struggle to subdue the Maya.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1562 Aug 8, Diego Te, a Maya man in the Yucatec town of Sotuta, testified that a year earlier he had witnessed a village leader and another man cut the hearts from 2 boys and hand them to a shaman, who rubbed the hearts onto the mouths of two Maya idols. The account was preserved in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain.
(AM, 7/05, p.43)
1562 A Spanish priest wrote that the well at Chichen Itza was a place where Mayas had made offerings to their gods.
(ON, 5/02, p.6)
1562 In the Yucatan a campaign to root out idolatry ended with the destruction of thousands of ritual objects and most of the Maya books in existence. The campaign was led by Franciscan leader Diego de Landa, who was later tried in Spain for his excessive behavior and acquitted. He recorded the oral traditions of the Maya in “An Account of the Things of the Yucatan" before returning there in 1573 as Bishop of Yucatan.
(AM, 7/05, p.44)
1564 In Mexico the monastery of Tecpatan was founded in southern Chiapas state.
(SSFC, 10/18/15, p.A5)
1565 Oct 8, Spanish Friar Andres de Urdaneta arrived in Acapulco after sailing as far as 38 degrees North latitude to obtain favorable winds. 14 of the crew died on the voyage from the Philippines. During the voyage he sighted land believed to be the California coast. His route became famous and trusted for sailing from Manila to Acapulco and became known as the Manila galleon. In 1939 William Lytle Schurz authored “The Manila Galleon."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9s_de_Urdaneta) (SFC,10/17/97, p.A25)(SFC, 2/7/15, p.D1)
1565 The Iglesia de San Roque was built in Campeche, Mexico.
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.E5)
1566 Two sons of Cortes, both named Martin Cortes, were arrested in Mexico for purportedly fomenting a rebellion against the Spanish crown. In 2004 Anna Lanyon authored “The New World of Martin Cortes."
(SSFC, 7/11/04, p.M3)
1567 The Metropolitan Cathedral was begun in Mexico City. It took 250 years to complete.
(Hem., 1/96, p.50)
1568 Spanish conquistadors first arrived at the valley of Tlaxcaltecas.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1570 The Mexican city of Valladolid, later Morelia, was laid out.
(SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C11)
1574 An auto-da-fe (a public announcement of sentence imposed on persons tried by the Inquisition) took place in Mexico for the first time.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)
1575-1649 The construction of La Immaculada Concepcion cathedral in Puebla.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T8)
1576 In Mexico the town of Mineral de Pozos was founded as a mining town. In 1982 the Mexican government declared it a national historic treasure.
(SSFC, 11/30/08, p.E5)
1577 Francisco Hernandez, Spanish explorer traveling through Mexico’s highlands, noted the many uses of the maguey (agave) plant. He cited it as a useful fuel, a material for cloth and ropes, with sap used to make vinegar and wine.
(Arch, 9/02, p.32)
1585 Archbishop of Mexico, Pedro Moya de Contreras, dispatched Spanish captain Francisco Gali to proceed to Manila from Acapulco, and "to reconnoiter down the coast" on his return trip.
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A25)
1586 Spanish Captain Francisco Gali died in Manila and Pedro de Unamuno took command of his 2 ships to return to Acapulco. He stopped in Macao where his ships were confiscated by the Portuguese. He obtained a loan from Father Martin Ignacio de Loyola, the nephew of the founder of the Jesuit order, and purchased a small ship to return to Acapulco with 2 priests, a few soldiers, and a crew of Luzon Indians.
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A25)
1586 In Mexico the Mina El Eden (Eden Mine) opened in Zacateca. It yielded a bounty of silver, gold, iron and zinc for over 3 centuries.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T3)
1587 Nov 22, Captain Pedro de Unamuno entered the port of Acapulco.
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A25)
1593 In Puebla, Mexico, the Convent de La Concepcion was built. It was later turned into the Hotel Camino Real Puebla.
(SSFC, 1/27/08, p.E5)
1593 In Mexico Capt. Don Francisco de Urdiqola started the first vineyard in the valley of Tlaxcaltecas at his El Rosario Hacienda.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1593-1817 The period of the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A1)
1596 Dec 8, Luis de Carabajal, 1st Jewish author in America, was executed in Mexico. The nephew of Luis Carvajal, a Jewish convert to Catholicism and governor of the province of Nuevo Leon, was accused of relapsing into Judaism. He was tried by Spanish Inquisitors and under torture gave out 116 names of other Judaizers that included his mother and 23 sisters. They were eventually strangled with iron collars and burned to death. A 1997 opera by Myron Fink was composed based on his story. Monterey, Mexico was founded by conquistador Don Luis de Carvajal. He fell in love the wrong man’s daughter and was later denounced to the Mexican Inquisition because of his Jewish heritage.
(SFC, 8/16/96, p.A19)(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)(WSJ, 2/25/97, p.A20)(MC, 12/8/01)
1596 The Casa de los Azulejos or House of Tiles (a.k.a. Sanborn's) was constructed. It is an ornate mansion with hand-painted blue and white tiles.
(Hem., 1/96, p.50)
1597 King Philip II issued a land grant to Don Lorenzo Garcia to start the first official winery for the new world at the San Lorenzo Hacienda.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
c1600-1700 Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was a lyric poet of this period. She entered the convent and assembled a 4,000 volume library and wrote poems along with secular and religious plays. The chamber opera "With Blood, With Ink" was later based on her life.
(WSJ, 4/14/00, p.W2)
1602 May, Sebastian Vizcaino, a Basque merchant, led 4 small ships north from Acapulco, Mexico, to chart the coast of California.
(SFC, 11/13/02, p.A8)
1614 Japan sent samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga to Europe via Acapulco to to request the right to trade directly with New Spain (Mexico).
(Econ, 11/15/14, SR p.8)
1616 The Fuerte de San Diego was built to protect the port of Acapulco, Mexico, from Dutch and English pirates.
(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.C6)
1618 In Merida the Iglesia de Jesus was built by Jesuits.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1621 Agustina Ruiz of Quertaro was tried for claiming sexual intercourse with saints. She was sent to a convent by the Inquisition for 3 years of fasting and penance.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)
1624 Jan 15, The people of Mexico rioted upon hearing that their churches were to be closed.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1624 The town of San Antonino petitioned for and was granted independence from the town of Ocotlan.
(WSJ, 4/13/99, p.A1)
1631 Oct 14, The ship Our Lady of Juncal set sail from the Gulf coast port of Veracruz, as part of a 19-ship fleet bearing described only as "a valuable shipment of the goods obtained by the king's ministers to feed the Spanish empire." Most of the fleet never made it.
(AP, 2/17/09)
1636 A city wall was built around Veracruz.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1660 The Palacio Clavijero was built as a Jesuit temple in Valladolid (later Morelia), Mexico.
(SSFC, 5/22/05, p.E6)
1666 In Cholula the chapel Nuestra de los Remedios was built atop a Teotihuacan pyramid.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T10)
1667 The San Ignacio Loyola Church at Parras de la Fuente was built.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1668 A fortified wall was completed at Campeche, Mexico, to ward off pirate attacks.
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.E4)
1683 Sep 29, A small armada sailed from the Mexican mainland across the Sea of Cortez to the Baha Peninsula. Hostile natives had forced them back to the mainland on a first landing and a storm forced them back on a 2nd attempt.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)(WSJ, 12/26/97, p.A9)
1683 Oct 6, The small armada from the Mexican mainland landed on their 3rd attempt at crossing to the Baha peninsula and settled at the mouth of a river that they named San Bruno. The site was abandoned after 2 years. Spanish settlement on the Baha was later described by Father James Donald Francez in "The Lost Treasures of Baha California."
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)(WSJ, 12/26/97, p.A9)
1690 In Puebla the ornate Capilla del Rosario, Chapel of the Rosary, was consecrated.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T8)
1695 Apr 17, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (b.~1648), Mexican nun and poet, died of plague.
(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.M3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sor_Juana)
1697 Oct 19, Settlers from Mexico sailed across the Sea of Cortez to build a new settlement.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)
1697 Oct 25, Settlers from Mexico founded the town of Loreto in honor of the Virgin Nuestra Senoro de Loreto, on the Baha Peninsula. It served as the capital of Baha California for the next 132 years.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)
1697 Padre Juan Maria Salvatierra established Baja's first mission at Lareto.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T1)
1699 Jesuits established a 2nd Baha outpost, Mission San Francisco de San Javier, in the Sierra Gigante mountains.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T1)
1699 The King of Spain, due to its competition, banned the production of wine in the Americas, except for that made by the church. The ban lasted to 1810.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1700 Sep, In Mexico Juan Bautista and Jacinto de los Angeles informed Spanish authorities of an Indian religious ceremony and were killed by fellow Indians. Christian officials decapitated and quartered 15 men and staked their body parts by the roadside as a warning. In 2002 Bautista and Angeles were beatified by Pope John Paul II.
(AP, 7/30/02)
1701 Padre Juan de Ugarte brought seeds and seedlings from Mexico City for the Baha outpost, Mission San Francisco de San Javier.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T1)
1712 Maria de Ortiz Espejo was convicted by the Inquisition of telling women that hummingbirds and earthquakes could help them get pregnant. She got off with a warning.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)
1720 The last major eruption of the Popocatepetl volcano outside Mexico City.
(SFC, 7/3/97, p.C5)
1724 Jesuit padre Jaime Bravo set up a visiting mission in the southern Baja peninsula for the nomadic Guaicura Indians.
(SSFC, 11/4/01, p.T12)
1729-1742 The building of the Cathedral at Zacateca. It has been called the "Parthenon of the Mexican Baroque."
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T3)
1730 Jesuits founded San Jose del Cabo in Baha, Ca.
(SSFC, 2/6/05, p.F8)
1731 Luis Berrueco, Mexican painter, painted “The Martyrs of Gorkum," a detailed work depicting the 1572 martyrdom of 19 Catholics in Gorinchem, Netherlands, during the Dutch war for independence.
(SFC, 3/5/11, p.E2)(http://tinyurl.com/5s8wnz2)
1734 Father Nicholas Tamaral attempted to enforce a ban polygamy among the Pericu Indians in Baha California. The Pericu beat him in return and apparently burned him alive.
(SSFC, 2/6/05, p.F8)
1740s Antonio de Solis, a Spanish priest, found the ruins of Palenque while planting a field.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C5)
1743 La Cathedral de Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion in Veracruz was dedicated.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1744 The cathedral in Morelia was completed.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T11)
1747 The Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de la Paz was built in Todos Santos on the southern Baja peninsula.
(SSFC, 11/4/01, p.T12)
1748-1758 Santa Prisca church in Taxco was built by the wealthy miner Jose de la Borda. It has twin towers of pink stone and an adjacent tiled dome.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T6)
1750 The border town of Guerrero was founded. It became Guerrero Viejo in 1953 after a new dam and flood covered the old town and residents moved to the new Guerrero Nuevo.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.C16)
1750-1860 The Hacienda Tabi developed as a sugar plantation in the Yucatan. The family of Carlos Peon Machado owned it for some 40 years and sold it in 1893.
(Arch, 1/05, p.43)
1751 The mission of St. Gertrude the Great was initiated and called "La Piedad" by Father Fernando Consag.
(WSJ, 12/26/97, p.A9)
1752 The first Mission at the town of Loreto on the Baha Peninsula was completed. Father George Retz moved north from Mission St. Ignatius, where he had studied the Cochimi language, and formally established "La Piedad" as the mission of St. Gertrude the Great.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)
1753 May 8, Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla, the father of Mexican independence, was born.
(HN, 5/8/98)(MC, 5/8/02)
1755 The Holy Inquisition began using the dungeon at the fortress of San Juan de Ulua in Veracruz.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1756 In Queretaro, Mexico, a palatial home was built and later converted into the hotel Casa de la Marquesa.
(SSFC, 1/27/08, p.E5)
1757 The Mission of San Javier was completed in San Javier on the Baha Peninsula.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)
c1758 In Taxco the Santa Prisca Cathedral was built in thanks by Don Jose de la Borda, who made his fortune there.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T6)
1758 Jesuits rebuilt their 1699 Mission San Francisco de San Javier in the Sierra Gigante mountains.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T1)
1759-1788 Charles III ruled as King of Spain. After a plague killed thousands in Alamos, Mexico, Charles III ordered homes to be rebuilt with mutual walls to prevent ramshackle structures by squatters.
(WUD, 1994, p.249)
1760 Juan Ruiz of Mexico painted "Christ Consoled by Angels."
(WSJ, 3/3/98, p.A16)
1760 The Valenciana mine near Guanajuato was discovered.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T10)
1760-1777 Juan Bautista de Anza (1736-1787) served as the commanding officer at Tupac.
(SFC, 6/7/00, p.A15)
1764 In Mexico Ignacio de Jerusalem composed "Matins for Our Lady of Guadalupe." It was first performed the Mexico City Cathedral.
(SFC, 6/24/97, p.B3)
1767 Jun 25, Mexican Indians rioted as Jesuit priests were ordered home. Spain expelled the Jesuits from Mexico and their work was taken over by the Dominican Fathers.
(WSJ, 12/26/97, p.A9)(HN, 6/25/98)(Econ, 6/1/13, p.80)
1768 In Guanajuato, Mexico, enslaved Indians struck a major silver vein in Guanajuato.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.D7)
1769 Father Junipero Serra set out on his northerly journey from Loreto to found missions along the Baha Peninsula and into California.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)
1771 Father Toribio Basterrechea, vicar of Huachinango, was convicted by the Inquisition of officiating at the marriage of two dogs. He was sentenced to 4 months of fasting and penance.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)
1773-1776 In Mexico a mid-sixteenth century church was abandoned in the Quechula locality of southern Chiapas state due to big plagues in the region.
(SSFC, 10/18/15, p.A5)
1774 Mexico exported 600 tons of the cochineal shell, known as carmine, to Spain. The acid color was extracted from the shell of the tiny red beetle that grew on cactus leaves. It was used to manufacture a red dye that was used in British "redcoats" and by Betsy Ross to color the first US flag.
(WSJ, 10/7/98, p.B1)
1775 Sep 29, Mexican Captain Juan Bautista de Anza (39) and his party of Spanish soldiers and setters departed Tubac, Arizona, on a journey to the SF Bay Area following reports of a great river flowing into the bay. Anza led 240 soldiers, priests and settlers to Monterey. Jose Manuel Valencia was one of the soldiers. His son, Candelario Valencia, later served in the military at the Presidio and owned a ranch in Lafayette and property next to Mission Dolores. One of the soldiers was Don Salvio Pacheco.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, p.C7)(SFC, 12/31/99, p.A22)(SFC, 9/14/13, p.C4)
1775 Altar was founded in Mexico’s Sonora state as a military base. It’s location 60 miles south of Arizona later proved valuable as a jumping off point for immigrant smuggling to the US.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.31)
1775 The Monte de Piedad (Mount of Pity), or National Pawn Shop, stands on the site of Moctezuma's brother's palace in Mexico City. It was founded by the Count of Regla. As a lender of last resort the shop provided loans worth one-fifth to one-third an item’s value at interest rates of 4% a month.
(Hem., 1/96, p.50)(SFC, 1/15/98, p.A10)
1775 Manuel Arroyo of Real del Monte confessed to 30 counts of oral sex on men. He claimed that his doctor told him it was good for his health and a way to avoid evil thoughts about women. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison by the Inquisition.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)
1775-1776 Juan Bautista de Anza led 198 colonists and 1,000 cattle from Sonora, Mexico, to California.
(SFC, 6/7/00, p.A15)
1776 Mar 28, Mexican Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, Lt. Jose Moraga, and Franciscan priest Pedro Font arrived at the tip of San Francisco. De Anza planted a cross at what is now Fort Point. They camped at Mountain Lake and searched inland for a more hospitable area and found a site they called Laguna de los Dolores or the Friday of Sorrows since the day was Friday before Palm Sunday. Anza became known as the “father of SF." Mission Dolores was founded by Father Francisco Palou and Father Pedro Cambon. Rancho San Pedro, near what is now Pacifica, served as the agricultural center. Laguna de los Dolores was later believed to be a spring near the modern-day corner of Duboce and Sanchez.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Bautista_de_Anza)(SFEC, 9/21/97, p.C7)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W34)(SFC, 2/19/11, p.A10)
1777-1787 Juan Bautista de Anza served as the governor of New Mexico.
(SFC, 6/7/00, p.A15)
1781 Sep 4, Mexican Provincial Governor, Felipe de Neve, founded Los Angeles. He founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles (Valley of Smokes), originally named Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, by Gaspar de Portola, a Spanish army captain and Juan Crespi, a Franciscan priest, who had noticed the beautiful area as they traveled north from San Diego in 1769. 44 Spanish settlers named a tiny village near San Gabriel, Los Angeles. Los Angeles, first an Indian village Yangma, was founded by Spanish decree. 26 of the settlers were of African ancestry.
(HFA, '96, p.38)(AP, 9/4/97)(SFEC, 4/12/98, Par p.20)(HN, 9/4/98)(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)(HN, 9/4/00)(MC, 9/4/01)
1784 The 1st Spanish military officer who explored the Mayan ruins of Palenque thought it was Atlantis risen.
(SSFC, 12/7/03, p.C10)
1786 Andres Lopez of Mexico painted "Sacred Heart of Jesus."
(WSJ, 3/3/98, p.A16)
1788 The Templo La Valenciana church was built next to the Valenciana mine.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T10)
1790 Dec 17, An Aztec calendar stone was discovered in Mexico City.
(HFA, '96, p.44)(MC, 12/17/01)
1791 May 14, In Mexico a time capsule was placed atop a bell tower at Mexico City's Metropolitan Cathedral when the building's topmost stone was laid, 218 years after construction had begun. Workers restoring the church found it in October, 2007.
(AP, 1/15/08)
1792 In Mexico Campeche’s northern fort, the Reducto de San Jose, was built. It later housed the Museo de Barcas y Armas.
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.E5)
1794 Feb 21, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Mexican Revolutionary, was born.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1801 La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora del Refugio was a Franciscan-style mission church built in the border town of Guerrero Viejo.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.C2)
1803 Alexander Von Humboldt, German explorer and scientist, spent some time in Taxco. The house where he stayed later became the Museum of Colonial Religious Art.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T7)
1805 Spanish soldiers under Lt. Francisco Ruiz discovered badgers in a canyon during an expedition in southern California. The area was thus named El Tejon (the badger).
(SFC, 5/9/08, p.A1)
1806 Mar 21, Benito Juarez, President of Mexico, was born in Oaxaca. He was Mexico's first president of Indian ancestry and fought against the French and their puppet emperor Maximilian.
(AP, 3/21/97)(HN, 3/21/99)
1807 Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike strayed beyond the limits of the territory into the Spanish-held territory of New Mexico, and was accused of spying by Spanish authorities. The Spaniards released Pike and his men after they could find no evidence against him. Pike’s explorations the previous November had taken him to the Rockies, where he reached the base of a mountain that would later be named Pikes Peak in his honor. Pike’s mission was to explore the southwestern limits of the Louisiana Territory, the vast tract of land that the United States had purchased from France in 1803 in a deal known as the Louisiana Purchase.
(HNQ, 7/15/02)
1810 Sep 16, In Mexico Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla delivered the cry for freedom in front of a small crowd of his parishioners (The Grito de Dolores) in Dolores Hidalgo. This action stemmed from meetings of the literary and social club of Queretaro (now a central state of Mexico), which included the priest, the mayor of the town, and a local military captain named Ignacio Allende. They believed that New Spain should be governed by the Creoles (criollos) rather than the Gachupines (peninsulares). Rev. Hidalgo was joined by Rev. Jose Maria Morelos. Both priests were later executed by firing squads. When Mexico revolted the Spanish settlements began to fall apart. Under Mexican rule the missions were secularized and the huge land holdings were broken up. At age 55, Hidalgo was a tall, gaunt man who carried his head habitually bent forward, giving him the appearance of a true contemplative. But looks were deceiving. He had a restless, willful nature, and his expressive green eyes shot fire when he argued politics. In his student days, he had won debates and honors; as a theologian he enjoyed considerable local renown. He was a visionary, resentful of authority and with a touch of the crusader about him.
(SFC, 5/19/96,CG, p.16)(SCal, Sep, 1995)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(AP, 9/16/97)(HNQ, 12/17/00)
1810 Juan Jose de los Reyes Martinez, miner and revolutionary hero (El Pipila), joined some 20,000 rebels who stormed Guanajuato, Mexico, and cornered Spanish colonists inside a granary. Martinez set fire to the granary and died in the flames.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.D6)
1810-1996 This period of Mexican history is covered by Enrique Krauze in his book: "Mexico: Biography of Power."
(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1811 Jul 31, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Mexican hero priest, was executed by Spanish.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1811-1812 During the war for independence the crime rate rose to double digits for two years in a row.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.A14)
1813 Nov 6, Chilpancingo congress declared Mexico independent of Spain.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1815 Dec 22, Spaniards executed Mexican revolutionary priest Jose Maria Morelos (b.1765).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mar%C3%ADa_Morelos)
1817 The Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City was completed.
(Hem., 1/96, p.49)
1817 Pedro Moreno and Victor Rosales died fighting Spain in western Mexico. Their bodies were among 14 later placed in urns as hero’s of Mexico’s 1810-1821 independence movement. In 1925 urns holding the remains were sealed in crypts at the Independence monument. Others in the urns included Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende.
(AP, 8/14/10)
1820 The Mexican government granted Luis Peralta (1759-1851) the 44,800-acre Rancho San Antonio in the East Bay of northern California, for his military services. The rancho ran from San Leandro Creek to a rise known as El Cerrito. Peralta settled in San Jose, while his four sons took over the land grant. The Peralta Hacienda in Oakland was built in 1870.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C3%ADs_Mar%C3%ADa_Peralta)(SFC, 5/3/02, p.A20)(SFC, 11/26/10, p.D9)
1821 Feb 24, Mexico rebels proclaimed the "Plan de Iguala," their declaration of independence from Spain, and took over the mission lands in California.
(HT, 3/97, p.61)(AP, 2/24/98)(HN, 2/24/98)
1821 Aug 23, After 11 years of war, Spain granted Mexican independence as a constitutional monarchy. Spanish Viceroy Juan de O'Donoju signed the Treaty of Cordoba, which approved a plan to make Mexico an independent constitutional monarchy.
(HN, 8/23/00)(MC, 8/23/02)
1821 Aug 28, In the city of Puebla a nun served a tri-colored chili dish to the Emperor Agustin de Iturbide, who was on his way home from signing the Treaty of Cordoba, which effectively freed Mexico from Spain. Iturbide, a Creole, had led the suppression of the initial rebellion for independence. He later abdicated, went into exile, returned and was executed. After Iturbide Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna led the country over 11 presidential terms.
(WSJ, 9/5/96, p.B1)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1821 Sep 27, The Mexican Empire declared its independence. Revolutionary forces occupied Mexico City as the Spanish withdraw.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1821 Mexican rule began over the New Mexico territory.
(SSFC, 5/22/05, p.E12)
1821-1846 Mexico ruled over California with a series of 12 governors. During part of this time Gen’l. Jose Castro commanded all of the Spanish forces in California and was an active opponent of US rule in 1846.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, p.C7)
1822 Jul 25, Gen. Agustin de Iturbide was crowned Agustin I, 1st emperor of Mexico.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1822 Aug, William Richardson (1795-1856) came to SF as first mate aboard the British whaler Orion. He jumped ship and began living at the Presidio. In 1835 he put up a tent in Yerba Buena, later renamed San Francisco, on Calle de la Fundacion, a site later identified as 827 Grant Ave.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Richardson)(SFC, 9/16/17 p.C2)
1822 Dec 12, Mexico was officially recognized as an independent nation by US.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1822 California became part of Mexico.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)
1822 The mission of St. Gertrude the Great on the Baha Peninsula was closed as the local population diminished.
(WSJ, 12/26/97, p.A9)
1823 , Mexico forbade the sale or purchase of slaves, and required that the children of slaves be freed when they reached age fourteen.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Texas)
1824 Oct 4, The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1824 was enacted, after the overthrow of the Mexican Empire of Agustin de Iturbide. In the new constitution, the republic took the name of United Mexican States, and was defined as a representative federal republic, with Catholicism as the official religion. A liberal constitution, established at this time, was later replaced by Santa Anna.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1824_Constitution_of_Mexico)(AP, 9/15/10)
1824 The Mexican governor of California offered all missions for sale under a program of secularization.
(SFEC, 3/12/00, p.T4)
1824 A Mexican General was served chiles en nogada after he threw out the last Spanish viceroy. The dish consisted of green chiles, pomegranate seeds and a white walnut sauce.
(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.A1)
1824 Since this year budget oversight has been handled by the executive branch.
(WSJ, 11/30/95, p.A-12)
1828 The Mexican city of Valladolid was renamed Morelia after independence hero Jose Maria Morelos
(SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C11)
1829 Aug 25, Pres. Jackson made an offer to buy Texas, but the Mexican government refused.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1829 Mexico abolished slavery, but it granted an exception until 1830 to Texas. In following years a southern US network helped thousands of American Black slaves escape to Mexico.
(AP, 9/16/20)
1829 A hurricane destroyed the town of Loreto in Baha California except for the Mission Nuestra Senora de Loreto. The center of government was moved down the coast to La Paz.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.C10)
1831 Mexico appointed Manuel Victoria to replace Alta California Gov. Jose Maria de Echeandia.
(SFC, 4/4/15, p.C2)
1833 Mexico took mission property from the Church and turned out the Acagchemem Indians at Mission San Juan Capistrano.
(HT, 3/97, p.61)
1833 The people of Iztapalapa, Mexico, began re-enacting the Passion of Christ, to give thanks for divine protection during a cholera epidemic.
(AP, 4/5/06)
1834 Jose Bernal owned Rancho Rincon de Las Salinas y Potrero. It included the land that later became known as Hunters Point in San Francisco. La Punta de Conca (seashell point) was later purchased by Robert and Philip Hunter who arrived during the gold rush and bought the land to develop a town.
(SSCM, 7/21/02, p.16)(SFL)
1835 Sep, Texans petitioned for statehood separate from Coahuila. They wrote out their needs and their complaints in The Declaration of Causes. This document was designed to convince the Federalists that the Texans desired only to preserve the 1824 Constitution, which guaranteed the rights of everyone living on Mexican soil. But by this time, Santa Anna was in power, having seized control in 1833, and he advocated the removal of all foreigners. His answer was to send his crack troops, commanded by his brother-in-law, General Martin Perfecto de Css, to San Antonio to disarm the Texans.
(HNQ, 3/24/01)
1835 Oct 2, The first battle of the Texas Revolution took place as American settlers fought Mexican soldiers near the Guadalupe River; the Mexicans ended up withdrawing.
(AP, 10/2/08)
1835 Oct, Before the Alamo, Mexican General Css led troops against the small community of Gonzales, since enshrined in history as the "Lexington of Texas." San Antonio de Bixar went under military rule, with 1,200 Mexican troops under General Css` command. When Css ordered the small community of Gonzales, about 50 miles east of San Antonio, to return a cannon loaned to the town for defense against Indian attack--rightfully fearing that the citizens might use the cannon against his own troops--the Gonzales residents refused. "Come and take it!" they taunted, setting off a charge of old chains and scrap iron, shot from the mouth of the tiny cannon mounted on ox-cart wheels. Although the only casualty was one Mexican soldier, Gonzales became enshrined as the "Lexington of Texas." The Texas Revolution was on.
(HNQ, 3/24/01)
1835 Nov 13, Texans officially proclaimed Independence from Mexico, and called itself the Lone Star Republic, after its flag, until its admission to the Union in 1845.
(HN, 11/13/98)
1836 Feb 12, Mexican General Santa Anna crossed the Rio Grande en route to the Alamo.
(HN, 2/12/99)
1836 Feb 23, The Alamo was besieged by Santa Anna. Thus began the siege of the Alamo, a 13-day moment in history that turned a ruined Spanish mission in San Antonio, Texas, into a shrine known and revered the world over. In 2012 James Donovan authored “The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo – and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation.
(AP, 2/23/98)(Econ, 6/2/12, p.99)
1836 Feb 24, Some 3,000 Mexicans under Gen. Santa Ana launched an assault on the Alamo, with its 182 Texan defenders. The siege lasted 13 days.
(HN, 2/24/98)(MC, 2/24/02)
1836 Feb 27, Mexican forces under General Jose de Urrea defeated Texan forces at the Battle of San Patricio.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar 2, Texas declared its independence from Mexico on Sam Houston's 43rd birthday. The first vice-president was Lorenzo de Zavala. Mexico refused to recognize Texas but diplomatic relations were established with the US, Britain and France. Texas was an independent republic until 1845.
(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-12)(WP, 6/29/96, p.A15)(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A3)(AP, 3/2/98)(HN, 3/2/99)
1836 Mar 2, Mexican forces under General Jose de Urrea defeated Texan forces at the Battle of Agua Dulce.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar 6, The Alamo fell after fighting for 13 days. Angered by a new Mexican constitution that removed much of their autonomy, Texans seized the Alamo in San Antonio in December 1835. Mexican president General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna marched into Texas to put down the rebellion. By late February, 1836, 182 Texans, led by Colonel William Travis, held the former mission complex against Santa Anna’s [3,000] 6,000 troops. At 4 a.m. on March 6, after fighting for 13 days, Santa Anna’s troops charged. In the battle that followed, all the Alamo defenders were killed while the Mexicans suffered about 2,000 casualties. Santa Anna dismissed the Alamo conquest as "a small affair," but the time bought by the Alamo defenders’ lives permitted General Sam Houston to forge an army that would win the Battle of San Jacinto and, ultimately, Texas’ independence. Mexican Lt. Col. Pena later wrote a memoir: "With Santa Anna in Texas: Diary of Jose Enrique de la Pena," that described the capture and execution of Davy Crockett and 6 other Alamo defenders. In 1975 a translation of the diary by Carmen Perry (d.1999) was published. Apparently, only one Texan combatant survived Jose María Guerrero, who persuaded his captors he had been forced to fight. Women, children, and a black slave, were spared.
(AP, 3/6/98)(HN, 3/6/98)(HNPD, 3/6/99)(SFC, 6/15/99, p.C6)
1836 Mar 12, Mexican forces under General Jose de Urrea defeated Texan forces at the Battle of Refugio.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar 13, Refugees from the Alamo arrived in Gonzales, Texas, and informed Gen. Sam Houston of the March 6 fall of the Alamo. Houston immediately ordered a retreat.
(ON, 8/10, p.1)
1836 Mar 20, At Coleto Creek, Texas, Colonel James Fannin after being surrounded by Mexican forces under General Urrea, agreed to surrender to Colonel Juan Jose Holzinger. Fannin was unaware that General Santa Anna had decreed execution for all rebels. Urrea negotiated the surrender "at the disposal of the Supreme Mexican Government," falsely stating that no prisoner taken on those terms had lost his life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar 26, Mexican Colonel Jose Nicolas de la Portilla received orders from Gen. Santa Anna in triplicate to execute his Texan prisoners at Goliad.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar 27, Mexican Colonel Jose Nicolas de la Portilla executed his Texan prisoners at Goliad. Colonel Portilla had the 342 Texians marched out of Fort Defiance into three columns. The Texians were then fired on at point-blank range. The wounded and dying were then clubbed and stabbed. Those who survived the initial volley were run down by the Mexican cavalry.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar, Thousands of English speaking Texans abandoned their homes as the Mexican army advanced following the fall of the Alamo. They fled toward Louisiana in what came to be called the “Runaway Scrape."
(ON, 8/10, p.2)
1836 Apr 21, Some 910 Texians led by Sam Houston, the former governor of Tennessee, defeated the Mexican army under Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at San Jacinto. The victory in the 18 minute battle sealed Texan independence from Mexico. Houston counted 9 fatalities. 630 Mexicans were killed out of some 1,250 troops. Some 700 were taken prisoner.
(AP, 4/21/97)(HN, 4/21/98)(AH, 2/03, p.22)(ON, 8/10, p.3)
1836 Sep 12, Mexican authorities crushed the revolt which broke out on August 25.
(HN, 9/12/98)
1836 Oct, Don Juan Alvarado, president of the 7-man legislature in the Mexican territory of California, fled Monterey with his deputies to Mission San Juan Bautista under threats from Lt. Col. Nicolas Gutierrez, the military governor. There they formed plans for a coup.
(ON, 4/04, p.9)
1836 Nov 4, Don Juan Alvarado and a group of followers forced the surrender of Lt. Col. Nicolas Gutierrez, the military governor Monterey. The quickly drafted a constitution and proclaimed California independent of Mexico. Officials in southern California refused to recognize Alvarado's government and he agreed to make California a territory of Mexico with himself as governor.
(ON, 4/04, p.10)
1836 Dec 28, Spain recognized the independence of Mexico.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1836 The remains of Hernando Cortes (d.1547), the Spanish conquistador who subdued Aztec king Montezuma and stole his wife, were brought to Mexico from Spain and laid to rest in Mexico City.
(WSJ, 12/14/00, p.A8)
1838 Nov 30, Mexico declared war on France.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1839 The Bernal Heights area of SF, Ca., began to be developed as part of a Mexican land grant belonging to Don Jose Cornelio Bernal.
(SFC, 6/29/06, 96 Hours p.41)
1840s A native rebellion called the Caste War broke out in southern Mexico against the ruling hacienda class. The 22,000 square-foot palacio of Hacienda Tabi in the Yucatan was sacked.
(Arch, 1/05, p.45)
1841 John Lloyd Stephens published "Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan" with illustrations by Frederick Catherwood.
(ON, 12/99, p.8)
1842 Oct 18, US Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones sailed into Monterey, the Mexican capital of California, on the mistaken belief that the US and Mexico had gone to war.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.D2)
1842 Oct 19, US Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones ordered the surrender of Mexican officials in Monterey, Ca., on the mistaken belief that the US and Mexico had gone to war. He soon learned of his error and returned Monterey to Mexican authority.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.D2)
1842 John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood returned to Mexico and later produced a 2nd book titled: Incidents of Travel in Yucatan," which described their discovery of 44 additional ruined cities in southeastern Mexico.
(ON, 12/99, p.8)
1843 Mar 25, Seventeen Texans, who picked black beans from a jar otherwise filled with white beans, were executed by a Mexican firing squad. After months of raiding, captivity and escapes in Northern Mexico, Mexican president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna ordered the execution of one tenth of the 176 Texas freebooters of the Mier Expedition. The event was later depicted by artist Theodore Gentilz.
(HNPD, 3/27/00)
1843 William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859), American Historian, authored "History of the Conquest of Mexico."
(ON, 10/00, p.5)(WSJ, 8/16/08, p.W6)
1843 In California a land grant established Rancho El Tejon. The area was named El Tejon (the badger) after Spanish soldiers under Lt. Francisco Ruiz discovered the species during an 1805 expedition.
(SFC, 5/9/08, p.A1)
1845 Mar 28, Mexico dropped diplomatic relations with US.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1845 Dec 29, Texas (comprised of the present State of Texas and part of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming) was admitted as the 28th state, with the provision that the area (389, 166 square miles) should be divided into no more than five states "of convenient size." Sam Houston insisted on maintaining control of offshore waters as a condition of joining the union. The annexation of Texas led Mexico and the US to prepare for war.
(AP, 12/29/97)(Econ, 7/1/06, p.29)(SFC, 1/11/20, p.C2)
1846 Jan 13, President James Polk dispatched General Zachary Taylor and 4,000 troops to the Texas Border as war with Mexico loomed. At the outset of the Mexican-American War, the Mexican army numbered 32,000 and the American army consisted of 7,200 men. The American army had, since 1815, only fought against a few Indian tribes. Forty-two percent of the army was made up of recent German or Irish immigrants. In the course of the war, the total U.S. force employed reached 104,000. In 2008 Martin Dugard authored “The Training Ground: Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Davis in the Mexican War, 1846-1848." In 2012 Amy S. Greenberg authored “A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln and the 1846 US Invasion of Mexico."
(HNQ, 2/28/99)(WSJ, 5/16/08, p.W8)(SSFC, 1/6/13, p.F6)
1846 May 8, News reached Washington DC that Mexican troops had attacked a US reconnaissance patrol near the Rio Grande and killed or captured some 40 men. That same afternoon Polk and his cabinet had decided to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Mexico.
(AH, 6/07, p.44)
1846 May 8, The first major battle of the Mexican-American War was fought at Palo Alto, Texas; US forces led by General Zachary Taylor were able to beat back the invading Mexican forces.
(AP, 5/8/07)
1846 May 9, US forced Mexico back to Rio Grande in the Battle of Resaca de la Palma.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1846 May 9, Gen. Mariano Arista crossed the Rio Grande and killed a number of US soldiers in a surprise attack. Mexico believed that France and Britain would support it in a war against the US.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A15)
1846 May 18, US troops attacked at the Rio Grande and occupied Matamoros.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1846 May 24, General Zachary Taylor captured Monterey in the Mexican War. [see Sep 25]
(HN, 5/24/98)
1846 Aug 22, The United States annexed New Mexico. The US pledged to honor the land grants in northern New Mexico that were awarded by the Spanish and Mexican governors of the territory.
(AP, 8/22/97)(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A6)
1846 Sep 25, American General Zachary Taylor's forces captured Monterey, Mexico. [see May 24]
(HN, 9/25/98)
1846 Nov 16, General Zachary Taylor took Saltillo, Mexico. General, cried Brig. Gen. John Wool in despair, we are whipped! I know it, replied Maj. Gen. Zachary Taylor, but the volunteers don't know it. Let them alone; we'll see what they do.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1846 Dec 6, Mounted Californio lancers overwhelmed the troops of Gen. Steven Kearny at the Battle of San Pasqual (San Diego). This was the worst defeat suffered by US troops in the California campaign of the Mexican-American War.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_San_Pasqual)(SFC, 9/1/18, p.C1)
c1846 Santa Anna was recalled to serve as president and to lead the army.
(WSJ, 5/29/98, p.W10)
1846-1848 US troops invaded and captured Mexico City.
(SFC, 12/10/96, p.A12)
1847 Jan 24, 1,500 New Mexican Indians and Mexicans were defeated by US Col. Price.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1847 Feb 22, In the Battle of Buena Vista US troops beat Mexican army during the Mexican-American War. Mexican General Santa Anna (of Alamo infamy) surrounded the outnumbered forces of U.S. General Zachary Taylor ('Old Rough and Ready') at the Angostura Pass in Mexico and demanded an immediate surrender. Taylor refused, reported to reply, "Tell him to go to hell," and early the next morning Santa Anna dispatched some 15,000 troops to move against the 5,000 Americans. The superior US artillery was able to halt one of the two advancing Mexican divisions. By the afternoon Taylor had lived up to his word as the Mexicans began to withdraw.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1847 Feb 23, U.S. troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor defeated Mexican Gen. Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista in Mexico. The United States and Mexico had been at war over territorial disputes since May 1846.
(AP, 2/23/98)(HN, 2/23/98)
1847 Feb 28, Colonel Alexander Doniphan and his ragtag Missouri Mounted Volunteers rode to victory at the Battle of Sacramento, during the Mexican War.
(HN, 2/28/99)
1847 Mar 7, U.S. General Scott occupied Veracruz, Mexico. Pres. Polk decided to attack the heart of Mexico. He sent Gen. Winfield Scott, who landed at Veracruz and with his troops hacked their way to Mexico City. [see Mar 9]
(HFA, '96, p.48)(HN, 3/7/98)
1847 Mar 9, US forces under General Winfield Scott invaded Mexico (Mexican-American War) 3 miles south of Vera Cruz. Encountering almost no resistance from the Mexicans massed in the fortified city of Vera Cruz, by nightfall the last of Scott's 10,000 men came ashore without the loss of a single life. It was the largest amphibious landing in U.S. history until WW II. [see Mar 7]
(MC, 3/9/02)
1847 Mar 29, Some 12,000 US forces led by General Winfield Scott occupied the city of Vera Cruz after Mexican defenders capitulated.
(HFA, '96, p.26)(AP, 3/29/97)(MC, 3/29/02)
1847 Apr 18, U.S. forces defeated the Mexicans at Cerro Gordo in one of the bloodiest battle of the war.
(HN, 4/18/99)
1847 Aug 20, General Winfield Scott won the battle of Churubusco on his drive to Mexico City. The Mexican War gave future civil war generals their first taste of combat.
(HN, 8/20/98)
1847 Sep 8, The US under Gen. Scott defeated Mexicans at Battle of Molino del Rey.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1847 Sep 13, US General Winfield Scott took Chapultepec, removing the last obstacle to his troops moving on Mexico City. Six teenage military cadets later became known as “Los Ninos Heroes" for their defense of Chapultepec Castle.
(HN, 9/13/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni%C3%B1os_H%C3%A9roes)
1847 Sep 14, US forces under Gen. Winfield Scott took control of Mexico City (the "Halls of Montezuma"). The Mexican forces fled with their leader, Santa Anna.
(HFA, '96, p.48)(AP, 9/14/97)
1847-1901 The Caste War of Yucatan extended over this period. it began with the revolt of the native Maya people against the population of European descent (called Yucatecos) in political and economic control. In 2017 the wreck of paddle-wheel steamboat "La Union," which had carried Mayan people during this period into virtual slavery to Cuba, was found.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_War_of_Yucat%C3%A1n)(SFC, 9/16/20, p.A2)
1848 Feb 2, US and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexico ceded one-third of its territory to the US including California, agreed to the Rio Grande as the boundary between Texas and Mexico and was awarded $15 million. 25,000 Mexicans and 12,000 Americans lost their lives in the 17-month old conflict.
(HFA, ‘96, p.48)(SFC, 6/13/96, p.A17)(HN, 2/2/99)
1848 Mar 10, The US Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war with Mexico.
(AP, 3/10/98)(HN, 3/10/98)
1848 May 30, Mexico ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo giving US: New Mexico, California and parts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona & Colorado in return for $15 million.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1848 Mexico was forced to sell most of the territory that is now Arizona to the United States following its defeat in the Mexican-American war.
(AP, 5/20/10)
1852 Capt. Charles Melville Scammon, a whaler, discovered the spawning area of the Pacific gray whales in the lagoons of Magdalena Bay off the Baha coast.
(SFEM, 5/7/00, p.9)
1853 Oct 15, William Walker set out from San Francisco with 45 men to conquer the Mexican territories of Baja California Territory and Sonora State. He succeeded in capturing La Paz, the capital of sparsely populated Baja California, which he declared the capital of a new Republic of Lower California, with himself as president and his former law partner, Henry P. Watkins, as vice president. He then put the region under the laws of the American state of Louisiana, which made slavery legal.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walker_(filibuster))(SFC, 8/1/15, p.C2)
1853 Benito Juarez, patriot and reformer, was locked up for 11 days in the dungeon of the fortress of San Juan de Ulua in Veracruz.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1854 Jan 10, William Walker proclaimed the independence of lower California, calling it the Republic of Sonora. A serious lack of supplies, discontent within his party and an unexpectedly strong resistance by the Mexican government quickly forced Walker to retreat and return to San Francisco where he was tried but quickly acquitted.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Sonora)(SFC, 8/1/15, p.C2)
1854 Aug 12, French adventurer Count Gaston Raousset-Boulbon (b.1817) was shot and killed by a Mexican firing squad. He had led some 112 gold miners from California’s Tuolumne County on an invasion of Mexico.
(https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_de_Raousset-Boulbon)(SFC, 9/5/15, p.C2)
1854 Julia Pastrana (20) became known as the "ape woman" after she left the Mexico’s Pacific coast state of Sinaloa. A rare genetic condition covered her face in thick hair. She was taken around the United States by showman Theodore Lent. She and Lent married and had a son, but she developed a fever related to complications from childbirth, and died along with her baby in 1860 in Moscow. In 2013 the University of Oslo, Norway, shipped her remains back to Sinaloa, where they were laid to rest.
(AP, 2/13/13)
1855-1926 An estimated 3,350 gray whales were harpooned in Magdalena Bay.
(SFEM, 5/7/00, p.9)
1858 Jan 21, Felix Marma Zuloaga became president of Mexico upon the ouster of Ignacio Comonfort.
(AP, 1/21/08)
1858 Apr 15, At the Battle of Azimghur, Mexicans defeated the Spanish loyalists.
(HN, 4/15/98)
1858 May 4, In the Mexican War of Reform liberals established their capital at Vera Cruz.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1858 Dec, Mexico's War for Liberal Reform, a three-year civil war lasting from December 1857 to December 1860, was fought between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party over the Constitution of 1857, promulgated under the liberal presidency of Ignacio Comonfort.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_War)
1858-1862 Benito Juarez served his 1st term as president. He succeeded in resisting the French and offered a moment of democracy before bending the constitution to stand for re-election.
(WUD, 1994, p.772)(SFC, 4/5/01, p.A12)
1859 Melchor Ocampo, a Mexican lawyer, scientist and liberal politician, penned a 537-word ode to marriage, which was incorporated as the vows in a new civil marriage law. They were meant to replace religious vows as Mexican liberals stripped away the Roman Catholic Church’s control over much of the country’s political, social and economic life. Conservative foes summarily executed Ocampo by firing squad for promoting the separation of church and state, but kept the amended vows in the new civil marriage law.
(AP, 7/30/06)
1860 In Mexico City the Hosteria de Santo Domingo restaurant began serving Chile en Nogada, a chili dish that displays the national colors (green, white & red).
(WSJ, 9/5/96, p.B1)
1861 Dec, French, British and Spanish troops landed at Veracruz, Mexico, seeking to force Benito Juarez to resume his financial obligations.
(PCh, 1992, p.485)
1862 May 5, At the Battle of Pueblo, a [2,000] 5,000 man Mexican force (cavalry), loyal to Benito Juarez and under the leadership of Gen’l. Ignacio Zaragoza, defeated 6,000 [10,000] French troops sent by Napoleon III. The French were attempting to capture Puebla de Los Angeles, a small town in east-central Mexico. The Battle of Puebla represented a great moral victory for the Mexican government, symbolizing the country's ability to defend its sovereignty against threat by a powerful foreign nation. The event became memorialized in the Cinco de Mayo annual festival. Napoleon had intended to march through to the US and help the Confederacy in the Civil War.
(SFEM, 4/27/97, p.6)(AP, 5/5/97)(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T8)(SFC, 5/1/99, p.A13)(WSJ, 5/5/00, p.W17)(MC, 5/5/02)
1863 Jun 7, Mexico City was captured by French troops.
(HN, 6/7/98)
1863 French forces captured Puebla.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6)
1864 Apr 10, The French crowned Archduke Maximilian, the younger brother of Austria’s Franz Josef, as ruler of Mexico.
(CLTIH, 4/10/96)(WSJ, 5/5/00, p.W17)
1864 May 29, Mexican Emperor Maximilian arrived at Vera Cruz.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1867 May 5, At the Battle of Puebla, the Mexican Juarez forces under Mariano Escobedo defeated Maximilian's forces at Gueratero.
(HN, 5/5/98)(PCh, 1992, p.505)
1867 Jun 19, Mexican Emperor and Austrian Archduke Maximillian (35) was executed on the orders of Benito Juarez by a firing squad in Queretaro. The event was immortalized in a painting by Manet.
(HN, 6/19/98)(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T10)(PCh, 1992, p.505)(WSJ, 5/5/00, p.17)
1867-1871 Benito Juarez served his 2ndt term as president.
(WUD, 1994, p.772)(SFC, 4/5/01, p.A12)
1869 The Santo Madero Church was built in Parras de la Fuente.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1870 Tequila Herradura began producing tequila at the Hacienda San Jose del Refugio in the highlands of Jalisco state. Their tequila was made from 100% blue-agave juice.
(WSJ, 5/3/99, p.A1)
1872 Jul 18, Benito Juarez (66), general (battle of Acapulco) and Pres. of Mexico (1858-1872), died of a heart attack in the National Palace.
(MC, 7/18/02)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1875 Oct 12, Mayan Indians attacked the Xuxub sugar plantation in the Yucatan and dozens of workers were killed or taken captive. Bernadino Cen, the Mayan leader, was killed when the Mexican National Guard arrived the next day. In 2004 Paul Sullivan authored “Xuxub Must Die."
(WSJ, 5/13/04, p.D10)
1875 In the early autumn Brigham Young sent Daniel W. Jones and five elders on horseback to Mexico. During the 3,000-mile trip, the missionaries stopped frequently in New Mexico and Arizona, preaching the gospel and converting Indians. Jones and his team arrived in Franklin, Texas, (El Paso) in 1876, crossing through present-day Juarez. They were warmly welcomed by Mexican officials.
(www.epcc.edu/nwlibrary/borderlands/19_mormons.htm)
1876 Jun 20, Antonio L de Santa Ana, president of Mexico and victor at Alamo, died.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1876 Nov 28, Porfirio Diaz (1830-1915) rose to the presidency following a coup. He was an economically progressive leader, imposed brutal order on the countryside and liberated Mexico City from its perennial floods. Díaz was forced to resign in May 1911 and went into exile in Paris, where he died four years later.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 12/14/00, p.A1)
1877 Jun 1, U.S. troops were authorized to pursue bandits into Mexico.
(DT internet 6/1/97)
1877 Oct 4, Pancho Villa (d.1923), [Doroteo Arango], Mexican revolutionary rebel, was born. [see Jun 5, 1878]
(MC, 10/4/01)
1878 Jun 5, Francisco "Pancho" Villa (d.1923), Mexican revolutionary and guerrilla leader, was born. He defied American General John J. Pershing’s expedition for him. [see Oct 4, 1877]
(HN, 6/5/99)
1878 Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala (d.1963) was born in Mexico. She co-founded the Congregation of the Servants of Saint Margaret Mary and the Poor and was beatified in 2004.
(AP, 4/25/04)
1879 Aug 8, Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary who occupied Mexico City three times, was born in Anenecuilco, Morelos state, Mexico.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Zapata)
1880 Oct 14, Apache leader Victorio was slain in Mexico. [see Oct 15]
(HN, 10/14/98)
1880 Oct 15, Victorio, feared leader of the Minbreno Apache, was killed by Mexican troops in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. [see Oct 14]
(HN, 10/15/98)
1880s The Palace of Justice in Vallodolid, Mexico, was built by Belgian engineer Guillermo Wodon de Sorinne.
(SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C11)
1883 Aug 8, Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary who occupied Mexico City three times, was born. [see 1877].
(HN, 8/8/98)(WUD, 1994 p.1659)
1885 May 15, Mormons began an exodus from the United States into Mexico. Chihuahua Governor Ochoa had agreed to sell land to the Mormons to colonize. Church President John Taylor had explored the area and church officials selected Casas Grandes, a valley in the state of Chihuahua, as the place to begin settlement.
(www.epcc.edu/nwlibrary/borderlands/19_mormons.htm)
1886 Dec 8, Diego Rivera (d.1957), Mexican painter, was born in Guanajuato.
(SSFC, 8/19/12, p.P2)
1886 The Tequila San Matias company in Guadalajara began tequila production.
(SFEC,10/19/97, Z1 p.4)
1888 In Mexico the Santo Tomas Winery was founded near Ensenada.
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.E3)
1889 After the Paris World Fair a church designed by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was dismantled and shipped to Santa Rosalia in Baja, Mexico.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T11)
1891 In Mexico the El Palacio de Hierro (The Iron Palace) chain of stores was founded to bring Parisian fashion to posh ladies of the new world.
(Econ, 12/8/12, p.67)
1892 In Merida the Palacio de Gobierno was built on the site of the governors’ palace.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1893 Don Evaristo Madero, grandfather of Francisco Madero, bought the San Lorenzo Hacienda and winery.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1894 Edward Herbert Thompson, American consul, purchased land in the Yucatan that contained the ruins of the Mayan city of Chichen Itza.
(ON, 5/02, p.6)
1895 Feb 14, Nigel Bruce, actor (Dr Watson in Sherlock Holmes movies), was born in Baja, Mexico.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1895 Sep 22, Paul Muni, actor (Academy Award 1936-Angel on My Shoulder), was born in Juarez.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1896 Amado Nervo (1870-1919), Mexican poet, journalist and educator. published "The Elysian Fields of Tabasco." Here he noted how families in Tabasco used classical names for newborns rather than saints' names.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amado_Nervo)(Econ., 10/3/20, p.28)
1896 Moises Saba Amigo arrived in Mexico from Aleppo, Syria. He was part of a large migration of Jews known as "Turcos" from Syria and Palestine whose passports were issued by Ottoman Turkey. He started peddling dry goods and moved up to a chain of stores, then textiles. The family savings were put into real estate. The Saba family were billionaires by 1997.
(WSJ, 8/22/97, p.A10)
1898 May 31, German List (d.1998) was born in Puebla. He became a poet and chronicled the Mexican Revolution from 1910-1920.
(SFC, 10/20/98, p.A22)
1900 Dec 31, In Mexico it was rumored in San Jose de Gracia, Michoacan state, that the world would come to an end on this date. A 1968 biography of this was recorded in "Pueblo en Vilo" (Town on Edge) by Luis Gonzalez y Gonzales, considered to be the founder of microhistory in Mexico.
(Econ., 10/3/20, p.71)
1899 Dec 31, Silvestre Revueltas (d.1940), violinist, conductor and composer (Sensemaya), was born in Santiago, Papasquiaro, Mexico.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvestre_Revueltas)
1900 Jose Eca de Queiroz, Portuguese novelist, died. His novels included an 1875 satire about a priest struggling with his vows of celibacy. It was made into a Mexican film "El Crimen del Padre Amaro" (The Crime of Father Amaro) in 2002.
(AP, 8/9/02)
1900-1908 In Merida the Teatro Peon Contreras was built during the boom years of henequen trade. A thorny agave plant provided a natural rope fiber, sisal, that made the Yucatan plantation owners rich until synthetic ropes were developed.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1900-1910 Simon Bley, banker and politician, served as the mayor of Hermosillo.
(SFC, 11/2/99, p.A26)
1901 Feb 2, Mexican government troops were badly beaten by Yaqui Indians.
(HN, 2/2/99)
1901 A silver refinery was established in Torreon in Coahuila state. Land for housing was sold next to the area in the 1970’s and in 1998 a pediatrician began noticing high levels of lead among the children. The Met Mex Penoles plant had created a mountain of slag over the years and poisonous lead seeped into the blood of thousands of children in the area. In 1999 a plan was announced to evacuate a 20-block area. 393 homes were to be bulldozed for a 15-acre buffer zone in a $36 million cleanup program, the largest ever by a Mexican company.
(SFC, 5/6/99, p.C2)(Econ, 9/3/11, p.37)
1901 Colorado River water first flowed to California's arid southeast on the Alamo Canal, which dipped into Mexico. California farmers soon decided they needed a canal completely within the United States, leading to completion of the All-American Canal in 1942.
(AP, 3/18/06)(Econ, 8/1/09, p.71)
1902 A massacre by Mexican federal troops, "the Battle of the Sierra Mazatan," killed about 150 Yaqui men, women and children. US anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka came upon some of the bodies while they were still decaying, hacked off the heads with a machete and boiled them to remove the flesh for his study of Mexico's "races." He sent the resulting collection to the New York museum. In 2009 Yaqui Indians buried their lost warriors after a two-year effort to rescue the remains from New York's American Museum of Natural History.
(AP, 11/17/09)
1903 El Teatro Juarez was completed in Guanajuato after 20 years of construction.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.D6)
1904-1909 Edward Herbert Thompson led dredging operations at the sacred well of Chichen Itza.
(ON, 5/02, p.7)
1905 Aug 3, Dolores Del Rio, actress (What Price Glory?), was born in Mexico.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1905 Mexico’s Islas Marias penal colony was founded. It was about 112 kms (70 miles) from the mainland Pacific coast resort of Puerto Vallarta. The Maria Madre island penal colony was ordered closed in 2019.
(AP, 11/24/11)(AP, 2/18/19)
1905 In Mexico Pres. Diaz and his finance minister, Jose Limantour, set a silver-gold parity of 32:1, that proved to be a deflationary mistake on the eve of revolution.
(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1906 The Cemex company was founded in Mexico with the opening of Cementos Hidalgo. In 1920 Cementos Portland Monterrey began operations and in 1931 the 2 companies merged to become Cementos Mexicanos.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cemex)
1907 Jul 6, Artist Frida Kahlo (d.1954) was born in Coyoacan, Mexico.
(SFC, 4/18/96, E-1)(SFC, 7/14/96, p.C11)(AP, 7/6/07)
1907 Jul 8, George W. Romney, later governor of Michigan, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico. He later was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination until he admitted that he had been "brainwashed" by the military on the Vietnam War.
(HN, 7/8/98)(SSFC, 2/25/07, p.A4)
1908 Jul 18, Lupe Velez (d.1944), film star, was born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Her over 40 films included “The Gaucho" (1927).
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0892473/)(www.youtube.com/watch?v=mArs7CMZYtg)
1908 In Mexico at least 5,000 Yaqui had been sold into slavery by this time. During the 34-year rule of Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz (1876-1911), the government repeatedly provoked the Yaqui remaining in Sonora to rebellion in order to seize their land for exploitation by investors for both mining and agricultural use.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaqui)
1909 The legendary Jesus Malverde, a Mexican Robin Hood who rode the hills around Culiacan in Sinaloa State, was supposedly hanged by the government and left to rot. The legendary crime figure became revered as a saint by many of the country's drug traffickers. In 2007 housewife Maria Alicia Pulido Sanchez built him a shrine in Mexico City after her son Marcos Abel recovered from injuries he suffered in a December 2005 car crash in just three days when she prayed to a Malverde statue a friend had given her.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.A14)(AP, 1/23/07)
1910 Jun 20, Mexican President Porfirio Diaz proclaimed martial law and arrested hundreds.
(HN, 6/20/98)
1910 Nov 18, The first shots of the revolution were fired in Puebla when federal police attacked the home of Aquiles Serdan, a shoe store owner agitating against Diaz.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6)
1910 Nov 20, Revolution broke out in Mexico. Francisco I. Madero called for a rise to national arms on this day when dictator Porfirio Diaz reneged on his pledge to stay out of the presidential election.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6) (AP, 11/20/97)
1910 The Revolution became a consuming civil war.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.D8)
1910 The National Autonomous University of Mexico was re-founded after being closed for 39 years due to civil wars.
(WSJ, 9/1/99, p.A8)
1910-1920 Over 1 million people died during the revolution.
(SFC, 10/20/98, p.A22)
1911 Jan 24, U.S. Cavalry was sent to preserve the neutrality of the Rio Grande during the Mexican Civil War.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1911 Jan, A pair of U.S. Army aviators dropped the first live bomb. The Mexican Revolution gave the opportunity to use the airplane in actual combat. Airplanes had already begun to replace balloons for battlefield observation.
(HNQ, 7/16/00)
1911 Mar 7, The United States sent 20,000 troops to the Mexican border in the wake of the Mexican Revolution.
(AP, 3/7/98)
1911 Mar 12, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, president of Mexico, was born.
(HN, 3/12/98)
1911 May 13, In Mexico revolutionary troops overan the city of Torreon. 303 Chinese men, women and children were killed over the next 3 days by a local mob and the revolutionary forces of Francisco I. Madero. In 2021 Pres. Andres manuel Lopez Obrador presented an apology for the massacre.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre%C3%B3n_massacre)(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A4)
1911 May 25, Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico, resigned his office under pressure from the revolution.
(HN, 5/25/98)(SC, 5/25/02)
1911 May 26, Porfirio Diaz caught a train from Mexico City’s San Lazaro station to Veracruz.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A23)
1911 Jun 21, Porfirio Diaz, the ex-president of Mexico, exiled himself to Paris.
(HN, 6/21/98)
1911 Aug 12, Cantinflas (d.1993), comedian and film star, was born in Mexico City as Mario Moreno.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantinflas)
1911 Nov 28, Zapata proclaimed Plan of Ayala, Mexico.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1911-1912 During the Revolution the crime rate rose in double digits for two years in a row
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.A14)
1911-1913 Francisco Indalecio Madero, revolutionary and political leader, served as president.
(WUD, 1994, p.861)
1912 Mar 29, The U.S. sent rifles to the Mexican ambassador in Mexico City and readied U.S. ships to transport troops to fight the rebels.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1912 Pancho Villa, a former bandit, returned to Mexico from the US with a tiny band of men that he built into the "Division del Norte."
(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A2)
1913 Jan 20, Jose Guadalupe Posada, Mexican cartoonist, died. He had created Catrina, the Skeleton Lady in her elegant broad-brimmed hat in a satirical engraving sometime between 1910 and his death. Her image grew over the years to symbolize Mexico’s Day of the Dead.
(AP, 10/31/13)
1913 Feb 9-1913 Feb 18, The 10 Day Tragedy of Mexico City when 3,000 died.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1913 Apr 9, Pancho Villa and his men stole 122 silver bars from a train in Northern Mexico. The silver was then valued at about $160,000 and in 1999 would be $2.6 million. Wells Fargo and its Mexican subsidiary arranged to buy back the silver for cash and gave Villa either $50,000 or 50,000 pesos ($25,000) in exchange for 93 of the 122 bars.
(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A2)
1913 Jun 17, U.S. Marines set sail from San Diego to protect American interests in Mexico.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1913 A coup led by Victoriano Huerta and encouraged by US Ambassador Lane Wilson overthrew and murdered Pres. Madero.
(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1913 The Banco Mercantil in Monterrey, Mexico faced demands by rebel troops to pay tribute to the Revolution or close. The bank spirited millions of dollars in gold bullion to Laredo, Texas. It survived the hostilities by operating "offshore" and returned home in 1916.
(WSJ, 4/1/96, p.A-10)
1913 Mexico’s active Volcan de Fuego, part of the Colima volcano complex, experienced a major eruption. As of 2012 it has erupted more than 40 times since 1576. Only a fraction of the volcano's surface area is in the state of Colima; the majority of its surface area lies over the border in the neighboring state of Jalisco.
(SSFC, 8/19/12, p.P3)(www.gomanzanillo.com/old_articles/volcano/)
1914 Mar 9, US Sen Albert Fall (Teapot Dome) demanded the "Cubanisation of Mexico."
(MC, 3/9/02)
1914 Mar 31, Octavio Paz, Mexican diplomat and Nobel Prize-winning writer, was born.
(HN, 3/31/01)
1914 Apr 9, In the Tampico incident a US ship crew was arrested in Mexico.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1914 Apr 21, U.S. marines occupied Veracruz, Mexico. They stayed for six months.
(HN, 4/21/98)
1914 Jul 15, Mexican president Huerta fled with 2 million pesos to Europe.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1914 Aug 16, Zapata and Pancho Villa over ran Mexico.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1914 Sep 15, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the Punitive Expedition out of Mexico. The Expedition, headed by General John Pershing, had been searching for Pancho Villa, a Mexican revolutionary.
(HN, 9/15/99)
1914 Elmer Jones, a Wells Fargo vice-president, was summoned by Pancho Villa and ordered to continue doing business on the northern railroads seized by Villa. Jones and another official refused and were imprisoned and ordered to be executed. The execution order was not completed and the Wells Fargo officials were rescued. The incident is contained in the book: "Wells Fargo: Advancing the American Frontier."
(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A2)
1914 The Sindicato Mexicano Electricistas (SME) was founded.
(WSJ, 12/3/99, p.A1)
1914 Mexico defaulted on its debt. It was shut out of capital markets for most of the next three decades.
(Econ, 5/2/15, p.63)
1915 Jan 9, Pancho Villa signed a treaty with U.S. General Scott, halting border conflicts.
(HN, 1/9/98)
1915 Jan 18, A train derailed on a steep incline at Colima-Guadalajara, Mexico, and some 600 people were killed.
(MC, 1/18/02)(http://www.emergency-management.net/pass_train.htm)
1915 Apr 21, Anthony Quinn (d.2001), film star, was born in Chihuahua to Frank Quinn and Manuella Oaxaca.
(HN, 4/21/98)(SFC, 6/4/01, p.A17)
1915 Jul 2, Porfirio Diaz, former president of Mexico, died in Paris, France. In 1994 his grandson, Carlos Tello Diaz, authored a study of his grandfather.
(SFC, 12/14/00, p.A8)(WSJ, 8/21/01, p.A14)
1915 Oct 19, US recognized General Venustiano Carranza (opposing Pancho Villa) as the president of Mexico, and imposed an embargo on the shipment of arms to all Mexican territories except those controlled by Carranza.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1915 In Mexico the government freed all prisoners at the fortress of San Juan de Ulua after they defended the fortress during a brief US occupation of Veracruz. The government declared the dungeon closed to prisoners for at least one hundred years.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1915-1916 A number of skirmishes took place between the Texas Rangers and Mexican Americans rebelling under the "Plan de San Diego" and numerous people were killed. Participants included the anarchist Magon brothers, and rebel leader Aniceto Pizana. In 2003 Benjamin Heber Johnson authored "Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Revolution and Its Bloody suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans."
(SSFC, 1/4/04, p.M3)
1915-1920 Venustiano Carranza (1859-1920), revolutionary and political leader, served as president. The army was led by Alvaro Obregon (1880-1928).
(WUD, 1994, p.226,994)
1916 Mar 9, Pancho Villa led 1,500 horsemen in a night raid on Columbus, New Mexico. 18 US soldiers and citizens were killed as the town was looted and burned. President Woodrow Wilson responded by ordering General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing to "pursue and disperse" the bandits. Wilson called out 158,664 National Guard members to deal with the situation.
(HN, 3/9/99)(SFC, 5/17/06, p.A11)(AP, 3/9/07)
1916 Mar 10, US President Woodrow Wilson ordered General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing to pursue and capture Pancho Villa, following Villa’s raid in New Mexico.
(SFC, 3/11/09, p.B2)
1916 Mar 15, General Pershing and his 15,000 troops chased Pancho Villa into Mexico. US troops pursued the guerillas, killing 50 on US soil and 70 more in Mexico. General Pershing failed to capture the Villa dead or alive. Villa was assassinated at Parral in 1923.
(HN, 3/15/98)(MC, 3/15/02)
1916 Mar 19, The First Aerosquadron took off from Columbus, NM, to join Gen. John J. Pershing and his Punitive Expedition for Pancho Villa in Mexico.
(HN, 3/19/99)
1916 Mar 30, Pancho Villa killed 172 at the Guerrero garrison in Mexico.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1916 Mar 31, General Pershing and his army routed Pancho Villa's army in Mexico.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1916 Apr 12, American cavalrymen and Mexican bandit troops clashed at Parrel, Mexico.
(HN, 4/12/99)
1916 Jun 17, American troops under the command of Gen. Jack Pershing marched into Mexico. US Gen’l. Pershing led an unsuccessful punitive expedition against Francisco "Pancho" Villa. [see Mar 31]
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A17)(MC, 6/17/02)
1916 Jun 21, Mexican troops beat a US expeditionary force under Gen Pershing.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1916 The newspaper El Universal was founded.
(SFC, 9/14/96, p.A10)
1917 Jan 19, The Zimmermann Note-a coded message sent to Germany's minister in Mexico by German Foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann, proposed an alliance between Germany and Mexico in the event war broke out between the U.S. and Germany. Intercepted by British naval intelligence, the note proposed, among other things, "We shall give generous financial support, and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona." The message was forwarded by the British to the U.S. State Department, which subsequently released it to the press on March 1.
(HNQ, 7/15/98)
1917 Jan 28, US forces were recalled from Mexico after nearly eleven months of fruitless searching for Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, accused of leading a bloody raid against Columbus, New Mexico.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1917 Feb 5, Mexico's constitution was adopted.
(HFA, '96, p.22)(AP, 2/5/97)
1917 Feb 19, American troops were recalled from the Mexican border.
(HN, 2/19/98)
1917 Feb 28, AP reported that Mexico and Japan would ally with Germany if US enters WW I.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1917 Diego Rivera painted his Cubist "Still Life with Bread and Fruit" while studying in Paris.
(WSJ, 3/17/00, p.W12)
1917 US law began to regulate immigration from Mexico. The US passed special rules to allow Mexicans to enter the US due to the expanding economy.
(Econ, 8/27/16, p.17)(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.5)
1919 Apr 10, Emiliano Zapata (b.c1877), a leader of Mexico's indigenous people during the Mexican Revolution, was assassinated by a government emissary who had come to his southern stronghold in the state of Morelos for peace negotiations. His native language was Nahuatl of the Aztecs.
(SFC, 4/13/96, p.A-10)(MC, 4/10/02)
1919 May 1, In Mexico Pancho Villa married Soledad Seanez Holguin. This was recognized by the state in 1946 after proof showed the pair had both a civil and a church wedding.
(SFC, 7/13/96, p. A19)
c1919 Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros (d.1974) and Diego Rivera, Mexican painters in Paris, decided that the revolution must be expressed in a public art that all could understand.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T5)
1920 Jul 28, Revolutionary and bandit Pancho Villa surrendered to the Mexican government.
(HN, 7/28/98)
1920-1924 Alvaro Obregon (1880-1928), general and statesman, served his first term as president. Obregon was killed by an assassin, who pretended to do his portrait.
(WUD, 1994, p.994)
1921 Fidel Velasquez Sanchez (1900-1997) formed the Union of Milk Workers.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.D8)
1922 Jan 17, Luis Echeverria Alvarez, president Mexico, was born.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1922 Mennonites from Canada and Pennsylvania fled persecution and settled near Chihuahua, Mexico.
(SFEC, 6/1/97, p.T3)(SFEC, 11/5/00, p.T4)
1923 Jul 20, In Mexico Francisco Villa (aka Pancho Villa, b.1877) [Doroteo Arango], general and revolutionist, died in an ambush. In c1999 Friedrich Katz of the Univ. of Chicago published "The Life and Times of Pancho Villa." In 2001 Frank McLynn authored "Villa and Zapata."
(WUD, 1994, p.1593)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A2)(WSJ, 8/21/01, p.A14)(MC, 7/20/02)
1923 Photographers Edward Weston (1886-1958) and Tina Modotti (1896-1942) set up shop in Mexico.
(WSJ, 3/12/97, p.A16)
1924 Jan 16, Katy Jurado (d.2002), Mexican-US film actress, was born as Maria Cristina Jurado Garcia in Guadalajara.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A19)
1924 Jan 24, The wedding of Alma Reed, a New York Times reporter, and Felipe Carrillo, governor of the Yucatan, was to have taken place. Carrillo was executed in Merida, a few days before the wedding, by hacienda owners angry over his planned reforms.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1924 The government gave local peasants title to more than 45 sq. miles of land in Mulege on the Baha Peninsula. It was part of a huge nationwide redistribution of land after the Revolution.
(SFC, 1/31/97, p.A4)
1924 US labor leader Samuel Gompers visited Mexico.
(SFC, 1/22/98, p.E3)
1924-1928 Plutarco Elias Calles served as president.
(WUD, 1994, p.211)
1925 There was eruption of Popocatepetl volcano outside Mexico City.
(SFC, 7/2/97, p.A9)
1926 Feb 11, The Mexican government nationalized all church property. Pres. Plutarco Elias Calles, founder of the modern Mexican political system, tried to suppress the Church. This fomented the Cristiada, 3 years of rebellion and outright war.
(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(Econ, 1/11/14, p.30)
1926 The evangelical church "Light of the World" was founded by the father of Samuel Joaquin Flores.
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A8,10)
1926-1929 In the "Cristero Wars" several thousand Catholic lay people and priests were killed in Mexico for opposing landowning and political restrictions placed against the church.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristero_War)(WSJ, 11/22/96, p.A12)
1927 Jan 12, U.S. Secretary of State Kellogg claimed that Mexican rebel Plutarco Calles was aiding the communist plot in Nicaragua.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1927 Apr, The last major battle between the Mexican Army and the Yaqui Indians was fought at Cerro del Gallo Mountain. By employing heavy artillery, machine guns, and planes of the Mexican Air Force to shell, bomb, and strafe Yaqui villages, Mexican authorities eventually prevailed.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaqui)
1927 Dec 25, Mexican congress opened land to foreign investors, reversing the 1917 ban enacted to preserve the domestic economy.
(HN, 12/25/98)
1928 Feb 25, In Mexico Toribio Romo Gonzalez (b.1900), a Catholic priest, was killed during the Cristero War. He was canonized as a saint on May 21, 2000, by Pope John Paul II, and later came to be regarded as the patron saint of migrants.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toribio_Romo_Gonz%C3%A1lez)(SFC, 7/17/14, p.D2)
1928 Mar 27, The U.S. accepted the new oil-land laws enacted by Mexico, ending a long-standing dispute between Mexico and the United States.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1928 Jul 28, Mexico's Pres.-elect Alvaro Obregon was murdered. His assassin Juan Excapulario was captured.
(SFC, 7/18/03, p.E5)
1928 Nov 11, Carlos Fuentes, Mexican novelist, was born.
(HN, 11/11/00)
1928 The city of Taxco, famous for its silver shops, was declared a national monument. The highway from Mexico City reached Taxco.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T6)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T7)
1928 Rufino Tamayo painted his "Still Life With Corn."
(WSJ, 3/17/00, p.W12)
1929 The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) began ruling. It was initially called the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) and was cemented by Plutarco Elias Calles. The party was decreed into existence by the incumbent president to reconcile the violent, post-revolutionary factions.
(SFC, 12/14/96, p.A12)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 10/13/97, p.A1)
1929 William Spratling, an architecture professor from Tulane Univ. recruited goldsmiths to teach local men in Taxco and inspired a silver arts renaissance.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T7)
1929-1935 In the US a massive involuntary migration of Mexicans took place as hundreds of thousands of Mexicans were deported south on cattle cars.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.12)
1930 Pres. Pascual Ortiz Rubio was wounded in an assassination attempt the day he took office. From this point till 2000 the sale and public display of alcoholic beverages were banned during patriotic events.
(SFC, 9/16/00, p.A14)
1930 Photographer Tina Modotti was deported from Mexico for her political activities. She bequeathed her photography position at Mexican Folkways Magazine to Alvarez Bravo.
(WSJ, 3/12/97, p.A16)
1930s Sergei Eisenstein made his film "Que Viva Mexico."
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.E3)
1930s Fidel Velasquez Sanchez (1900-1997), a Mexico City baker [dairy worker], rose to power in the union movement. He was a strong anti-communist and rewarded his friends with money and power. He led the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) for 56 years.
(SFC, 6/21/97, p.A10,12)(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.D8)
1930-1939 During the 1930s Great Depression, counties and cities in the American Southwest and Midwest forced Mexican immigrants and their families to leave the US over concerns they were taking jobs away from whites despite their legal right to stay. Around 500,000 to 1 million Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans were pushed out of the US.
(AP, 8/30/15)
1931 Cementos Mexicanos, later called Cemex, was formed when two companies in Monterey joined forces, including one founded by Lorenzo Zambrano Gutierrez.
(WSJ, 12/11/08, p.A14)
1932 David Alfaro Sigueiros, Mexican artist, arrived in Los Angeles to teach at the LA Art School and spent seven months there. He experimented with new industrial tools and created large outdoor murals. His 80x18 foot mural, “La America Tropical," on City Hall on Olvera Street, commissioned by Christine Sterling, was painted over following completion. Soon thereafter his request for a visa renewal was denied. In 2006 LA and the Getty Foundation began a $7.7 million project to restore the work.
(SFC, 8/4/06, p.E7)(Econ, 9/25/10, p.103)
1932 Mexico abolished the death penalty.
(SFC, 1/16/02, p.A3)
1932 The Los Flamingos Hotel was built in Acapulco, Mexico. John Wayne and a number of Hollywood pals bought it in 1954 and closed it to the public.
(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.C6)
1932 At Monte Alban in the Oaxaca valley the spectacular Tomb 7 was verified as a Zapotec burial chamber.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.A24)
1933 Petromex was formed during the presidency of Abelardo L. Rodriguez.
(www.trinity.edu/jgonzal1/341f96g1.html)
1934 Nov 30, Lazaro Cardenas, following July elections, began serving as PRI president (1934-1940) of Mexico.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, p.A26)
1935 Apr 10, Jorge Mester, conductor (Louisville Orch 1967-79), was born in Mexico City.
(MC, 4/10/02)
1935 Casino gambling was outlawed in Mexico.
(SFC, 6/8/96, p.A7)
1936 Diego Rivera painted "Portrait of the Poet Lalane."
(WSJ, 9/8/00, p.W8)
1936 The Mexican film "Alla en el Rancho" starred cowboy singer Tito Guizar (d.1999 at 91)
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.C5)
1937 Jan 30, Mexico's Pres. Lazaro Cardenas created the AGPN, "Administracion General del Petroleo Nacional." The AGPN became a public organism that would guide the Mexican oil industry. The creation of the AGPN constituted the transformation of Petromex into a publicly driven firm.
(www.trinity.edu/jgonzal1/341f96g1.html)
1937 Enriquez Alferez (d.1999 at 98), Mexican artist, created his "Fountain of the Four Winds" for the New Orleans Lakefront Airport. One of the 4 figures of the sculpture was a well-endowed nude male.
(SFC, 9/14/99, p.A23)
1938 Mar 18, Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized his country's petroleum reserves and took control of foreign-owned oil facilities.
(WSJ, 3/20/96, p.A-1)(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A15)(AP, 3/18/08)
1938 Mar 27, The U.S. stopped buying Mexican silver in reprisal for the Mexican seizure of American oil companies.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1938 Jun 6, Bishop Rafael Guizar Valencia (b.1878) died in Mexico City. He had risked his life to tend the wounded during Mexico’s revolution. In 2006 Pope Benedict XVI named him a saint.
(SFC, 10/16/06, p.A2)
1938 Nov 12, Mexico agreed to compensate the U.S. for land seizures.
(HN, 11/12/98)
1938 Nov 24, Mexico seized oil land adjacent to Texas.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1939 The National Action Party (PAN) was founded in the state of Chihuahua.
(WSJ, 7/1/98, p.A1)
1940 Jul, Avila Camacho was elected president of Mexico. He agreed to compensate the multi-nationals for their oil losses and a new market for Mexican oil opened, i.e. the US.
(www.mexconnect.com)
1940 Aug 20, Ramon Mercador (Mercader) del Rio, a Spanish Communist, posed as a Canadian businessman (aka Frank Jackson) and fatally wounded Leon Trotsky with an alpine ax to the back of the head in Mexico City. Trotsky died the next day.
(WSJ, 3/29/96, p.A-14)(TMC, 1994, p.1940)(SFC, 7/19/96, p.B1)(HN, 8/20/01)
1940 Aug 21, Leon Trotsky, exiled Communist revolutionary, died in Mexico City from wounds inflicted by an assassin the day before. Earlier this year Josef Grigulevich (27), a Lithuania-born KGB agent, established a safe house at Zook's Pharmacy in Santa Fe, NM, for the assassins of Leon Trotsky. The pharmacy, visible in archive photos, was replaced in 1990 by a Haagen-Dazs ice cream shop. Grigulevich was recruited by Soviet strongman Josef Stalin's secret police as a university student in Paris and learned the assassin's trade during the Spanish civil war. He later published 58 books on Latin American history. In 2011 intelligence expert E.B. Held authored "A Spy's Guide to Albuquerque and Santa Fe."
(AP, 8/21/08)(AFP, 2/4/11)
1940 Oct 5, Silvestre Revueltas, Mexican composer: Cuauhnahuac/Planos, died at 40.
(MC, 10/5/01)
1940 Mexico's President Lazaro Cardenas legalized heroin and opened injection rooms. The US cutoff supplies of morphine, a heroin substitute, and Cardenas retreated.
(Econ., 11/21/20, p.30)
1940 Andre Breton held the Int’l. Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City. Included was the photograph "The Good Reputation Sleeping" by Alvarez Bravo.
(WSJ, 3/12/97, p.A16)
1940 The Spanish song "Bésame Mucho" was written Mexican Consuelo Velázquez before her sixteenth birthday. The phrase "besame mucho" can be translated into English as "kiss me a lot". She wrote this song even though she had never been kissed yet at the time. She was inspired by the aria "Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor" from the Spanish 1916 opera Goyescas by Enrique Granados. The lyrics were translated into English by Sunny Skylar.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9same_Mucho)
1940 The Los Angeles city council blocked games of professional women’s football. The LA team went to Mexico and played before a filled stadium.
(SFC, 2/7/03, p.D13)
1940 In Tecate at the foot of Mt. Kuchumaa Rancho La Puerta was opened as a fitness spa, the first in North America.
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.24)
1940 John Steinbeck and marine biologist Doc Ricketts (d.1948) traveled by boat from Monterey to the Sea of Cortez. In 1951 Steinbeck authored "The Log from the Sea of Cortez" based on the trip.
(SFC, 2/22/02, p.A21)
1940s Agustin Andrade and Ignacio Alcazar, cousins, started ice cream shops in Mexico City. Their enterprises expanded and came to be known the La Michoacana ice cream shops. Popsicle shops, known as paleterias, later established the economic base for the village of Tocumbo. Martin Gonzalez later authored a history of Mexico's ice cream industry.
(SFEC, 3/26/00, p.A19)
1940-1955 Mexican cinema turned out some 100 films a year during this period, later dubbed as the golden age of Mexican cinema.
(Econ, 11/20/10, p.45)
1941 In Mexico Rev. Marcial Maciel founded the Legion of Christ, a conservative Roman Catholic order to minister to the wealthy and multiply its beneficial impact on society. In 1946 Pope Pius XII ordered Father Maciel to recruit Latin American leaders. In 1997 8 men went public with allegations of sexual abuse by Father Maciel dating to the 1940s and 1950s.
(WSJ, 1/21/06, p.A13)
1941 Fidel Velasquez Sanchez (1900-1997) was first elected head of the Confederation of Mexican Workers.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.D8)
1941 The film "The Forgotten Village" was made by Herbert Kline. He was assisted by John Steinbeck in the story about peasant life in Mexico.
(SFC, 2/13/99, p.A24)
1942 Jan 5, Tina Modotti (b.1896), Italian born actress, model, photographer and secret agent, died in Mexico City. She had been expelled from Mexico in 1930 but returned incognito in 1939. In 1999 her biography by Pino Cacucci was translated into English.
(SFEC, 7/25/99, BR p.1)(SFC, 9/2/06, p.E3)(http://tinyurl.com/lklsy)
1942 Jul 2, Vincente Fox Quesada, elected president in 2000, was born.
(SFC, 7/3/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 7/3/00, p.A8)
1942 Aug 4, The "Bracero Program," began running under the auspices of the US Dept. of Labor. It sent Mexican workers to the US to help the labor shortage created by World War II. From 1942-1949 10% of their wages was deposited with the National Bank of Rural Credit, Banrural (Banco Nacional de Credito Agricola, a predecessor of Banrural). The program ended in 1964. Workers in 1999 demanded to know the status of the fund. Mexican banking officials in 1999 reported no evidence of the funds. In 2001 a suit for $500 million was filed for deposits and interest from 1942-1949.
(SFC, 8/6/99, p.A16)(SFC, 10/6/99, p.A16)(SSFC, 7/15/01, p.A4)(SFC, 1/16/04, p.A19)
1942 Sep 5, Eduardo Mata, Mexico City Mexico, conductor (Improvisaciones), was born.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1943 The evangelical church "Light of the World" began a relationship with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The cult provided crowds at political rallies in exchange political leverage.
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A8,10)
1943 The Lacandon people of southern Mexico went almost extinct. By 2019 their population had grown significantly, yet remains small, at approximately 650 speakers of the Lacandon language. Their ancestral home in Chiapas state is the last pocket of tropical rain forest in North America.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacandon)(SSFC, 10/13/19, p.A23)
1943 Parcutin Volcano in central Mexico began a 9-year eruption.
(AM, 3/04, p.50)
1944 Jun 1, The government of Mexico abolished the traditional afternoon siesta. [see Apr 1, 1999]
(Web Tech news, 6/1/99)
1944 Mexico and the US signed a treaty allowing cross-border flows of water to each other.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A2)
1944 Dr. Norman Borlaug (b.1914), a microbiologist on the staff of the du Pont de Nemours Foundation, arrived in Mexico to deal with the failure of the wheat crop caused by stem rust. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for developing new strains of wheat as well as systems for fertilizing and nurturing growth.
(WSJ, 1/17/07, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug)
1945 The film "Campeon Sin Corona" (Champion Without a Crown) starred David Silva and was directed by Hector Alejandro Galindo.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.A25)
1946 The Int’l. Whaling Commission prohibited the hunting of gray whales worldwide when their numbers were down to the thousands.
(SFEM, 5/7/00, p.9)
1946-1952 Miguel Aleman Valdez was president of Mexico. He was known as the "Enterprise President." He gave the PRI a pro-business cast and an odor of corruption. He built a showcase campus for UNAM.
(WSJ, 11/19/96, p.A18)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 9/1/99, p.A8)
1947 Jul 20, Carlos Santana, legendary guitar player, was born in Autlan, Mexico.
(SSFC, 10/14/07, Par p.18)
1948 Jan 28, A plane chartered by US Immigration Services left Oakland, Ca., carrying 32 people, including 28 Mexicans. Many were part of the bracero program and had finished their government-sponsored work contracts. 20 miles West of Coalinga an engine exploded, a wing broke off and more than 100 witnesses watched bodies and luggage thrown from the fireball. There were no survivors.
(http://tinyurl.com/ky6debf)
1948 The Mexican film "Nosotros Los Pobres" (We the Poor) starred Katy Jurado (d.2002) and Pedro Infante.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A19)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosotros_los_pobres)
1948 The film "Una Familia de Tantas" (One Family of Many) was directed by Hector Alejandro Galindo.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.A25)
1948 In London, England, Joaquin Capilla (19) of Mexico won a bronze medal for platform diving.
(AP, 5/9/10)
1950 Jul 5, In Mexico City the English-language News newspaper was founded by Romulo O'Farrill, Sr.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_News_(Mexico_City))
1950 Octavio Paz (36), poet and essayist, published "The Labyrinth of Solitude," his classical study of the Mexican character.
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A17)(Econ, 11/18/06, Survey p.4)
1950 The Mexican film "Los Olvidados" was directed by Luis Bunuel. It was released in the US as "The Young and the Damned." It was a study of social pathology among the urban poor in Mexico City.
(WSJ, 3/30/01, p.W6)(SFC, 8/9/07, p.B5)
1950 The Mexican film “Un Dia de Vida" (One Day of Life) by Emilio Fernandez told the story of a dissident army officer sentenced to death for protesting military complicity in the assassination of Emiliano Zapata.
(SFC, 7/7/14, p.E2)
1950 The Mina El Eden in Zacateca was closed.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T3)
1951 Sep 6, William Burroughs (1914-1997), writer, shot and killed his wife Joan Vollmer (27) in Mexico City. He claimed to be trying to shoot a glass off her head, a la William Tell, during a day of drinking and drugs but shot her in the head.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.B6)(Internet)
1951 Oct 15, Dr. Carl Djerassi (27), Prof. of chemistry at Stanford Univ., developed the birth control pill in Mexico City while working for Palo Alto based Syntex Corp. He synthesized norethindrone, a steroid oral contraceptive. In 2001 Carl Djerassi authored "This Man’s Pill: Reflections on the 50th Birthday of the Pill." Djerassi synthesized a key hormone in the pill in Mexico City in 1951. Serle won FDA ok to market the pill May 11, 1960.
(SJSVB, 4/8/96, p.8)(SSFC, 10/14/01, Par p.13)(SSFC, 10/21/01, p.R6)
1951 Dec. 17, Raul and Carlos Salinas, aged 5 and 3, played with their friend Gustavo Zapata at their home in Mexico City. While playing they snatched a rifle from a closet and shot a servant just below the eye, killed her and continued playing. Newspaper reports of the time indicated that Carlos pulled the trigger.
(WSJ, 2/8/96, p.A-6)
1951 Dec 27, Ernesto Zedillo was born.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A20)
1952 The film "El Bruto" starred Katy Jurado (1924-2002) and was directed by Luis Bunuel. Jurado won an Ariel, Mexico’s highest acting award, for her performance.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A19)
1952 In Mexico City Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, built the order’s 1st school, Instituto Cumbres (The Heights), with funds donated by Flora Baragan de Garza, the Monterey widow of one of the wealthiest men in Mexico.
(WSJ, 1/21/06, p.A1)
1952 In Mexico Amalia Hernandez (d.2000 at 83) founded the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, DB p.47)(SFC, 11/8/00, p.B7)
1952 In the 15th Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, Joaquin Capilla (23) of Mexico won an Olympic silver medal, for platform diving.
(AP, 5/9/10)
1952 The sarcophagus of Lord Pakal was found in the ruins at Palenque by Alberto Ruz L’Huiller.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C5)
1952 Petroleum engineers drilled in the Yucatan and found unexpected igneous rock. It was later thought to have come from a comet that hit about 65 million years ago. Sinkholes scattered around the edge of the resulting 112 mile diameter crater were later believed to result from rocks sinking in the center and causing fractures along the perimeter.
(SFC, 2/4/97, p.A9)
1953 Aug, The border town of Guerrero was founded became Guerrero Viejo after a new dam and flood covered the old town and the 2,500 residents moved to the new Guerrero Nuevo.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.C16)
1953 Sybille Bedford (b.1911), German-born English novelist, published her 1st book, “A Visit to Don Otavio," a travelogue of Mexico.
(WSJ, 5/12/05, p.D8)
1953 The Mexican film “Abismos de Pasion" was directed by Luis Bunuel. It was loose adaptation of Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights" and featured Ernesto Alonso (d.2007).
(SFC, 8/9/07, p.B5)
1953 The Mexican film "Espaldas Mojadas" (Wetbacks) was directed by Hector Alejandro Galindo.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.A25)
1953 Mexico allowed women the right to vote.
(SFC, 12/4/97, p.C6)
1953 Speedy Gonzalez, a cartoon mouse with a Mexican accent, debuted in the US.
(AP, 6/30/05)
1954 Jan 16, Mexico closed its borders to all farm laborers heading for the US following a breakdown in negotiations with the US over renewal of an annual agreement on labor flow.
(SFC, 1/16/04, p.E5)
1954 Jul 13, Frida Kahlo (b.1907), artist, died in Mexico City. Her final painting was an incomplete portrait of Joseph Stalin. Hayden Herrera authored her biography in 1983. Raquel Tibol later authored "Frido Kahlo: An Open Life."
(SFC, 4/22/01, p.D3)(WSJ, 7/6/01, p.W11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo)
1954 The Mexican film "And Tomorrow They Will Be Women" featured Sonia Furio (1937-1996).
(SFC, 12/4/96, p.A17)
1954 On the US-Mexican border the 100,000 acre Falcon Lake, near Zapata, Texas, was created on the Rio Grande's old river bed. It was managed by the bi-national International Water Boundary Commission.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20101001/ts_csm/329598)
1954 The French abandoned their copper mines in Santa Rosalia, Baha.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T11)
1955 Apr 3, In Guadalajara, Mexico, a night train plunged into a canyon and some 300 people were killed.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)(AP, 2/18/04)
1955 June, Gordon Wasson, a vice-president of J.P. Morgan, traveled to Mexico and became one of the first outsiders to eat the hallucinogenic psilocybin mushroom.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.78)
1955 The Mexican film “Ensayo de un Crimen" (The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz) was directed by Luis Bunuel and featured Ernesto Alonso.
(SFC, 8/9/07, p.B5)
1955-1969 Enrique Alonso “Cachirulo" (1928- 2004) actor, writer and producer, directed the “Teatro Fantastico" TV show.
(SFC, 8/30/04, p.B4)
1956 Winston Scott (1909-1971) was appointed as the American CIA station chief in Mexico.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKscottW.htm)
1956 In Australia Joaquin Capilla (27) of Mexico won a bronze medal for springboard diving and a gold for platform diving.
(AP, 5/9/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaqu%C3%ADn_Capilla)
1957 Sep 17, Two male attorneys "stood in" as actress Sophia Loren and producer Carlo Ponti were married by proxy in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Legal issues later forced an annulment; the couple wed in Sevres, France, in 1966.
(AP, 9/17/07)
1957 Life magazine printed R. Gordon Wasson’s “Seeking the Magic Mushroom" detailing his experiences at a religious ritual in Mexico. Wasson, a vice-president of J.P. Morgan, experienced the hallucinogenic psilocybin mushroom during a trip to Mexico in 1955.
(WSJ, 7/11/06, p.B10)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.78)
1957 Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, aka the Iron Mayor of Mexico City, opened a new building for street vendors but left out fruit seller Rico Guillermina (1933-1996) and hundreds of others. She began a crusade and formed the Civic Association of Street Vendors which supported the PRI, who in return disregarded the laws controlling street sales.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A19)
1957 Mexico began allowing artists to pay taxes with donations of their artwork after muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros faced jail time for not paying taxes.
(SFC, 7/24/14, p.A4)
1957 Iusacell obtained a mobile radio telephone concession in Mexico.
(WSJ, 8/7/96, p.A10)
1957 Miguel Covarrubias, Mexican muralist, died. His work included murals for the 1939-1940 World’s Fair in San Francisco.
(SFC, 4/20/01, p.A19)
1957 Diego Rivera, artist, died in Mexico City.
(Hem., 1/96, p.50)
1958 Carlos Fuentes (b.1928), Mexican author, published his first novel “Where the Air Is Clear." It was set in Mexico City in 1956-1957 when he was a student there on the G.I. Bill.
(WSJ, 6/14/08, p.W10)
1958 Wrestler Rodolfo Guzman (d.1984) began appearing in films as El Santo (The Saint) and went on to star in dozens of films battling criminals, demons, witches and zombies.
(SFEC, 9/19/99, p.A19)
1959 Peñon Woman was found in central Mexico dating back 13,000 years. She shared many of the features found in the Kennewick Man (1996) of Washington State.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.77)
1960 May 6, Jacques Mornard (Ram¢n Mercader), Trotsky's murderer, was freed in Mexico.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1960 Oct 19, The United States and Mexico agreed to the co-construction of a dam on the Rio Grande.
(HN, 10/19/98)
1961 Oscar Lewis, American anthropologist, authored "The Children of Sanchez." He had interviewed a poor, problem-plagued Mexican family for the book, which became a social science landmark, defining what came to be known as "the anthropology of poverty."
(AP, 1/26/04)
1961 The Flying Samaritans had their beginning when Aileen Saunders was forced to land near El Rosario in Baja, California.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, p.T10)
1961 M.S. Swaminathan, adviser to India’s minister of agriculture, invited Norman Borlaug, a plant geneticist who had improved the yield on Mexican wheat, to visit India.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.29)
1961-1968 Octavio Paz, poet and Nobel laureate, served as the Mexican ambassador to India. In 1997 he published "In Light of India."
(SFEC, 8/31/97, BR p.9)
1962 May 23, Ruben Jaramillo, Mexican agrarian reformer, was assassinated along with his family by state forces.
(SFC, 12/31/96, p.C9)(AP, 5/23/04)
1962 The film "El Santo Against the Vampire Woman" starred Rodolfo Guzman.
(SFEC, 9/19/99, p.A19)
1963 Sep 26, Lee Harvey Oswald traveled on a Continental Trailways bus to Mexico.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1963 Sep 27, Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Cuban consulate in Mexico.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1963 Oct 8, Remedios Varo (b.1908), Spanish-born surrealist painter, died in Mexico. Walter Gruen, her 11-year lover and promoter, collected her work and in 1987 attempted to get copyright protection. A Mexican judge denied his request due to Varo’s failure to get a formal divorce from French poet Benjamin Peret. In 1999 the Mexican government tried to seize the paintings on behalf of Mexico but faced a claim by next of kin niece Beatriz Varo. By 2005 Mr. Gruen agreed to give his entire collection to the Mexican government if it gets named after his deceased daughter.
(http://tinyurl.com/b87uu)(WSJ, 9/20/05, p.A1)
1963 In Mexico during the administration of Lopez Mateos soldiers took part in the mutilation killing of a leader of coffee farmers in the community of El Ticui. The event was documented in a 2006 government report on Mexico’s “dirty war."
(AP, 2/27/06)
1963 Winston Scott served as American CIA station chief in Mexico during the time that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Cuban Embassy there. In 2008 Jefferson Morley authored “Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA." Morley proposed that Scott later covered up CIA operations that involved Oswald.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKscottW.htm)(WSJ, 3/20/08, p.D7)
1963 In Guadalajara, Mexico, Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala (b.1878), co-founder of the Congregation of the Servants of St. Margaret Maria and of the Poor, died in the Santa Margarita Hospital she helped found. Zavala, aka Madre Lupita, had decided at 22 to dedicate herself to helping the sick. Her religious mission played out during a period of tension between church and state, when tens of thousands of people were killed during a 1926-1929 uprising by Roman Catholic rebels against anti-clerical laws. She was beatified in 2004 by Pope John Paul II. In 2013 she was canonized as a saint by Pope Francis.
(AP, 4/24/04)(AP, 5/12/13)
1964 Dec 13, In El Paso, Texas, President Johnson and Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz set off an explosion that diverted the Rio Grande, reshaping the U.S.-Mexican border and ending a century-old dispute.
(AP, 12/13/04)
1964 Luis Bunuel made his film "Simon del Desierto" (Simon of the Desert). It was his last film before returning to Europe. It features an ascetic who gets transported to a go-go bar in Greenwich Village.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.E3)
1964 The John Huston film "Night of the Iguana" starred Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon and Elizabeth Taylor. It was filmed in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and featured the work of cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa (1908-1997).
(SFC, 4/29/97, p.A20)(USAT, 1/16/04, p.1D)
1964 Pres. John F. Kennedy ended the bracero program, begun in 1942, that allowed Mexican guest workers to work in the US.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_program)(Econ, 2/4/17, p.26)
1964 Mexico began producing its own version of the Volkswagen Beetle, known as the el vocho.
(SSFC, 9/14/08, p.A10)
1964 The Moctezuma River in Sonora state was dammed.
(SFC, 5/15/99, p.A11)
1965 Mexico’s Border Industrialization Program (BIP) was first introduced. It led to the construction of foreign-owned maquiladoras (assembly plants) to produce goods for export.
(MT, summer 2003, p.22)
1966 In Mexico the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir was completed in southern Chiapas state.
(SSFC, 10/18/15, p.A5)
1967 Feb 14, The first nuclear weapons free zone was established in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Treaty of Tiatelolco was signed in Mexico City. It banned the manufacture, storage or testing of nuclear weapons and the devices for launching them.
(http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/dnp/sub2.asp?ipage=timeline)
1967 May 18, Schoolteacher Lucio Cabanas began a guerrilla campaign in Atoyac de Alvarez, west of Acapulco in the state of Guerrero. The government responded with widespread repression and hundreds of civilians were killed or disappeared.
(SFEC, 9/30/96, p.A12)
1967 May 29, Geronimo Baqueiro Foster (b.1898), Mexican musicologist and composer, died.
(www.dolmetsch.com/cdefsb.htm)
1968 Feb 4, Neal Cassidy (b.1926), friend of Jack Kerouac and one of the Merry Pranksters, died on a Mexican highway.
(SFC, 7/2/97, p.E5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Cassady)
1968 Oct 2, In Mexico soldiers under Pres. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz used automatic weapons and killed some 300 students in the Mexico City Tlatelolco massacre prior to the start of the summer Olympics. The government said only 50 students were killed during gunfire that lasted 5 hours. Luis Echeverria, later president, was the interior minister and the man in charge of public security. He was called before a congressional committee in 1998. Evidence in 1999 confirmed that pre-positioned soldiers fired on the students. In 2002 a special prosecutor said he has found no evidence to support historians' claims that some 300 people died when army troops opened fire on demonstrators in 1968. He put the number killed at 38. A judge dismissed other genocide charges against Echeverria in July 2005, ruling that while he may have been responsible for a separate 1971 student massacre, he could not be tried because the statute of limitations had expired in 1985.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFC, 9/1/96, p.A16)(SFEC, 4/6/97, p.C12)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 2/4/98, p.C2,14)(WSJ, 9/10/98, p.A1)(SFC, 6/28/99, p.A10)(AP, 8/5/02)(AP, 3/27/09)
1968 Oct 12, The summer Games of the 19th Olympiad were officially opened in Mexico City by Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(HN, 10/12/98)
1968 Oct 16, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos (23) sparked controversy at the Mexico City Olympics by giving "black power" salutes during a victory ceremony after they'd won gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter race. In 2011 John Carlos with Dave Zirin authored “The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World."
(AP, 10/16/08)(SSFC, 10/9/11, p.G4)
1968 Oct 18, The US Olympic Committee suspended two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, for giving a black power salute as a protest during a victory ceremony in Mexico City. Bob Beamon soared 29 feet, 2 inches, to set a world record in the long jump. In 1976 Dick Schaap authored “The Perfect Jump."
(AP, 10/18/98)(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.W8)
1968 Oct 27, The 19th Olympic games closed at Mexico City, Mexico.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Summer_Olympics)
1968 There was a rain of hundreds of thousands of maggots on Acapulco.
(SFC, 5/30/98, p.E4)
1969 Feb 8, A meteor shower hit Mexico creating a luminance in the night sky as bright as day. A meteorite weighing over 1 ton fell in Chihuahua, Mexico.
(http://wapi.isu.edu/geo_pgt/Mod05_Meteorites_Ast/mod5.htm)(TMP, KCTS-Video, 1987)
1969 Feb 8, Mexican graphic artist Leopoldo Mendez (b.1902) died. His work mostly focused on engraving for illustrations and other print work generally connected to his political and social activism.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldo_M%C3%A9ndez)
1969 Mar 26, B. Traven (b.1890), novelist and short-story writer, died. He lived most of his life incognito in Mexico. His work included "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1934), "The Death Ship," The Rebellion of the Hanged" and "The General from the Jungle." In 1976 Michael L. Baumann authored "B. Traven, An Introduction." In 2000 Michael L. Baumann authored "Mr. Traven, I Presume."
(SFEC, 10/15/00, BR p.8)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/traven.htm)
1969 Pres. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz decided to name Interior Minister Luis Echeverria Alvarez as the next PRI presidential candidate. He then attributed the selection to labor union chiefs, peasant leaders and party rank-and-file.
(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.A21)
1969-1971 Heberto Castillo (1928-1997), founder of the Party of their Democratic Revolution (1989), was imprisoned for his support of the student movement. He was elected to the senate in 1994. He had studied engineering and as a specialist in structural mathematics invented a 3-dimensional construction form.
(SFEC, 4/6/97, p.C12)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Mexico
Go to 1970
Return to home
Mexico is about 3 times the size of Texas.
(SSFC, 10/9/05, Par p.27)
Mexico has 31 states and one federal district. These include: Aguascalientes; Baha California; Baha California Sur; Campeche; Chiapas; Chihuahua; Coahuila; Colima; Durango; Guanajuato; Guerrero (Chilpancingo); Hidalgo; Jalisco; Mexico; Michoacan; Morelos (Cuernavaca); Nayarit; Nuevo Leon; Oaxaca; Puebla; Queretaro (Queretaro); Quintana Roo; San Luis Potosi; Sinaloa; Sonora (Hermosillo); Tabasco; Tamaulipas; Tlaxcala; Veracruz; Yucatan; Zacatecas; and the Federal District (Mexico City).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Mexico)
Mexico Online: http://www.mexonline.com/history.htm
Travel Docs: http://www.traveldocs.com/mx/index.htm
Native Mexican Indian Groups include:
Maya; Tzeltal; Tzotzil
Native Indians in Baha included the Cucapa, Kaliwi, Kumiai and the Pai Pai. The Cochimi were part of the Kumiai.
(SFC, 10/17/98, p.A16)
An Aztec legend states that the hummingbird god told ancient Aztecs to build their city at the spot where they find an eagle eating a snake on a cactus. The site at Lake Texcoco met the requirement and there Mexico City was found.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.E3)
The Aztecs spoke Nahuatl. By 2006 it was the native language of just 1.5 million Mexican Indians.
(WSJ, 2/24/06, p.A1)
80Mil BC Caverns at the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa National Park south of Mexico City date to this time.
(SFC,11/3/97, p.A10)
72Mil BC A helmet-crested, duck-billed dinosaur lived about this time in northeastern Mexico. In 2008 the species was named Velafrons coahuilensis.
(AP, 2/12/08)
66.038Mil BC About this time a comet struck the area of the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula and created a crater, known today as Chicxulub, about 150-180 miles (200 km) in diameter. The area at this time was covered by ocean. The asteroid was initially believed to have been 6-12 miles (10 km) in diameter. It left a thin layer of iridium in rock strata around the world. Evidence for this was gathered by Luis Alvarez. The asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, about 80% of the world’s plants species and all animals bigger than a cat. In 2002 it also was estimated to have wiped out 55-60% of the plant-eating insects. A high oxygen level may have contributed to a worldwide firestorm. In 1997 Walter Alvarez published "T. Rex and the Crater of Doom," an account of this critical event. The impact was estimated at 5 billion times greater than the atomic bombs of WW II. In 2007 US and Czech researchers used computer simulations to calculate that there was a 90 percent probability that the collision of two asteroids in 160 Mil BC was the event that precipitated the Chicxulub disaster. In 2008 new research using an osmium isotope indicated that the responsible asteroid was about 2.5 miles wide. In 2013 scientists said this date was accurate to give or take 11,000 years.
(SFC, 2/18/96, p.A3)(SFEC, 8/17/97, BR p.7)(NH, 9/97, p.85)(SFC, 2/25/02, p.A4)(WSJ, 3/2/04, p.B1)(Reuters, 9/5/07)(SFC, 4/12/08, p.A4)(SFC, 2/8/13, p.A1)
15Mil BC The Baha Peninsula began separating from the Mexican mainland.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T8)
10Mil BC Oceanic spreading began a process of mountain building in southern California, including formation of the San Andreas Fault, migration of the Baja California peninsula away from the mainland of Mexico, the loss of summer rainfall and the diversification of species.
(Fremontia, 4/2009, p.20)
50,000BC In 2017 scientists in Mexico discovered microbial life trapped in crystals in caves in Naica that dated to about this time.
(SSFC, 2/19/17, p.A2)
c38,000BC In 2003 British scientists found 40,000-year-old human footprints in central Mexico, shattering theories that mankind arrived in the Americas tens of thousands of years later from Asia. The footprints were found in an abandoned quarry close to the Cerro Toluquilla volcano and were subsequently studied and dated by a multinational team of scientists.
(AFP, 7/5/05)
29,000BC Scientists in 2020 reported on artifacts found in a mountain cave in the state of Zacatecas in north-central Mexico. Limestone tools found at the site spanned from 31,000 to 12,500 years old, said archaeologist Ciprian Ardelean of Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas in Mexico, lead author of one of two studies published in the journal Nature.
(Reuters, 7/22/20)
c21000BC The Popocatepetl volcano erupted with a force equal to the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.8)
20000 BC-15000 BC In 2019 archaeologists in Mexico found the bones of about 60 mammoths at an airport under construction just north of Mexico City, near human-built ’traps’. The bones were found in sediment layers corresponding to 15,000 to 20,000 years ago.
(AP, 5/22/20)
c11000BC Scientists in 2001-2002 discovered skeletons in caves along Mexico’s Yucatan coast that dated to about this time.
(SFC, 9/10/04, p.A2)
c11000BC Peñon Woman, found in central Mexico in 1959, dated to this time. She shared many of the features found in the Kennewick Man (1996) of Washington State.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.77)
11000BC-10000BC In 2014 scientists reported on a female skull, dating to about this time, found by divers at the Hoyo Negro Yucatan cave. They described her as Palaeoamerican, part of a small group whose remains do not resemble modern native Americans.
(Econ, 5/17/14, p.75)
c7975BC Humans lived in a cave near Oaxaca, Mexico, named Guila Naquitz (White Cliff). Scattered remains of tools, seeds and plants were found in 1966 by archeologist Kent Flannery and some of the seeds were dated to this time. The squash seeds showed signs of cultivation.
(SFC, 5/9/97, p.A2)
c5100BCE In 2001 evidence in Mexico was reported for corn cultivation from sediments of this time.
(SFC, 5/18/01, p.A7)
2700BCE Domesticated maize in Mexico goes back to this time.
(SFEC, 4/18/99, Z1 p.2)
2500BC In 2006 researchers reported a 4,500-year-old burial in Mexico that showed front teeth ground down so they could be mounted with animal teeth. It was the oldest example of dental work in the Americas.
(SFC, 6/14/06, p.A2)
1600BC The Paso de Amada site of Chiapas, Mexico, was first settled about this time in the Soconusco region, which extended down the Pacific coast into Guatemala. The town numbered about 2,000 people, who were later dubbed the Mokaya (maize people).
(Arch, 1/06, p.48)
1600BC-1250BC An earthen mound on the southern Mexico-Guatemala border dated to this period and was considered part of a chiefdom center of the Mokaya people.
(Arch, 1/06, p.43)
1500BC A court to play ulama was built about this time in Chiapas, Mexico. Olmecs used latex balls for the game. The Olmecs processed rubber using latex from rubber trees mixed with juice from the morning glory vine. The rubber was used to make a bouncy ball for their ball games.
(SFC, 6/19/99, p.A9)(Econ, 4/24/04, p.81)
1500BC-1100BC Evidence found in 1998 revealed terraced farming for corn back to this time in northeast Mexico on a hilltop overlooking the Rio Casa Grandes.
(SFC, 3/13/98, p.A11)
1400BC-400BC The Olmecs, who called themselves Xi, were the earliest known civilization of Mesoamerica. They influenced the subsequent civilizations of the Maya and Aztec. They inhabited the Gulf Coast region of what is now Mexico and Central America. Their capital was San Lorenzo, near the present day city of Veracruz. In 1968 Michael D. Coe authored “America’s First Civilization: Discovering the Olmec."
(WSJ, 1/16/96, p. A-16)(SFC, 8/2/05, p.A2)(WSJ, 5/11/06, p.D6)
1250BC-1150BC This time frame is referred to as the Initial Olmec Period of southern Mexico.
(Arch, 1/06, p.42)
1200BC The tradition of the Mokaya people at coastal Chiapas and Guatemala came to a sudden end about this time. This appeared to coincide with the rise of the Olmec people.
(Arch, 1/06, p.43)
1200BC-400BC The Olmecs built impressive cities and established trade routes throughout Mesoamerica, that included settlements at La Venta and Tres Zapotes.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1200BC-300BCE The Olmec people ruled southern Mexico and northern Central America.
(WSJ, 7/2/96, p.A12)
1150BC-1000BC This time frame is referred to as the Early Olmec Period of southern Mexico.
(Arch, 1/06, p.42)
1000BC The settlement at Canton Corralito on the southern Mexico-Guatemala border covered at least 60 acres by this time and was believed to be a colony of the Gulf Olmec people. About this time the nearby Coatan River began to rise and engulfed the settlement.
(Arch, 1/06, p.44)
900BC In 2006 Mexican archeologists discovered a stone block in Veracruz state inscribed with 62 distinct signs that dated to about this time. The Cascajal stone was attributed to the Olmecs, who civilization lasted from about 1200BC-400BC.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.A3)
900BC-500BC This time frame is referred to as the Late Olmec Period of southern Mexico, which featured pyramids for the first time in ceremonial centers. La Venta, the 2nd major Olmec capital dates to this period.
(Arch, 1/06, p.42, 49)
800BC-500BC Zazacatla in central Mexico covered less than one square mile between during this period. Inhabitants of Zazacatla adopted Olmec styles when they changed from a simple, egalitarian society to a more complex, hierarchical one. Much of it was later covered by housing and commercial development extending from Cuernavaca.
(AP, 1/25/07)
600BCE The great Olmec Ceremonial Center in Tabasco, Mexico, was abandoned about this time.
(RFH-MDHP, p.241)
c600BCE The Zapotec city of Monte Alban was founded in the Oaxaca valley.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.A24)
c200BCE Migrations began toward the area north of Lake Texcoco where the urban center of Teotihuacan developed.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T8)
c100BCE The area around Palenque was 1st occupied.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C5)
c0-1500 Paintings were made on rock surfaces in the central mountain ranges of the Baha Peninsula by unknown native Indians. In 1997 Harry W. Crosby published "Cave Paintings of Baha California."
(WSJ, 3/5/98, p.A20)
100-150 Archeologists in 1998 uncovered evidence of a pre-Columbian civilization from under the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan that was dated to this time. The skeleton of a man was found by a team led by Saburo Sugiyama. The most important and largest city of pre-Colombian central Mexico, the Nahuatl meaning of Teotihuacan was "Where Men Become Gods" or "The City of Gods." Just north of Mexico City, Teotihuacan was planned at about the beginning of the Christian era and was sacked and burned by invading Toltecs in 650.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C2)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T10)(HNQ, 4/24/99)(SFEC, 9/19/99, p.A22)
150-200AD The Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan (City of the Gods) was built near what later became Mexico City. Quetzalcoatl was considered as the origin of all human activities on earth, the creator of land and time and its divisions.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T9)(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.C7)
200-300 Campeche (Mexico), from the 3rd century, was the principal town of the Maya kingdom of Ah Kin Pech (place of serpents and ticks).
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.E4)
200-650 Yohualichan was a ceremonial site for the Totonac Indians over this period. The town of Cuetzalan was later established a few miles away.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C10)
300 Mayans began building on Cozumel Island off Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula about this time. The town of San Gervasio was built and inhabited through 1650. Cozumel covers 189 square miles, about the size of Lake Tahoe.
(SSFC, 9/25/05, E4)
c350 In Teotihuacan 3 men were buried amid lavish goods. Their graves were discovered in 2002 in a tomb at the top of the 5th of 7 layers of the Pyramid of the Moon near Mexico City.
(SFC, 11/22/02, p.J2)
431 A great Mayan dynasty arose at Palenque and soon began trading with communities hundreds of miles away.
(SSFC, 12/7/03, p.C10)
440-790 Palenque flourished.
(AM, 5/01, p.49)
500 Teotihuacan people built a 60-foot pyramid about this time in what later became known as Iztapalapa, Mexico. It was abandoned after about 300 years, when the Teotihuacan culture collapsed. Archeologists began to unveil the site in 2004.
(AP, 4/6/06)
562 Tikal in Guatemala was conquered possibly by the Mayans of Calakmul city in Mexico. Calakmul is one of the largest of Mayan cities with more than 6,000 structures. It was the capital of a widespread hegemony of Lowland Maya kingdoms during the Late Classic (600-900).
(AM, May/Jun 97 suppl. p.G)(Arch, 9/00, p.27)
600-900 A three hundred year dynasty ruled over Palenque. In the Pyramid of Inscriptions is the tomb of Pakal, the greatest king of the dynasty.
(SFC, 5/19/96, T-9)
615 Pakal (12) became the Mayan ruler of Palenque. His reign ended with his death in 683.
(SSFC, 12/7/03, p.C10)(WSJ, 9/16/04, p.D12)
620 The town of Cholula was founded in central Mexico. It was later said to be the oldest continuously occupied town in all of North America.
(SSFC, 2/26/06, p.F10)
650-750 The Teotihuacan culture began declining and was almost abandoned by the end of this period.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C2)
650-850 Tepanapa, the first pyramid of the Teotihuacan culture, was built in Cholula (Mexico). Over the next 800 years a nested series of 4 pyramids were constructed in Cholula.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T10)(HNQ, 4/24/99)(SSFC, 2/26/06, p.F10)
662 By 2004 Simon Martin, Mayan scholar, worked out an almost day-by-day account of events from this year in the plain of Tabasco, Mexico.
(Econ, 5/22/04, p.79)
683 Pacal, Mayan ruler of Palenque, died. His sarcophagus, found in 1952, has the intricately carved lid later suggested to represent an extra-terrestrial visitor.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C5)(WSJ, 9/16/04, p.A1)
c700 The Zapotec city of Monte Alban was abandoned.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.A24)
c750 Teotihuacan, the 1st major urban center of Mesoamerica, fell about this time. It was burned, deserted and its people scattered. It contained the Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of the Sun.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T8)
850 The Chicanna temple in the Mayan city of Calakmul was built about this time.
(SSFC, 4/25/10, p.M1)
1000-1260 The Popoloca Indians of Mexico's Puebla state built the Ndachjian-Tehuacan temple complex during this period. In 2018 archeological excavations found the first temple of the Flayed Lord, Xipe Totec, depicted as a skinned human corpse, at the complex. The Popolocas were later conquered by the Aztecs.
(SFC, 1/4/19, p.A2)
1200 In 2007 Mexican archeologists discovered the ruins of an Aztec pyramid in the heart of Mexico City that dated to about this time.
(Reuters, 12/27/07)
1325 The Aztecs founded Tenochtitlan, later known as Mexico City, about this time.
(www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/expedmus.html)
1450 In Mexico City an Aztec cornerstone ceremony took place about this time intended to dedicate a new layer of building. In 2005 archeologists found a child found at the Templo Mayor ruins who was apparently killed as part of a ceremony dedicated to the war god Huitzilopochtli.
(AP, 7/23/05)
1466-1520 Montezuma II, Aztec emperor. He amassed great wealth through taxation in Mexico and Central America. He used his wealth to build his capital at Tenochtitlan.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R8)
c1500s Zapotec Indians founded the town of San Antonino after Spaniards took over Ocotlan in Oaxaca. The residents later came to be called Tonineros.
(WSJ, 4/13/99, p.A1)
1502 Ahuizotl, ruler of the Aztecs, died and was cremated on a funeral pyre about this time at the foot of the Templo Mayor pyramid. In 2007 Mexican archeologists found underground chambers in Mexico City they believed to contain his remains.
(AP, 8/4/07)(AP, 6/17/10)
1502 Moctezuma Xocoyotl (Montezuma II), an Aztec prince, inherited the Aztec throne becoming the 9th ruler of the Aztecs.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.8)(ON, 10/00, p.1)(Econ, 9/26/09, p.99)
1517 Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba, Spanish explorer, sailed from Cuba and discovered the Mayan civilization in the Yucatan, southeast Mexico.
(TL-MB, p.11)(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1518 An Indian from the Gulf coast reported to the royal court at Tenochtitlan the sighting large vessels.
(ON, 10/00, p.1)
1519 Mar 13, Spaniards under conquistador Hernan Cortes (1485-1547) landed at Vera Cruz, Mexico with 10 stallions, 5 mares and a foal. Smallpox was carried to America in the party of Hernando Cortes.
(SFC, 9/2/96, p.A3)(HN, 3/13/98)(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1519 Mar 27, A truce was arranged with Cortes when Mayan caciques brought food and gold as well as 20 female slaves. Among these was a young woman from Jalisco named Marina, who had been stolen from a noble family when small and sold into slavery, where she learned the language of Yucatán. As a bilingual translator from Aztec to Mayan, Marina played a major role in the eventual conquest of Tenochtitlán.
(http://www.athenapub.com/cortes1.htm)
1519 Apr 21, Hernan Cortes landed at Veracruz, Mexico, on Holy Thursday.
(www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/timeline/1.html)
1519 Apr 24, Envoys of Montezuma II attended the first Easter mass in Central America.
(HN, 4/24/98)
1519 Apr, Montezuma received a message that white strangers had reappeared and attacked a Mayan coastal village south of the Aztec border. Hundreds of Mayans were killed and the strangers sailed north.
(ON, 10/00, p.2)
1519 Aug, Montezuma learned that Cortez was marching toward Tenochtitlan with an army of 300 soldiers and 2000 non-Aztec Indians. Cortez was accompanied by Malinche, his Indian mistress and interpreter.
(ON, 10/00, p.2)
1519 Sep 5, In the 2nd Battle of Tehuacingo, Mexico, Hernan Cortes faced the Tlascala Aztecs.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1519 Nov 8, The Aztec and their leader, Moctezuma, welcomed Hernando Cortez and his 650 explorers to their capital at Tenochtitlan. Spanish adventurer Hernando Cortez and his force of about 300 Spanish soldiers, 18 horses and thousands of Mexico's native inhabitants who had grown resentful of Aztec rule marched unmolested into Tenochtitlán, the capital city of the Aztec empire. The Aztec ruler Montezuma, believing that Cortez could be the white-skinned deity Quetzalcoatl, whose return had been foretold for centuries, greeted the arrival of these strange visitors with courtesy--at least until it became clear that the Spaniards were all too human and bent on conquest. Cortez and his men, dazzled by the Aztec riches and horrified by the human sacrifice central to their religion, began to systematically plunder Tenochtitlán and tear down the bloody temples. Montezuma's warriors attacked the Spaniards but with the aid of Indian allies, Spanish reinforcements, superior weapons and disease, Cortez defeated an empire of approximately 25 million people by August 13, 1521.
(ATC, p.16)(SFC, 9/2/96, p.A3) (HNPD, 11/8/98)
1519 Nov 14, Cortez took Montezuma hostage due to the killing of Spanish soldiers along the Gulf Coast by Aztec warriors. The accused warriors were later burned to death in front of Montezuma and the Aztec people.
(ON, 10/00, p.3)
1519 Domenico de Pineda, Spanish navigator, explored the Gulf of Mexico.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.11)
1519 Cortez discovered a plot by some Cholulans to assassinate him and ordered some 6,000 Cholulan men executed.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T10)
1519 Francisco de Montejo, a captain under Cortez, set about subjugating the Maya.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1519 Spanish soldiers in Mexico learned that the shipwrecked sailor Gonzalo Guerrero had drifted there in 1511. Guerrero married a Maya woman and raised the first mestizo children.
(Econ, 11/10/07, p.102)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Guerrero)
1519 Cortes found the court of Moctezuma to have a ravenous appetite for turkeys. The gobblers, later served for Thanksgiving, returned to North America only after their Mexican ancestors had crossed the Atlantic twice, first to Spain and then back from England.
(Econ, 12/20/14, p.78)
1520 Apr, Cortez left Tenochtitlan to travel along the Gulf Coast.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1520 May 16, In Tenochtitlan a religious festival turned bloody when Spanish soldiers attacked a frenzied crowd. Several weeks of street fighting followed.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1520 May 20, Hernando Cortez defeated Spanish troops sent to punish him in Mexico.
(HN, 5/20/98)
1520 Jun 24, Montezuma, under orders by Cortez to calm his people, was showered with "stones, darts, arrows and sticks" from a jeering crowd.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1520 Jun 29, Montezuma II was murdered as Spanish conquistadors fled the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan during the night. Montezuma died from wounds inflicted by his people. Conquistadors under Cortez plundered gold from Aztecs.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moctezuma_II)
1520 Jul 10, The explorer Cortez was driven from Tenochtitlan, Mexico, by Aztec leader Cuauhtemoc, and retreated to Tlaxcala.
(HN, 7/10/98)
1520 Jul 14, Hernando Cortes fought the Aztecs at the Battle of Otumba, Mexico.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1521 Jan, Cortez returned to Tenochtitlan and destroyed the city. Thousands of Aztecs were killed. The surviving children of Montezuma were sent to Spain and were granted compensatory titles to the Spanish nobility.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1521 May 22, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez began the siege of Tenochtitlan.
(SFC, 5/20/21, p.A4)
1521 Aug 13, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez conquered the Mexican city of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) after an 85-day battle. Emp. Cuauhtemotzin was taken prisoner. Cortez had an Indian mistress named La Malinche.
(AP, 8/13/97)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 4/24/98, p.A15)(SFC, 5/20/21, p.A4)
1521 Aug 31, Spanish conqueror Cortez (1485-1547), having captured the city of Tenochtitlan, Mexico, set it on fire. Nearly 100,000 people died in the siege and some 100,000 more died afterwards of smallpox. In 2008 Buddy levy authored “Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs."
(HN, 8/31/98)(WSJ, 7/10/08, p.A13)
1521 Andres de Tapia, a Spanish soldier who accompanied Cortes in the conquest of Mexico, counted tens of thousands of skulls at what became known as the Huey Tzompantli in Tenochtitlan, later Mexico City. Archeologist later identified crania of women and children among the hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure.
(Reuters, 7/2/17)
1522 Oct 15, Emperor Charles named Hernan Cortes governor of Mexico.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1522 Martin Cortes (d.1569), son of Hernando Cortes, was born in Mexico to an Amerindian woman named Malinche. Cortes also named a 3rd son Martin, who was born in Spain. Both brothers were arrested in 1566 for purportedly fomenting a rebellion against the Spanish crown.
(SSFC, 7/11/04, p.M3)
1525 City officials tried to control the street vendors in Mexico City.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A19)
1528 The fortress of San Juan de Ulua was built on a coral reef in Vera Cruz. It was later estimated that half-million slaves died in the process.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1530 The San Francisco Church and monastery in Valladolid, Mexico, was begun.
(SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C11)
1531 Dec 12, Legend held that a dark-skinned Virgin Mary appeared to a peasant outside Mexico City and left an imprint on his cactus-fiber poncho. The poncho became an icon for the Virgin of Guadalupe. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, an Indian peasant, had visions of the Virgin Mary. In 2002 Pope John Paul II planned to canonize him. The Vatican’s main source was a religious work that dated to 1666.
(SFC, 2/1/99, p.A9)(WSJ, 2/27/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/17/02, p.A1)(AP, 7/30/02)
1531 The Spaniards founded Puebla, on the route from Vera Cruz to Mexico City, to house demobilized conquistadors.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T8)
1531 In Mexico Queretaro was designated the third city of New Spain.
(SSFC, 1/27/08, p.E5)
1533 Spaniards arrived at Zaci, the capital of the Cupul Maya, in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula and were pushed out.
(SSFC, 6/29/08, p.E5)(http://tinyurl.com/4o62ox)
1535 Apr 17, Antonio Mendoza was appointed first viceroy of New Spain.
(HN, 4/17/98)
1535 Emissaries of Cortez discovered La Paz, in Baha, Mexico.
(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.C10)
1536 cJan, Spanish castaways Don Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca with 3 companions reached the Pacific Coast in northern Mexico under Indian escort and encountered Spanish troops engaged as slave hunters.
(ON, 10/03, p.5)
1536 Jun 6, Mexico began its inquisition.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1536 Jul 24, Spanish castaways Don Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca with 3 companions arrived in Mexico City under escort from Culiacan.
(ON, 10/03, p.5)
1537 Aug, Castaway Don Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca returned from Mexico to Spain where he wrote an account of his 3,000 mile journey through North American and his experiences with the Indians. These narratives were collected and published in 1542 in Spain. They are now known as The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. The narrative of Cabeza de Vaca is the “first European book devoted completely to North America. In 2006 Paul Schneider authored “Brutal Journey: The True Story of the First Crossing of North America." Schneider used de Vaca’s original memoir as well as an official report prepared by survivors of the Narvaez expedition.
(ON, 10/03, p.5)(SSFC, 6/11/06, p.M3)(http://tinyurl.com/z36z9yk)
1540 Spaniards settled Campeche, Mexico. Montejo the Younger, the founder of Merida, gained a foothold at Campeche.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.D12)(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.E4)
1541 The "Codex Mendoza" was an Aztec pictorial manuscript of this time. It showed tribute received by the Aztecs from people like the Mixtec with turquoise shields and beads. It also showed 3 young people being stoned to death for drunkenness.
(NH, 4/97, p.24)(Arch, 1/05, p.29)
1541 Morelia, the capital of the Mexican state of Michoacan, was founded by the royal edict of Antonio de Mendoza. It was originally named Valladolid after a city in Spain. The name was changed in 1928 to honor the local village priest and revolutionary hero Jose Maria Morelos.
(Hem, Nov.'95, p.146)(SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C11)
1542 Jun 27, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo set out from the port of Navidad, Mexico, with 2 ships, the San Salvador and the Victoria, to "discover the coast of New Spain." Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo claimed California for Spain. [see Sep 28]
(NPS-CNM, 4/1/97)(MC, 6/27/02)
1542 Merida was founded by Francisco de Montejo at the holy Maya city of T’Ho. Montejo was the son of the captain under Cortez with the same name.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1542 In Mexico Catholic priest Miguel de Palomares died and was buried inside Mexico City’s first cathedral, near an altar. In 2016 engineers discovered a stone slab thought to cover his tomb.
(www.archaeology.org/news/4380-160414-mexico-spanish-priest)
1543 May 24, The city of Valladolid, Mexico, was founded in the Yucatan peninsula.
(SSFC, 6/29/08, p.E5)(www.valladolidyucatan.com/history.html)
1543 Sep, The Spanish survivors of the de Soto expedition reached Spanish settlements in Mexico.
(ON, 4/01, p.5)
1543-1773 The Palacio de los Capitanes in Antigua, Guatemala, was the center for Spanish rule over Chiapas, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua during this period.
(SFEM, 6/13/99, p.32)
1545 Bishop Fray Bartolome de las Casas championed the Indians in the area of Chiapas.
(WSJ, 1/15/98, p.A1)
1546 A coalition of eastern Maya laid siege to Valladolid, in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Spanish conquistadores brutally crushed a major Mayan rebellion in New Spain.
(http://tinyurl.com/4o62ox)(TL-MB, 1988, p.17)
1547 The Spaniards arrived at Cuetzalan, an area inhabited by Nahua and Totonac Indians.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C10)
1547 Hernando Cortes, the conquistador who subdued Aztec king Montezuma and stole his wife, died in Spain. His remains were brought to Mexico in 1836.
(WSJ, 12/14/00, p.A8)
1553 The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) was founded as a royal, pontifical university.
(WSJ, 9/1/99, p.A1)
1555 Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun wrote down "The War of Conquest: The Aztec’s Own Story."
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1555 In Ocotlan, Oaxaca, a church was built.
(WSJ, 4/13/99, p.A1)
1557 The Spanish enslaved local Indians around Guanajuato, Mexico, to work a silver mine. A major vein was struck in 1768.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.D7)
1561-1598 In Merida the Cathedral de San Idelfonso was constructed on the site of a Mayan temple by Spanish conquistadors. It was designed as a stronghold in their struggle to subdue the Maya.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1562 Aug 8, Diego Te, a Maya man in the Yucatec town of Sotuta, testified that a year earlier he had witnessed a village leader and another man cut the hearts from 2 boys and hand them to a shaman, who rubbed the hearts onto the mouths of two Maya idols. The account was preserved in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain.
(AM, 7/05, p.43)
1562 A Spanish priest wrote that the well at Chichen Itza was a place where Mayas had made offerings to their gods.
(ON, 5/02, p.6)
1562 In the Yucatan a campaign to root out idolatry ended with the destruction of thousands of ritual objects and most of the Maya books in existence. The campaign was led by Franciscan leader Diego de Landa, who was later tried in Spain for his excessive behavior and acquitted. He recorded the oral traditions of the Maya in “An Account of the Things of the Yucatan" before returning there in 1573 as Bishop of Yucatan.
(AM, 7/05, p.44)
1564 In Mexico the monastery of Tecpatan was founded in southern Chiapas state.
(SSFC, 10/18/15, p.A5)
1565 Oct 8, Spanish Friar Andres de Urdaneta arrived in Acapulco after sailing as far as 38 degrees North latitude to obtain favorable winds. 14 of the crew died on the voyage from the Philippines. During the voyage he sighted land believed to be the California coast. His route became famous and trusted for sailing from Manila to Acapulco and became known as the Manila galleon. In 1939 William Lytle Schurz authored “The Manila Galleon."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9s_de_Urdaneta) (SFC,10/17/97, p.A25)(SFC, 2/7/15, p.D1)
1565 The Iglesia de San Roque was built in Campeche, Mexico.
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.E5)
1566 Two sons of Cortes, both named Martin Cortes, were arrested in Mexico for purportedly fomenting a rebellion against the Spanish crown. In 2004 Anna Lanyon authored “The New World of Martin Cortes."
(SSFC, 7/11/04, p.M3)
1567 The Metropolitan Cathedral was begun in Mexico City. It took 250 years to complete.
(Hem., 1/96, p.50)
1568 Spanish conquistadors first arrived at the valley of Tlaxcaltecas.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1570 The Mexican city of Valladolid, later Morelia, was laid out.
(SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C11)
1574 An auto-da-fe (a public announcement of sentence imposed on persons tried by the Inquisition) took place in Mexico for the first time.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)
1575-1649 The construction of La Immaculada Concepcion cathedral in Puebla.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T8)
1576 In Mexico the town of Mineral de Pozos was founded as a mining town. In 1982 the Mexican government declared it a national historic treasure.
(SSFC, 11/30/08, p.E5)
1577 Francisco Hernandez, Spanish explorer traveling through Mexico’s highlands, noted the many uses of the maguey (agave) plant. He cited it as a useful fuel, a material for cloth and ropes, with sap used to make vinegar and wine.
(Arch, 9/02, p.32)
1585 Archbishop of Mexico, Pedro Moya de Contreras, dispatched Spanish captain Francisco Gali to proceed to Manila from Acapulco, and "to reconnoiter down the coast" on his return trip.
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A25)
1586 Spanish Captain Francisco Gali died in Manila and Pedro de Unamuno took command of his 2 ships to return to Acapulco. He stopped in Macao where his ships were confiscated by the Portuguese. He obtained a loan from Father Martin Ignacio de Loyola, the nephew of the founder of the Jesuit order, and purchased a small ship to return to Acapulco with 2 priests, a few soldiers, and a crew of Luzon Indians.
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A25)
1586 In Mexico the Mina El Eden (Eden Mine) opened in Zacateca. It yielded a bounty of silver, gold, iron and zinc for over 3 centuries.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T3)
1587 Nov 22, Captain Pedro de Unamuno entered the port of Acapulco.
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A25)
1593 In Puebla, Mexico, the Convent de La Concepcion was built. It was later turned into the Hotel Camino Real Puebla.
(SSFC, 1/27/08, p.E5)
1593 In Mexico Capt. Don Francisco de Urdiqola started the first vineyard in the valley of Tlaxcaltecas at his El Rosario Hacienda.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1593-1817 The period of the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A1)
1596 Dec 8, Luis de Carabajal, 1st Jewish author in America, was executed in Mexico. The nephew of Luis Carvajal, a Jewish convert to Catholicism and governor of the province of Nuevo Leon, was accused of relapsing into Judaism. He was tried by Spanish Inquisitors and under torture gave out 116 names of other Judaizers that included his mother and 23 sisters. They were eventually strangled with iron collars and burned to death. A 1997 opera by Myron Fink was composed based on his story. Monterey, Mexico was founded by conquistador Don Luis de Carvajal. He fell in love the wrong man’s daughter and was later denounced to the Mexican Inquisition because of his Jewish heritage.
(SFC, 8/16/96, p.A19)(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)(WSJ, 2/25/97, p.A20)(MC, 12/8/01)
1596 The Casa de los Azulejos or House of Tiles (a.k.a. Sanborn's) was constructed. It is an ornate mansion with hand-painted blue and white tiles.
(Hem., 1/96, p.50)
1597 King Philip II issued a land grant to Don Lorenzo Garcia to start the first official winery for the new world at the San Lorenzo Hacienda.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
c1600-1700 Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was a lyric poet of this period. She entered the convent and assembled a 4,000 volume library and wrote poems along with secular and religious plays. The chamber opera "With Blood, With Ink" was later based on her life.
(WSJ, 4/14/00, p.W2)
1602 May, Sebastian Vizcaino, a Basque merchant, led 4 small ships north from Acapulco, Mexico, to chart the coast of California.
(SFC, 11/13/02, p.A8)
1614 Japan sent samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga to Europe via Acapulco to to request the right to trade directly with New Spain (Mexico).
(Econ, 11/15/14, SR p.8)
1616 The Fuerte de San Diego was built to protect the port of Acapulco, Mexico, from Dutch and English pirates.
(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.C6)
1618 In Merida the Iglesia de Jesus was built by Jesuits.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1621 Agustina Ruiz of Quertaro was tried for claiming sexual intercourse with saints. She was sent to a convent by the Inquisition for 3 years of fasting and penance.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)
1624 Jan 15, The people of Mexico rioted upon hearing that their churches were to be closed.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1624 The town of San Antonino petitioned for and was granted independence from the town of Ocotlan.
(WSJ, 4/13/99, p.A1)
1631 Oct 14, The ship Our Lady of Juncal set sail from the Gulf coast port of Veracruz, as part of a 19-ship fleet bearing described only as "a valuable shipment of the goods obtained by the king's ministers to feed the Spanish empire." Most of the fleet never made it.
(AP, 2/17/09)
1636 A city wall was built around Veracruz.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1660 The Palacio Clavijero was built as a Jesuit temple in Valladolid (later Morelia), Mexico.
(SSFC, 5/22/05, p.E6)
1666 In Cholula the chapel Nuestra de los Remedios was built atop a Teotihuacan pyramid.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T10)
1667 The San Ignacio Loyola Church at Parras de la Fuente was built.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1668 A fortified wall was completed at Campeche, Mexico, to ward off pirate attacks.
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.E4)
1683 Sep 29, A small armada sailed from the Mexican mainland across the Sea of Cortez to the Baha Peninsula. Hostile natives had forced them back to the mainland on a first landing and a storm forced them back on a 2nd attempt.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)(WSJ, 12/26/97, p.A9)
1683 Oct 6, The small armada from the Mexican mainland landed on their 3rd attempt at crossing to the Baha peninsula and settled at the mouth of a river that they named San Bruno. The site was abandoned after 2 years. Spanish settlement on the Baha was later described by Father James Donald Francez in "The Lost Treasures of Baha California."
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)(WSJ, 12/26/97, p.A9)
1690 In Puebla the ornate Capilla del Rosario, Chapel of the Rosary, was consecrated.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T8)
1695 Apr 17, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (b.~1648), Mexican nun and poet, died of plague.
(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.M3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sor_Juana)
1697 Oct 19, Settlers from Mexico sailed across the Sea of Cortez to build a new settlement.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)
1697 Oct 25, Settlers from Mexico founded the town of Loreto in honor of the Virgin Nuestra Senoro de Loreto, on the Baha Peninsula. It served as the capital of Baha California for the next 132 years.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)
1697 Padre Juan Maria Salvatierra established Baja's first mission at Lareto.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T1)
1699 Jesuits established a 2nd Baha outpost, Mission San Francisco de San Javier, in the Sierra Gigante mountains.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T1)
1699 The King of Spain, due to its competition, banned the production of wine in the Americas, except for that made by the church. The ban lasted to 1810.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1700 Sep, In Mexico Juan Bautista and Jacinto de los Angeles informed Spanish authorities of an Indian religious ceremony and were killed by fellow Indians. Christian officials decapitated and quartered 15 men and staked their body parts by the roadside as a warning. In 2002 Bautista and Angeles were beatified by Pope John Paul II.
(AP, 7/30/02)
1701 Padre Juan de Ugarte brought seeds and seedlings from Mexico City for the Baha outpost, Mission San Francisco de San Javier.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T1)
1712 Maria de Ortiz Espejo was convicted by the Inquisition of telling women that hummingbirds and earthquakes could help them get pregnant. She got off with a warning.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)
1720 The last major eruption of the Popocatepetl volcano outside Mexico City.
(SFC, 7/3/97, p.C5)
1724 Jesuit padre Jaime Bravo set up a visiting mission in the southern Baja peninsula for the nomadic Guaicura Indians.
(SSFC, 11/4/01, p.T12)
1729-1742 The building of the Cathedral at Zacateca. It has been called the "Parthenon of the Mexican Baroque."
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T3)
1730 Jesuits founded San Jose del Cabo in Baha, Ca.
(SSFC, 2/6/05, p.F8)
1731 Luis Berrueco, Mexican painter, painted “The Martyrs of Gorkum," a detailed work depicting the 1572 martyrdom of 19 Catholics in Gorinchem, Netherlands, during the Dutch war for independence.
(SFC, 3/5/11, p.E2)(http://tinyurl.com/5s8wnz2)
1734 Father Nicholas Tamaral attempted to enforce a ban polygamy among the Pericu Indians in Baha California. The Pericu beat him in return and apparently burned him alive.
(SSFC, 2/6/05, p.F8)
1740s Antonio de Solis, a Spanish priest, found the ruins of Palenque while planting a field.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C5)
1743 La Cathedral de Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion in Veracruz was dedicated.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1744 The cathedral in Morelia was completed.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T11)
1747 The Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de la Paz was built in Todos Santos on the southern Baja peninsula.
(SSFC, 11/4/01, p.T12)
1748-1758 Santa Prisca church in Taxco was built by the wealthy miner Jose de la Borda. It has twin towers of pink stone and an adjacent tiled dome.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T6)
1750 The border town of Guerrero was founded. It became Guerrero Viejo in 1953 after a new dam and flood covered the old town and residents moved to the new Guerrero Nuevo.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.C16)
1750-1860 The Hacienda Tabi developed as a sugar plantation in the Yucatan. The family of Carlos Peon Machado owned it for some 40 years and sold it in 1893.
(Arch, 1/05, p.43)
1751 The mission of St. Gertrude the Great was initiated and called "La Piedad" by Father Fernando Consag.
(WSJ, 12/26/97, p.A9)
1752 The first Mission at the town of Loreto on the Baha Peninsula was completed. Father George Retz moved north from Mission St. Ignatius, where he had studied the Cochimi language, and formally established "La Piedad" as the mission of St. Gertrude the Great.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)
1753 May 8, Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla, the father of Mexican independence, was born.
(HN, 5/8/98)(MC, 5/8/02)
1755 The Holy Inquisition began using the dungeon at the fortress of San Juan de Ulua in Veracruz.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1756 In Queretaro, Mexico, a palatial home was built and later converted into the hotel Casa de la Marquesa.
(SSFC, 1/27/08, p.E5)
1757 The Mission of San Javier was completed in San Javier on the Baha Peninsula.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)
c1758 In Taxco the Santa Prisca Cathedral was built in thanks by Don Jose de la Borda, who made his fortune there.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T6)
1758 Jesuits rebuilt their 1699 Mission San Francisco de San Javier in the Sierra Gigante mountains.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T1)
1759-1788 Charles III ruled as King of Spain. After a plague killed thousands in Alamos, Mexico, Charles III ordered homes to be rebuilt with mutual walls to prevent ramshackle structures by squatters.
(WUD, 1994, p.249)
1760 Juan Ruiz of Mexico painted "Christ Consoled by Angels."
(WSJ, 3/3/98, p.A16)
1760 The Valenciana mine near Guanajuato was discovered.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T10)
1760-1777 Juan Bautista de Anza (1736-1787) served as the commanding officer at Tupac.
(SFC, 6/7/00, p.A15)
1764 In Mexico Ignacio de Jerusalem composed "Matins for Our Lady of Guadalupe." It was first performed the Mexico City Cathedral.
(SFC, 6/24/97, p.B3)
1767 Jun 25, Mexican Indians rioted as Jesuit priests were ordered home. Spain expelled the Jesuits from Mexico and their work was taken over by the Dominican Fathers.
(WSJ, 12/26/97, p.A9)(HN, 6/25/98)(Econ, 6/1/13, p.80)
1768 In Guanajuato, Mexico, enslaved Indians struck a major silver vein in Guanajuato.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.D7)
1769 Father Junipero Serra set out on his northerly journey from Loreto to found missions along the Baha Peninsula and into California.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)
1771 Father Toribio Basterrechea, vicar of Huachinango, was convicted by the Inquisition of officiating at the marriage of two dogs. He was sentenced to 4 months of fasting and penance.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)
1773-1776 In Mexico a mid-sixteenth century church was abandoned in the Quechula locality of southern Chiapas state due to big plagues in the region.
(SSFC, 10/18/15, p.A5)
1774 Mexico exported 600 tons of the cochineal shell, known as carmine, to Spain. The acid color was extracted from the shell of the tiny red beetle that grew on cactus leaves. It was used to manufacture a red dye that was used in British "redcoats" and by Betsy Ross to color the first US flag.
(WSJ, 10/7/98, p.B1)
1775 Sep 29, Mexican Captain Juan Bautista de Anza (39) and his party of Spanish soldiers and setters departed Tubac, Arizona, on a journey to the SF Bay Area following reports of a great river flowing into the bay. Anza led 240 soldiers, priests and settlers to Monterey. Jose Manuel Valencia was one of the soldiers. His son, Candelario Valencia, later served in the military at the Presidio and owned a ranch in Lafayette and property next to Mission Dolores. One of the soldiers was Don Salvio Pacheco.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, p.C7)(SFC, 12/31/99, p.A22)(SFC, 9/14/13, p.C4)
1775 Altar was founded in Mexico’s Sonora state as a military base. It’s location 60 miles south of Arizona later proved valuable as a jumping off point for immigrant smuggling to the US.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.31)
1775 The Monte de Piedad (Mount of Pity), or National Pawn Shop, stands on the site of Moctezuma's brother's palace in Mexico City. It was founded by the Count of Regla. As a lender of last resort the shop provided loans worth one-fifth to one-third an item’s value at interest rates of 4% a month.
(Hem., 1/96, p.50)(SFC, 1/15/98, p.A10)
1775 Manuel Arroyo of Real del Monte confessed to 30 counts of oral sex on men. He claimed that his doctor told him it was good for his health and a way to avoid evil thoughts about women. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison by the Inquisition.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)
1775-1776 Juan Bautista de Anza led 198 colonists and 1,000 cattle from Sonora, Mexico, to California.
(SFC, 6/7/00, p.A15)
1776 Mar 28, Mexican Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, Lt. Jose Moraga, and Franciscan priest Pedro Font arrived at the tip of San Francisco. De Anza planted a cross at what is now Fort Point. They camped at Mountain Lake and searched inland for a more hospitable area and found a site they called Laguna de los Dolores or the Friday of Sorrows since the day was Friday before Palm Sunday. Anza became known as the “father of SF." Mission Dolores was founded by Father Francisco Palou and Father Pedro Cambon. Rancho San Pedro, near what is now Pacifica, served as the agricultural center. Laguna de los Dolores was later believed to be a spring near the modern-day corner of Duboce and Sanchez.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Bautista_de_Anza)(SFEC, 9/21/97, p.C7)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W34)(SFC, 2/19/11, p.A10)
1777-1787 Juan Bautista de Anza served as the governor of New Mexico.
(SFC, 6/7/00, p.A15)
1781 Sep 4, Mexican Provincial Governor, Felipe de Neve, founded Los Angeles. He founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles (Valley of Smokes), originally named Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, by Gaspar de Portola, a Spanish army captain and Juan Crespi, a Franciscan priest, who had noticed the beautiful area as they traveled north from San Diego in 1769. 44 Spanish settlers named a tiny village near San Gabriel, Los Angeles. Los Angeles, first an Indian village Yangma, was founded by Spanish decree. 26 of the settlers were of African ancestry.
(HFA, '96, p.38)(AP, 9/4/97)(SFEC, 4/12/98, Par p.20)(HN, 9/4/98)(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)(HN, 9/4/00)(MC, 9/4/01)
1784 The 1st Spanish military officer who explored the Mayan ruins of Palenque thought it was Atlantis risen.
(SSFC, 12/7/03, p.C10)
1786 Andres Lopez of Mexico painted "Sacred Heart of Jesus."
(WSJ, 3/3/98, p.A16)
1788 The Templo La Valenciana church was built next to the Valenciana mine.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T10)
1790 Dec 17, An Aztec calendar stone was discovered in Mexico City.
(HFA, '96, p.44)(MC, 12/17/01)
1791 May 14, In Mexico a time capsule was placed atop a bell tower at Mexico City's Metropolitan Cathedral when the building's topmost stone was laid, 218 years after construction had begun. Workers restoring the church found it in October, 2007.
(AP, 1/15/08)
1792 In Mexico Campeche’s northern fort, the Reducto de San Jose, was built. It later housed the Museo de Barcas y Armas.
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.E5)
1794 Feb 21, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Mexican Revolutionary, was born.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1801 La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora del Refugio was a Franciscan-style mission church built in the border town of Guerrero Viejo.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.C2)
1803 Alexander Von Humboldt, German explorer and scientist, spent some time in Taxco. The house where he stayed later became the Museum of Colonial Religious Art.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T7)
1805 Spanish soldiers under Lt. Francisco Ruiz discovered badgers in a canyon during an expedition in southern California. The area was thus named El Tejon (the badger).
(SFC, 5/9/08, p.A1)
1806 Mar 21, Benito Juarez, President of Mexico, was born in Oaxaca. He was Mexico's first president of Indian ancestry and fought against the French and their puppet emperor Maximilian.
(AP, 3/21/97)(HN, 3/21/99)
1807 Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike strayed beyond the limits of the territory into the Spanish-held territory of New Mexico, and was accused of spying by Spanish authorities. The Spaniards released Pike and his men after they could find no evidence against him. Pike’s explorations the previous November had taken him to the Rockies, where he reached the base of a mountain that would later be named Pikes Peak in his honor. Pike’s mission was to explore the southwestern limits of the Louisiana Territory, the vast tract of land that the United States had purchased from France in 1803 in a deal known as the Louisiana Purchase.
(HNQ, 7/15/02)
1810 Sep 16, In Mexico Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla delivered the cry for freedom in front of a small crowd of his parishioners (The Grito de Dolores) in Dolores Hidalgo. This action stemmed from meetings of the literary and social club of Queretaro (now a central state of Mexico), which included the priest, the mayor of the town, and a local military captain named Ignacio Allende. They believed that New Spain should be governed by the Creoles (criollos) rather than the Gachupines (peninsulares). Rev. Hidalgo was joined by Rev. Jose Maria Morelos. Both priests were later executed by firing squads. When Mexico revolted the Spanish settlements began to fall apart. Under Mexican rule the missions were secularized and the huge land holdings were broken up. At age 55, Hidalgo was a tall, gaunt man who carried his head habitually bent forward, giving him the appearance of a true contemplative. But looks were deceiving. He had a restless, willful nature, and his expressive green eyes shot fire when he argued politics. In his student days, he had won debates and honors; as a theologian he enjoyed considerable local renown. He was a visionary, resentful of authority and with a touch of the crusader about him.
(SFC, 5/19/96,CG, p.16)(SCal, Sep, 1995)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(AP, 9/16/97)(HNQ, 12/17/00)
1810 Juan Jose de los Reyes Martinez, miner and revolutionary hero (El Pipila), joined some 20,000 rebels who stormed Guanajuato, Mexico, and cornered Spanish colonists inside a granary. Martinez set fire to the granary and died in the flames.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.D6)
1810-1996 This period of Mexican history is covered by Enrique Krauze in his book: "Mexico: Biography of Power."
(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1811 Jul 31, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Mexican hero priest, was executed by Spanish.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1811-1812 During the war for independence the crime rate rose to double digits for two years in a row.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.A14)
1813 Nov 6, Chilpancingo congress declared Mexico independent of Spain.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1815 Dec 22, Spaniards executed Mexican revolutionary priest Jose Maria Morelos (b.1765).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mar%C3%ADa_Morelos)
1817 The Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City was completed.
(Hem., 1/96, p.49)
1817 Pedro Moreno and Victor Rosales died fighting Spain in western Mexico. Their bodies were among 14 later placed in urns as hero’s of Mexico’s 1810-1821 independence movement. In 1925 urns holding the remains were sealed in crypts at the Independence monument. Others in the urns included Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende.
(AP, 8/14/10)
1820 The Mexican government granted Luis Peralta (1759-1851) the 44,800-acre Rancho San Antonio in the East Bay of northern California, for his military services. The rancho ran from San Leandro Creek to a rise known as El Cerrito. Peralta settled in San Jose, while his four sons took over the land grant. The Peralta Hacienda in Oakland was built in 1870.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C3%ADs_Mar%C3%ADa_Peralta)(SFC, 5/3/02, p.A20)(SFC, 11/26/10, p.D9)
1821 Feb 24, Mexico rebels proclaimed the "Plan de Iguala," their declaration of independence from Spain, and took over the mission lands in California.
(HT, 3/97, p.61)(AP, 2/24/98)(HN, 2/24/98)
1821 Aug 23, After 11 years of war, Spain granted Mexican independence as a constitutional monarchy. Spanish Viceroy Juan de O'Donoju signed the Treaty of Cordoba, which approved a plan to make Mexico an independent constitutional monarchy.
(HN, 8/23/00)(MC, 8/23/02)
1821 Aug 28, In the city of Puebla a nun served a tri-colored chili dish to the Emperor Agustin de Iturbide, who was on his way home from signing the Treaty of Cordoba, which effectively freed Mexico from Spain. Iturbide, a Creole, had led the suppression of the initial rebellion for independence. He later abdicated, went into exile, returned and was executed. After Iturbide Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna led the country over 11 presidential terms.
(WSJ, 9/5/96, p.B1)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1821 Sep 27, The Mexican Empire declared its independence. Revolutionary forces occupied Mexico City as the Spanish withdraw.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1821 Mexican rule began over the New Mexico territory.
(SSFC, 5/22/05, p.E12)
1821-1846 Mexico ruled over California with a series of 12 governors. During part of this time Gen’l. Jose Castro commanded all of the Spanish forces in California and was an active opponent of US rule in 1846.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, p.C7)
1822 Jul 25, Gen. Agustin de Iturbide was crowned Agustin I, 1st emperor of Mexico.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1822 Aug, William Richardson (1795-1856) came to SF as first mate aboard the British whaler Orion. He jumped ship and began living at the Presidio. In 1835 he put up a tent in Yerba Buena, later renamed San Francisco, on Calle de la Fundacion, a site later identified as 827 Grant Ave.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Richardson)(SFC, 9/16/17 p.C2)
1822 Dec 12, Mexico was officially recognized as an independent nation by US.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1822 California became part of Mexico.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)
1822 The mission of St. Gertrude the Great on the Baha Peninsula was closed as the local population diminished.
(WSJ, 12/26/97, p.A9)
1823 , Mexico forbade the sale or purchase of slaves, and required that the children of slaves be freed when they reached age fourteen.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Texas)
1824 Oct 4, The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1824 was enacted, after the overthrow of the Mexican Empire of Agustin de Iturbide. In the new constitution, the republic took the name of United Mexican States, and was defined as a representative federal republic, with Catholicism as the official religion. A liberal constitution, established at this time, was later replaced by Santa Anna.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1824_Constitution_of_Mexico)(AP, 9/15/10)
1824 The Mexican governor of California offered all missions for sale under a program of secularization.
(SFEC, 3/12/00, p.T4)
1824 A Mexican General was served chiles en nogada after he threw out the last Spanish viceroy. The dish consisted of green chiles, pomegranate seeds and a white walnut sauce.
(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.A1)
1824 Since this year budget oversight has been handled by the executive branch.
(WSJ, 11/30/95, p.A-12)
1828 The Mexican city of Valladolid was renamed Morelia after independence hero Jose Maria Morelos
(SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C11)
1829 Aug 25, Pres. Jackson made an offer to buy Texas, but the Mexican government refused.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1829 Mexico abolished slavery, but it granted an exception until 1830 to Texas. In following years a southern US network helped thousands of American Black slaves escape to Mexico.
(AP, 9/16/20)
1829 A hurricane destroyed the town of Loreto in Baha California except for the Mission Nuestra Senora de Loreto. The center of government was moved down the coast to La Paz.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T5)(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.C10)
1831 Mexico appointed Manuel Victoria to replace Alta California Gov. Jose Maria de Echeandia.
(SFC, 4/4/15, p.C2)
1833 Mexico took mission property from the Church and turned out the Acagchemem Indians at Mission San Juan Capistrano.
(HT, 3/97, p.61)
1833 The people of Iztapalapa, Mexico, began re-enacting the Passion of Christ, to give thanks for divine protection during a cholera epidemic.
(AP, 4/5/06)
1834 Jose Bernal owned Rancho Rincon de Las Salinas y Potrero. It included the land that later became known as Hunters Point in San Francisco. La Punta de Conca (seashell point) was later purchased by Robert and Philip Hunter who arrived during the gold rush and bought the land to develop a town.
(SSCM, 7/21/02, p.16)(SFL)
1835 Sep, Texans petitioned for statehood separate from Coahuila. They wrote out their needs and their complaints in The Declaration of Causes. This document was designed to convince the Federalists that the Texans desired only to preserve the 1824 Constitution, which guaranteed the rights of everyone living on Mexican soil. But by this time, Santa Anna was in power, having seized control in 1833, and he advocated the removal of all foreigners. His answer was to send his crack troops, commanded by his brother-in-law, General Martin Perfecto de Css, to San Antonio to disarm the Texans.
(HNQ, 3/24/01)
1835 Oct 2, The first battle of the Texas Revolution took place as American settlers fought Mexican soldiers near the Guadalupe River; the Mexicans ended up withdrawing.
(AP, 10/2/08)
1835 Oct, Before the Alamo, Mexican General Css led troops against the small community of Gonzales, since enshrined in history as the "Lexington of Texas." San Antonio de Bixar went under military rule, with 1,200 Mexican troops under General Css` command. When Css ordered the small community of Gonzales, about 50 miles east of San Antonio, to return a cannon loaned to the town for defense against Indian attack--rightfully fearing that the citizens might use the cannon against his own troops--the Gonzales residents refused. "Come and take it!" they taunted, setting off a charge of old chains and scrap iron, shot from the mouth of the tiny cannon mounted on ox-cart wheels. Although the only casualty was one Mexican soldier, Gonzales became enshrined as the "Lexington of Texas." The Texas Revolution was on.
(HNQ, 3/24/01)
1835 Nov 13, Texans officially proclaimed Independence from Mexico, and called itself the Lone Star Republic, after its flag, until its admission to the Union in 1845.
(HN, 11/13/98)
1836 Feb 12, Mexican General Santa Anna crossed the Rio Grande en route to the Alamo.
(HN, 2/12/99)
1836 Feb 23, The Alamo was besieged by Santa Anna. Thus began the siege of the Alamo, a 13-day moment in history that turned a ruined Spanish mission in San Antonio, Texas, into a shrine known and revered the world over. In 2012 James Donovan authored “The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo – and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation.
(AP, 2/23/98)(Econ, 6/2/12, p.99)
1836 Feb 24, Some 3,000 Mexicans under Gen. Santa Ana launched an assault on the Alamo, with its 182 Texan defenders. The siege lasted 13 days.
(HN, 2/24/98)(MC, 2/24/02)
1836 Feb 27, Mexican forces under General Jose de Urrea defeated Texan forces at the Battle of San Patricio.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar 2, Texas declared its independence from Mexico on Sam Houston's 43rd birthday. The first vice-president was Lorenzo de Zavala. Mexico refused to recognize Texas but diplomatic relations were established with the US, Britain and France. Texas was an independent republic until 1845.
(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-12)(WP, 6/29/96, p.A15)(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A3)(AP, 3/2/98)(HN, 3/2/99)
1836 Mar 2, Mexican forces under General Jose de Urrea defeated Texan forces at the Battle of Agua Dulce.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar 6, The Alamo fell after fighting for 13 days. Angered by a new Mexican constitution that removed much of their autonomy, Texans seized the Alamo in San Antonio in December 1835. Mexican president General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna marched into Texas to put down the rebellion. By late February, 1836, 182 Texans, led by Colonel William Travis, held the former mission complex against Santa Anna’s [3,000] 6,000 troops. At 4 a.m. on March 6, after fighting for 13 days, Santa Anna’s troops charged. In the battle that followed, all the Alamo defenders were killed while the Mexicans suffered about 2,000 casualties. Santa Anna dismissed the Alamo conquest as "a small affair," but the time bought by the Alamo defenders’ lives permitted General Sam Houston to forge an army that would win the Battle of San Jacinto and, ultimately, Texas’ independence. Mexican Lt. Col. Pena later wrote a memoir: "With Santa Anna in Texas: Diary of Jose Enrique de la Pena," that described the capture and execution of Davy Crockett and 6 other Alamo defenders. In 1975 a translation of the diary by Carmen Perry (d.1999) was published. Apparently, only one Texan combatant survived Jose María Guerrero, who persuaded his captors he had been forced to fight. Women, children, and a black slave, were spared.
(AP, 3/6/98)(HN, 3/6/98)(HNPD, 3/6/99)(SFC, 6/15/99, p.C6)
1836 Mar 12, Mexican forces under General Jose de Urrea defeated Texan forces at the Battle of Refugio.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar 13, Refugees from the Alamo arrived in Gonzales, Texas, and informed Gen. Sam Houston of the March 6 fall of the Alamo. Houston immediately ordered a retreat.
(ON, 8/10, p.1)
1836 Mar 20, At Coleto Creek, Texas, Colonel James Fannin after being surrounded by Mexican forces under General Urrea, agreed to surrender to Colonel Juan Jose Holzinger. Fannin was unaware that General Santa Anna had decreed execution for all rebels. Urrea negotiated the surrender "at the disposal of the Supreme Mexican Government," falsely stating that no prisoner taken on those terms had lost his life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar 26, Mexican Colonel Jose Nicolas de la Portilla received orders from Gen. Santa Anna in triplicate to execute his Texan prisoners at Goliad.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar 27, Mexican Colonel Jose Nicolas de la Portilla executed his Texan prisoners at Goliad. Colonel Portilla had the 342 Texians marched out of Fort Defiance into three columns. The Texians were then fired on at point-blank range. The wounded and dying were then clubbed and stabbed. Those who survived the initial volley were run down by the Mexican cavalry.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1836 Mar, Thousands of English speaking Texans abandoned their homes as the Mexican army advanced following the fall of the Alamo. They fled toward Louisiana in what came to be called the “Runaway Scrape."
(ON, 8/10, p.2)
1836 Apr 21, Some 910 Texians led by Sam Houston, the former governor of Tennessee, defeated the Mexican army under Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at San Jacinto. The victory in the 18 minute battle sealed Texan independence from Mexico. Houston counted 9 fatalities. 630 Mexicans were killed out of some 1,250 troops. Some 700 were taken prisoner.
(AP, 4/21/97)(HN, 4/21/98)(AH, 2/03, p.22)(ON, 8/10, p.3)
1836 Sep 12, Mexican authorities crushed the revolt which broke out on August 25.
(HN, 9/12/98)
1836 Oct, Don Juan Alvarado, president of the 7-man legislature in the Mexican territory of California, fled Monterey with his deputies to Mission San Juan Bautista under threats from Lt. Col. Nicolas Gutierrez, the military governor. There they formed plans for a coup.
(ON, 4/04, p.9)
1836 Nov 4, Don Juan Alvarado and a group of followers forced the surrender of Lt. Col. Nicolas Gutierrez, the military governor Monterey. The quickly drafted a constitution and proclaimed California independent of Mexico. Officials in southern California refused to recognize Alvarado's government and he agreed to make California a territory of Mexico with himself as governor.
(ON, 4/04, p.10)
1836 Dec 28, Spain recognized the independence of Mexico.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1836 The remains of Hernando Cortes (d.1547), the Spanish conquistador who subdued Aztec king Montezuma and stole his wife, were brought to Mexico from Spain and laid to rest in Mexico City.
(WSJ, 12/14/00, p.A8)
1838 Nov 30, Mexico declared war on France.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1839 The Bernal Heights area of SF, Ca., began to be developed as part of a Mexican land grant belonging to Don Jose Cornelio Bernal.
(SFC, 6/29/06, 96 Hours p.41)
1840s A native rebellion called the Caste War broke out in southern Mexico against the ruling hacienda class. The 22,000 square-foot palacio of Hacienda Tabi in the Yucatan was sacked.
(Arch, 1/05, p.45)
1841 John Lloyd Stephens published "Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan" with illustrations by Frederick Catherwood.
(ON, 12/99, p.8)
1842 Oct 18, US Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones sailed into Monterey, the Mexican capital of California, on the mistaken belief that the US and Mexico had gone to war.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.D2)
1842 Oct 19, US Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones ordered the surrender of Mexican officials in Monterey, Ca., on the mistaken belief that the US and Mexico had gone to war. He soon learned of his error and returned Monterey to Mexican authority.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.D2)
1842 John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood returned to Mexico and later produced a 2nd book titled: Incidents of Travel in Yucatan," which described their discovery of 44 additional ruined cities in southeastern Mexico.
(ON, 12/99, p.8)
1843 Mar 25, Seventeen Texans, who picked black beans from a jar otherwise filled with white beans, were executed by a Mexican firing squad. After months of raiding, captivity and escapes in Northern Mexico, Mexican president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna ordered the execution of one tenth of the 176 Texas freebooters of the Mier Expedition. The event was later depicted by artist Theodore Gentilz.
(HNPD, 3/27/00)
1843 William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859), American Historian, authored "History of the Conquest of Mexico."
(ON, 10/00, p.5)(WSJ, 8/16/08, p.W6)
1843 In California a land grant established Rancho El Tejon. The area was named El Tejon (the badger) after Spanish soldiers under Lt. Francisco Ruiz discovered the species during an 1805 expedition.
(SFC, 5/9/08, p.A1)
1845 Mar 28, Mexico dropped diplomatic relations with US.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1845 Dec 29, Texas (comprised of the present State of Texas and part of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming) was admitted as the 28th state, with the provision that the area (389, 166 square miles) should be divided into no more than five states "of convenient size." Sam Houston insisted on maintaining control of offshore waters as a condition of joining the union. The annexation of Texas led Mexico and the US to prepare for war.
(AP, 12/29/97)(Econ, 7/1/06, p.29)(SFC, 1/11/20, p.C2)
1846 Jan 13, President James Polk dispatched General Zachary Taylor and 4,000 troops to the Texas Border as war with Mexico loomed. At the outset of the Mexican-American War, the Mexican army numbered 32,000 and the American army consisted of 7,200 men. The American army had, since 1815, only fought against a few Indian tribes. Forty-two percent of the army was made up of recent German or Irish immigrants. In the course of the war, the total U.S. force employed reached 104,000. In 2008 Martin Dugard authored “The Training Ground: Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Davis in the Mexican War, 1846-1848." In 2012 Amy S. Greenberg authored “A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln and the 1846 US Invasion of Mexico."
(HNQ, 2/28/99)(WSJ, 5/16/08, p.W8)(SSFC, 1/6/13, p.F6)
1846 May 8, News reached Washington DC that Mexican troops had attacked a US reconnaissance patrol near the Rio Grande and killed or captured some 40 men. That same afternoon Polk and his cabinet had decided to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Mexico.
(AH, 6/07, p.44)
1846 May 8, The first major battle of the Mexican-American War was fought at Palo Alto, Texas; US forces led by General Zachary Taylor were able to beat back the invading Mexican forces.
(AP, 5/8/07)
1846 May 9, US forced Mexico back to Rio Grande in the Battle of Resaca de la Palma.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1846 May 9, Gen. Mariano Arista crossed the Rio Grande and killed a number of US soldiers in a surprise attack. Mexico believed that France and Britain would support it in a war against the US.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A15)
1846 May 18, US troops attacked at the Rio Grande and occupied Matamoros.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1846 May 24, General Zachary Taylor captured Monterey in the Mexican War. [see Sep 25]
(HN, 5/24/98)
1846 Aug 22, The United States annexed New Mexico. The US pledged to honor the land grants in northern New Mexico that were awarded by the Spanish and Mexican governors of the territory.
(AP, 8/22/97)(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A6)
1846 Sep 25, American General Zachary Taylor's forces captured Monterey, Mexico. [see May 24]
(HN, 9/25/98)
1846 Nov 16, General Zachary Taylor took Saltillo, Mexico. General, cried Brig. Gen. John Wool in despair, we are whipped! I know it, replied Maj. Gen. Zachary Taylor, but the volunteers don't know it. Let them alone; we'll see what they do.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1846 Dec 6, Mounted Californio lancers overwhelmed the troops of Gen. Steven Kearny at the Battle of San Pasqual (San Diego). This was the worst defeat suffered by US troops in the California campaign of the Mexican-American War.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_San_Pasqual)(SFC, 9/1/18, p.C1)
c1846 Santa Anna was recalled to serve as president and to lead the army.
(WSJ, 5/29/98, p.W10)
1846-1848 US troops invaded and captured Mexico City.
(SFC, 12/10/96, p.A12)
1847 Jan 24, 1,500 New Mexican Indians and Mexicans were defeated by US Col. Price.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1847 Feb 22, In the Battle of Buena Vista US troops beat Mexican army during the Mexican-American War. Mexican General Santa Anna (of Alamo infamy) surrounded the outnumbered forces of U.S. General Zachary Taylor ('Old Rough and Ready') at the Angostura Pass in Mexico and demanded an immediate surrender. Taylor refused, reported to reply, "Tell him to go to hell," and early the next morning Santa Anna dispatched some 15,000 troops to move against the 5,000 Americans. The superior US artillery was able to halt one of the two advancing Mexican divisions. By the afternoon Taylor had lived up to his word as the Mexicans began to withdraw.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1847 Feb 23, U.S. troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor defeated Mexican Gen. Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista in Mexico. The United States and Mexico had been at war over territorial disputes since May 1846.
(AP, 2/23/98)(HN, 2/23/98)
1847 Feb 28, Colonel Alexander Doniphan and his ragtag Missouri Mounted Volunteers rode to victory at the Battle of Sacramento, during the Mexican War.
(HN, 2/28/99)
1847 Mar 7, U.S. General Scott occupied Veracruz, Mexico. Pres. Polk decided to attack the heart of Mexico. He sent Gen. Winfield Scott, who landed at Veracruz and with his troops hacked their way to Mexico City. [see Mar 9]
(HFA, '96, p.48)(HN, 3/7/98)
1847 Mar 9, US forces under General Winfield Scott invaded Mexico (Mexican-American War) 3 miles south of Vera Cruz. Encountering almost no resistance from the Mexicans massed in the fortified city of Vera Cruz, by nightfall the last of Scott's 10,000 men came ashore without the loss of a single life. It was the largest amphibious landing in U.S. history until WW II. [see Mar 7]
(MC, 3/9/02)
1847 Mar 29, Some 12,000 US forces led by General Winfield Scott occupied the city of Vera Cruz after Mexican defenders capitulated.
(HFA, '96, p.26)(AP, 3/29/97)(MC, 3/29/02)
1847 Apr 18, U.S. forces defeated the Mexicans at Cerro Gordo in one of the bloodiest battle of the war.
(HN, 4/18/99)
1847 Aug 20, General Winfield Scott won the battle of Churubusco on his drive to Mexico City. The Mexican War gave future civil war generals their first taste of combat.
(HN, 8/20/98)
1847 Sep 8, The US under Gen. Scott defeated Mexicans at Battle of Molino del Rey.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1847 Sep 13, US General Winfield Scott took Chapultepec, removing the last obstacle to his troops moving on Mexico City. Six teenage military cadets later became known as “Los Ninos Heroes" for their defense of Chapultepec Castle.
(HN, 9/13/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni%C3%B1os_H%C3%A9roes)
1847 Sep 14, US forces under Gen. Winfield Scott took control of Mexico City (the "Halls of Montezuma"). The Mexican forces fled with their leader, Santa Anna.
(HFA, '96, p.48)(AP, 9/14/97)
1847-1901 The Caste War of Yucatan extended over this period. it began with the revolt of the native Maya people against the population of European descent (called Yucatecos) in political and economic control. In 2017 the wreck of paddle-wheel steamboat "La Union," which had carried Mayan people during this period into virtual slavery to Cuba, was found.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_War_of_Yucat%C3%A1n)(SFC, 9/16/20, p.A2)
1848 Feb 2, US and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexico ceded one-third of its territory to the US including California, agreed to the Rio Grande as the boundary between Texas and Mexico and was awarded $15 million. 25,000 Mexicans and 12,000 Americans lost their lives in the 17-month old conflict.
(HFA, ‘96, p.48)(SFC, 6/13/96, p.A17)(HN, 2/2/99)
1848 Mar 10, The US Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war with Mexico.
(AP, 3/10/98)(HN, 3/10/98)
1848 May 30, Mexico ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo giving US: New Mexico, California and parts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona & Colorado in return for $15 million.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1848 Mexico was forced to sell most of the territory that is now Arizona to the United States following its defeat in the Mexican-American war.
(AP, 5/20/10)
1852 Capt. Charles Melville Scammon, a whaler, discovered the spawning area of the Pacific gray whales in the lagoons of Magdalena Bay off the Baha coast.
(SFEM, 5/7/00, p.9)
1853 Oct 15, William Walker set out from San Francisco with 45 men to conquer the Mexican territories of Baja California Territory and Sonora State. He succeeded in capturing La Paz, the capital of sparsely populated Baja California, which he declared the capital of a new Republic of Lower California, with himself as president and his former law partner, Henry P. Watkins, as vice president. He then put the region under the laws of the American state of Louisiana, which made slavery legal.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walker_(filibuster))(SFC, 8/1/15, p.C2)
1853 Benito Juarez, patriot and reformer, was locked up for 11 days in the dungeon of the fortress of San Juan de Ulua in Veracruz.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1854 Jan 10, William Walker proclaimed the independence of lower California, calling it the Republic of Sonora. A serious lack of supplies, discontent within his party and an unexpectedly strong resistance by the Mexican government quickly forced Walker to retreat and return to San Francisco where he was tried but quickly acquitted.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Sonora)(SFC, 8/1/15, p.C2)
1854 Aug 12, French adventurer Count Gaston Raousset-Boulbon (b.1817) was shot and killed by a Mexican firing squad. He had led some 112 gold miners from California’s Tuolumne County on an invasion of Mexico.
(https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_de_Raousset-Boulbon)(SFC, 9/5/15, p.C2)
1854 Julia Pastrana (20) became known as the "ape woman" after she left the Mexico’s Pacific coast state of Sinaloa. A rare genetic condition covered her face in thick hair. She was taken around the United States by showman Theodore Lent. She and Lent married and had a son, but she developed a fever related to complications from childbirth, and died along with her baby in 1860 in Moscow. In 2013 the University of Oslo, Norway, shipped her remains back to Sinaloa, where they were laid to rest.
(AP, 2/13/13)
1855-1926 An estimated 3,350 gray whales were harpooned in Magdalena Bay.
(SFEM, 5/7/00, p.9)
1858 Jan 21, Felix Marma Zuloaga became president of Mexico upon the ouster of Ignacio Comonfort.
(AP, 1/21/08)
1858 Apr 15, At the Battle of Azimghur, Mexicans defeated the Spanish loyalists.
(HN, 4/15/98)
1858 May 4, In the Mexican War of Reform liberals established their capital at Vera Cruz.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1858 Dec, Mexico's War for Liberal Reform, a three-year civil war lasting from December 1857 to December 1860, was fought between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party over the Constitution of 1857, promulgated under the liberal presidency of Ignacio Comonfort.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_War)
1858-1862 Benito Juarez served his 1st term as president. He succeeded in resisting the French and offered a moment of democracy before bending the constitution to stand for re-election.
(WUD, 1994, p.772)(SFC, 4/5/01, p.A12)
1859 Melchor Ocampo, a Mexican lawyer, scientist and liberal politician, penned a 537-word ode to marriage, which was incorporated as the vows in a new civil marriage law. They were meant to replace religious vows as Mexican liberals stripped away the Roman Catholic Church’s control over much of the country’s political, social and economic life. Conservative foes summarily executed Ocampo by firing squad for promoting the separation of church and state, but kept the amended vows in the new civil marriage law.
(AP, 7/30/06)
1860 In Mexico City the Hosteria de Santo Domingo restaurant began serving Chile en Nogada, a chili dish that displays the national colors (green, white & red).
(WSJ, 9/5/96, p.B1)
1861 Dec, French, British and Spanish troops landed at Veracruz, Mexico, seeking to force Benito Juarez to resume his financial obligations.
(PCh, 1992, p.485)
1862 May 5, At the Battle of Pueblo, a [2,000] 5,000 man Mexican force (cavalry), loyal to Benito Juarez and under the leadership of Gen’l. Ignacio Zaragoza, defeated 6,000 [10,000] French troops sent by Napoleon III. The French were attempting to capture Puebla de Los Angeles, a small town in east-central Mexico. The Battle of Puebla represented a great moral victory for the Mexican government, symbolizing the country's ability to defend its sovereignty against threat by a powerful foreign nation. The event became memorialized in the Cinco de Mayo annual festival. Napoleon had intended to march through to the US and help the Confederacy in the Civil War.
(SFEM, 4/27/97, p.6)(AP, 5/5/97)(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T8)(SFC, 5/1/99, p.A13)(WSJ, 5/5/00, p.W17)(MC, 5/5/02)
1863 Jun 7, Mexico City was captured by French troops.
(HN, 6/7/98)
1863 French forces captured Puebla.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6)
1864 Apr 10, The French crowned Archduke Maximilian, the younger brother of Austria’s Franz Josef, as ruler of Mexico.
(CLTIH, 4/10/96)(WSJ, 5/5/00, p.W17)
1864 May 29, Mexican Emperor Maximilian arrived at Vera Cruz.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1867 May 5, At the Battle of Puebla, the Mexican Juarez forces under Mariano Escobedo defeated Maximilian's forces at Gueratero.
(HN, 5/5/98)(PCh, 1992, p.505)
1867 Jun 19, Mexican Emperor and Austrian Archduke Maximillian (35) was executed on the orders of Benito Juarez by a firing squad in Queretaro. The event was immortalized in a painting by Manet.
(HN, 6/19/98)(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T10)(PCh, 1992, p.505)(WSJ, 5/5/00, p.17)
1867-1871 Benito Juarez served his 2ndt term as president.
(WUD, 1994, p.772)(SFC, 4/5/01, p.A12)
1869 The Santo Madero Church was built in Parras de la Fuente.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1870 Tequila Herradura began producing tequila at the Hacienda San Jose del Refugio in the highlands of Jalisco state. Their tequila was made from 100% blue-agave juice.
(WSJ, 5/3/99, p.A1)
1872 Jul 18, Benito Juarez (66), general (battle of Acapulco) and Pres. of Mexico (1858-1872), died of a heart attack in the National Palace.
(MC, 7/18/02)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1875 Oct 12, Mayan Indians attacked the Xuxub sugar plantation in the Yucatan and dozens of workers were killed or taken captive. Bernadino Cen, the Mayan leader, was killed when the Mexican National Guard arrived the next day. In 2004 Paul Sullivan authored “Xuxub Must Die."
(WSJ, 5/13/04, p.D10)
1875 In the early autumn Brigham Young sent Daniel W. Jones and five elders on horseback to Mexico. During the 3,000-mile trip, the missionaries stopped frequently in New Mexico and Arizona, preaching the gospel and converting Indians. Jones and his team arrived in Franklin, Texas, (El Paso) in 1876, crossing through present-day Juarez. They were warmly welcomed by Mexican officials.
(www.epcc.edu/nwlibrary/borderlands/19_mormons.htm)
1876 Jun 20, Antonio L de Santa Ana, president of Mexico and victor at Alamo, died.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1876 Nov 28, Porfirio Diaz (1830-1915) rose to the presidency following a coup. He was an economically progressive leader, imposed brutal order on the countryside and liberated Mexico City from its perennial floods. Díaz was forced to resign in May 1911 and went into exile in Paris, where he died four years later.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 12/14/00, p.A1)
1877 Jun 1, U.S. troops were authorized to pursue bandits into Mexico.
(DT internet 6/1/97)
1877 Oct 4, Pancho Villa (d.1923), [Doroteo Arango], Mexican revolutionary rebel, was born. [see Jun 5, 1878]
(MC, 10/4/01)
1878 Jun 5, Francisco "Pancho" Villa (d.1923), Mexican revolutionary and guerrilla leader, was born. He defied American General John J. Pershing’s expedition for him. [see Oct 4, 1877]
(HN, 6/5/99)
1878 Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala (d.1963) was born in Mexico. She co-founded the Congregation of the Servants of Saint Margaret Mary and the Poor and was beatified in 2004.
(AP, 4/25/04)
1879 Aug 8, Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary who occupied Mexico City three times, was born in Anenecuilco, Morelos state, Mexico.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Zapata)
1880 Oct 14, Apache leader Victorio was slain in Mexico. [see Oct 15]
(HN, 10/14/98)
1880 Oct 15, Victorio, feared leader of the Minbreno Apache, was killed by Mexican troops in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. [see Oct 14]
(HN, 10/15/98)
1880s The Palace of Justice in Vallodolid, Mexico, was built by Belgian engineer Guillermo Wodon de Sorinne.
(SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C11)
1883 Aug 8, Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary who occupied Mexico City three times, was born. [see 1877].
(HN, 8/8/98)(WUD, 1994 p.1659)
1885 May 15, Mormons began an exodus from the United States into Mexico. Chihuahua Governor Ochoa had agreed to sell land to the Mormons to colonize. Church President John Taylor had explored the area and church officials selected Casas Grandes, a valley in the state of Chihuahua, as the place to begin settlement.
(www.epcc.edu/nwlibrary/borderlands/19_mormons.htm)
1886 Dec 8, Diego Rivera (d.1957), Mexican painter, was born in Guanajuato.
(SSFC, 8/19/12, p.P2)
1886 The Tequila San Matias company in Guadalajara began tequila production.
(SFEC,10/19/97, Z1 p.4)
1888 In Mexico the Santo Tomas Winery was founded near Ensenada.
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.E3)
1889 After the Paris World Fair a church designed by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was dismantled and shipped to Santa Rosalia in Baja, Mexico.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T11)
1891 In Mexico the El Palacio de Hierro (The Iron Palace) chain of stores was founded to bring Parisian fashion to posh ladies of the new world.
(Econ, 12/8/12, p.67)
1892 In Merida the Palacio de Gobierno was built on the site of the governors’ palace.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1893 Don Evaristo Madero, grandfather of Francisco Madero, bought the San Lorenzo Hacienda and winery.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.T8)
1894 Edward Herbert Thompson, American consul, purchased land in the Yucatan that contained the ruins of the Mayan city of Chichen Itza.
(ON, 5/02, p.6)
1895 Feb 14, Nigel Bruce, actor (Dr Watson in Sherlock Holmes movies), was born in Baja, Mexico.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1895 Sep 22, Paul Muni, actor (Academy Award 1936-Angel on My Shoulder), was born in Juarez.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1896 Amado Nervo (1870-1919), Mexican poet, journalist and educator. published "The Elysian Fields of Tabasco." Here he noted how families in Tabasco used classical names for newborns rather than saints' names.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amado_Nervo)(Econ., 10/3/20, p.28)
1896 Moises Saba Amigo arrived in Mexico from Aleppo, Syria. He was part of a large migration of Jews known as "Turcos" from Syria and Palestine whose passports were issued by Ottoman Turkey. He started peddling dry goods and moved up to a chain of stores, then textiles. The family savings were put into real estate. The Saba family were billionaires by 1997.
(WSJ, 8/22/97, p.A10)
1898 May 31, German List (d.1998) was born in Puebla. He became a poet and chronicled the Mexican Revolution from 1910-1920.
(SFC, 10/20/98, p.A22)
1900 Dec 31, In Mexico it was rumored in San Jose de Gracia, Michoacan state, that the world would come to an end on this date. A 1968 biography of this was recorded in "Pueblo en Vilo" (Town on Edge) by Luis Gonzalez y Gonzales, considered to be the founder of microhistory in Mexico.
(Econ., 10/3/20, p.71)
1899 Dec 31, Silvestre Revueltas (d.1940), violinist, conductor and composer (Sensemaya), was born in Santiago, Papasquiaro, Mexico.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvestre_Revueltas)
1900 Jose Eca de Queiroz, Portuguese novelist, died. His novels included an 1875 satire about a priest struggling with his vows of celibacy. It was made into a Mexican film "El Crimen del Padre Amaro" (The Crime of Father Amaro) in 2002.
(AP, 8/9/02)
1900-1908 In Merida the Teatro Peon Contreras was built during the boom years of henequen trade. A thorny agave plant provided a natural rope fiber, sisal, that made the Yucatan plantation owners rich until synthetic ropes were developed.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1900-1910 Simon Bley, banker and politician, served as the mayor of Hermosillo.
(SFC, 11/2/99, p.A26)
1901 Feb 2, Mexican government troops were badly beaten by Yaqui Indians.
(HN, 2/2/99)
1901 A silver refinery was established in Torreon in Coahuila state. Land for housing was sold next to the area in the 1970’s and in 1998 a pediatrician began noticing high levels of lead among the children. The Met Mex Penoles plant had created a mountain of slag over the years and poisonous lead seeped into the blood of thousands of children in the area. In 1999 a plan was announced to evacuate a 20-block area. 393 homes were to be bulldozed for a 15-acre buffer zone in a $36 million cleanup program, the largest ever by a Mexican company.
(SFC, 5/6/99, p.C2)(Econ, 9/3/11, p.37)
1901 Colorado River water first flowed to California's arid southeast on the Alamo Canal, which dipped into Mexico. California farmers soon decided they needed a canal completely within the United States, leading to completion of the All-American Canal in 1942.
(AP, 3/18/06)(Econ, 8/1/09, p.71)
1902 A massacre by Mexican federal troops, "the Battle of the Sierra Mazatan," killed about 150 Yaqui men, women and children. US anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka came upon some of the bodies while they were still decaying, hacked off the heads with a machete and boiled them to remove the flesh for his study of Mexico's "races." He sent the resulting collection to the New York museum. In 2009 Yaqui Indians buried their lost warriors after a two-year effort to rescue the remains from New York's American Museum of Natural History.
(AP, 11/17/09)
1903 El Teatro Juarez was completed in Guanajuato after 20 years of construction.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.D6)
1904-1909 Edward Herbert Thompson led dredging operations at the sacred well of Chichen Itza.
(ON, 5/02, p.7)
1905 Aug 3, Dolores Del Rio, actress (What Price Glory?), was born in Mexico.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1905 Mexico’s Islas Marias penal colony was founded. It was about 112 kms (70 miles) from the mainland Pacific coast resort of Puerto Vallarta. The Maria Madre island penal colony was ordered closed in 2019.
(AP, 11/24/11)(AP, 2/18/19)
1905 In Mexico Pres. Diaz and his finance minister, Jose Limantour, set a silver-gold parity of 32:1, that proved to be a deflationary mistake on the eve of revolution.
(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1906 The Cemex company was founded in Mexico with the opening of Cementos Hidalgo. In 1920 Cementos Portland Monterrey began operations and in 1931 the 2 companies merged to become Cementos Mexicanos.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cemex)
1907 Jul 6, Artist Frida Kahlo (d.1954) was born in Coyoacan, Mexico.
(SFC, 4/18/96, E-1)(SFC, 7/14/96, p.C11)(AP, 7/6/07)
1907 Jul 8, George W. Romney, later governor of Michigan, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico. He later was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination until he admitted that he had been "brainwashed" by the military on the Vietnam War.
(HN, 7/8/98)(SSFC, 2/25/07, p.A4)
1908 Jul 18, Lupe Velez (d.1944), film star, was born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Her over 40 films included “The Gaucho" (1927).
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0892473/)(www.youtube.com/watch?v=mArs7CMZYtg)
1908 In Mexico at least 5,000 Yaqui had been sold into slavery by this time. During the 34-year rule of Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz (1876-1911), the government repeatedly provoked the Yaqui remaining in Sonora to rebellion in order to seize their land for exploitation by investors for both mining and agricultural use.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaqui)
1909 The legendary Jesus Malverde, a Mexican Robin Hood who rode the hills around Culiacan in Sinaloa State, was supposedly hanged by the government and left to rot. The legendary crime figure became revered as a saint by many of the country's drug traffickers. In 2007 housewife Maria Alicia Pulido Sanchez built him a shrine in Mexico City after her son Marcos Abel recovered from injuries he suffered in a December 2005 car crash in just three days when she prayed to a Malverde statue a friend had given her.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.A14)(AP, 1/23/07)
1910 Jun 20, Mexican President Porfirio Diaz proclaimed martial law and arrested hundreds.
(HN, 6/20/98)
1910 Nov 18, The first shots of the revolution were fired in Puebla when federal police attacked the home of Aquiles Serdan, a shoe store owner agitating against Diaz.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6)
1910 Nov 20, Revolution broke out in Mexico. Francisco I. Madero called for a rise to national arms on this day when dictator Porfirio Diaz reneged on his pledge to stay out of the presidential election.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6) (AP, 11/20/97)
1910 The Revolution became a consuming civil war.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.D8)
1910 The National Autonomous University of Mexico was re-founded after being closed for 39 years due to civil wars.
(WSJ, 9/1/99, p.A8)
1910-1920 Over 1 million people died during the revolution.
(SFC, 10/20/98, p.A22)
1911 Jan 24, U.S. Cavalry was sent to preserve the neutrality of the Rio Grande during the Mexican Civil War.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1911 Jan, A pair of U.S. Army aviators dropped the first live bomb. The Mexican Revolution gave the opportunity to use the airplane in actual combat. Airplanes had already begun to replace balloons for battlefield observation.
(HNQ, 7/16/00)
1911 Mar 7, The United States sent 20,000 troops to the Mexican border in the wake of the Mexican Revolution.
(AP, 3/7/98)
1911 Mar 12, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, president of Mexico, was born.
(HN, 3/12/98)
1911 May 13, In Mexico revolutionary troops overan the city of Torreon. 303 Chinese men, women and children were killed over the next 3 days by a local mob and the revolutionary forces of Francisco I. Madero. In 2021 Pres. Andres manuel Lopez Obrador presented an apology for the massacre.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre%C3%B3n_massacre)(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A4)
1911 May 25, Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico, resigned his office under pressure from the revolution.
(HN, 5/25/98)(SC, 5/25/02)
1911 May 26, Porfirio Diaz caught a train from Mexico City’s San Lazaro station to Veracruz.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A23)
1911 Jun 21, Porfirio Diaz, the ex-president of Mexico, exiled himself to Paris.
(HN, 6/21/98)
1911 Aug 12, Cantinflas (d.1993), comedian and film star, was born in Mexico City as Mario Moreno.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantinflas)
1911 Nov 28, Zapata proclaimed Plan of Ayala, Mexico.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1911-1912 During the Revolution the crime rate rose in double digits for two years in a row
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.A14)
1911-1913 Francisco Indalecio Madero, revolutionary and political leader, served as president.
(WUD, 1994, p.861)
1912 Mar 29, The U.S. sent rifles to the Mexican ambassador in Mexico City and readied U.S. ships to transport troops to fight the rebels.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1912 Pancho Villa, a former bandit, returned to Mexico from the US with a tiny band of men that he built into the "Division del Norte."
(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A2)
1913 Jan 20, Jose Guadalupe Posada, Mexican cartoonist, died. He had created Catrina, the Skeleton Lady in her elegant broad-brimmed hat in a satirical engraving sometime between 1910 and his death. Her image grew over the years to symbolize Mexico’s Day of the Dead.
(AP, 10/31/13)
1913 Feb 9-1913 Feb 18, The 10 Day Tragedy of Mexico City when 3,000 died.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1913 Apr 9, Pancho Villa and his men stole 122 silver bars from a train in Northern Mexico. The silver was then valued at about $160,000 and in 1999 would be $2.6 million. Wells Fargo and its Mexican subsidiary arranged to buy back the silver for cash and gave Villa either $50,000 or 50,000 pesos ($25,000) in exchange for 93 of the 122 bars.
(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A2)
1913 Jun 17, U.S. Marines set sail from San Diego to protect American interests in Mexico.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1913 A coup led by Victoriano Huerta and encouraged by US Ambassador Lane Wilson overthrew and murdered Pres. Madero.
(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1913 The Banco Mercantil in Monterrey, Mexico faced demands by rebel troops to pay tribute to the Revolution or close. The bank spirited millions of dollars in gold bullion to Laredo, Texas. It survived the hostilities by operating "offshore" and returned home in 1916.
(WSJ, 4/1/96, p.A-10)
1913 Mexico’s active Volcan de Fuego, part of the Colima volcano complex, experienced a major eruption. As of 2012 it has erupted more than 40 times since 1576. Only a fraction of the volcano's surface area is in the state of Colima; the majority of its surface area lies over the border in the neighboring state of Jalisco.
(SSFC, 8/19/12, p.P3)(www.gomanzanillo.com/old_articles/volcano/)
1914 Mar 9, US Sen Albert Fall (Teapot Dome) demanded the "Cubanisation of Mexico."
(MC, 3/9/02)
1914 Mar 31, Octavio Paz, Mexican diplomat and Nobel Prize-winning writer, was born.
(HN, 3/31/01)
1914 Apr 9, In the Tampico incident a US ship crew was arrested in Mexico.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1914 Apr 21, U.S. marines occupied Veracruz, Mexico. They stayed for six months.
(HN, 4/21/98)
1914 Jul 15, Mexican president Huerta fled with 2 million pesos to Europe.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1914 Aug 16, Zapata and Pancho Villa over ran Mexico.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1914 Sep 15, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the Punitive Expedition out of Mexico. The Expedition, headed by General John Pershing, had been searching for Pancho Villa, a Mexican revolutionary.
(HN, 9/15/99)
1914 Elmer Jones, a Wells Fargo vice-president, was summoned by Pancho Villa and ordered to continue doing business on the northern railroads seized by Villa. Jones and another official refused and were imprisoned and ordered to be executed. The execution order was not completed and the Wells Fargo officials were rescued. The incident is contained in the book: "Wells Fargo: Advancing the American Frontier."
(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A2)
1914 The Sindicato Mexicano Electricistas (SME) was founded.
(WSJ, 12/3/99, p.A1)
1914 Mexico defaulted on its debt. It was shut out of capital markets for most of the next three decades.
(Econ, 5/2/15, p.63)
1915 Jan 9, Pancho Villa signed a treaty with U.S. General Scott, halting border conflicts.
(HN, 1/9/98)
1915 Jan 18, A train derailed on a steep incline at Colima-Guadalajara, Mexico, and some 600 people were killed.
(MC, 1/18/02)(http://www.emergency-management.net/pass_train.htm)
1915 Apr 21, Anthony Quinn (d.2001), film star, was born in Chihuahua to Frank Quinn and Manuella Oaxaca.
(HN, 4/21/98)(SFC, 6/4/01, p.A17)
1915 Jul 2, Porfirio Diaz, former president of Mexico, died in Paris, France. In 1994 his grandson, Carlos Tello Diaz, authored a study of his grandfather.
(SFC, 12/14/00, p.A8)(WSJ, 8/21/01, p.A14)
1915 Oct 19, US recognized General Venustiano Carranza (opposing Pancho Villa) as the president of Mexico, and imposed an embargo on the shipment of arms to all Mexican territories except those controlled by Carranza.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1915 In Mexico the government freed all prisoners at the fortress of San Juan de Ulua after they defended the fortress during a brief US occupation of Veracruz. The government declared the dungeon closed to prisoners for at least one hundred years.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1915-1916 A number of skirmishes took place between the Texas Rangers and Mexican Americans rebelling under the "Plan de San Diego" and numerous people were killed. Participants included the anarchist Magon brothers, and rebel leader Aniceto Pizana. In 2003 Benjamin Heber Johnson authored "Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Revolution and Its Bloody suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans."
(SSFC, 1/4/04, p.M3)
1915-1920 Venustiano Carranza (1859-1920), revolutionary and political leader, served as president. The army was led by Alvaro Obregon (1880-1928).
(WUD, 1994, p.226,994)
1916 Mar 9, Pancho Villa led 1,500 horsemen in a night raid on Columbus, New Mexico. 18 US soldiers and citizens were killed as the town was looted and burned. President Woodrow Wilson responded by ordering General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing to "pursue and disperse" the bandits. Wilson called out 158,664 National Guard members to deal with the situation.
(HN, 3/9/99)(SFC, 5/17/06, p.A11)(AP, 3/9/07)
1916 Mar 10, US President Woodrow Wilson ordered General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing to pursue and capture Pancho Villa, following Villa’s raid in New Mexico.
(SFC, 3/11/09, p.B2)
1916 Mar 15, General Pershing and his 15,000 troops chased Pancho Villa into Mexico. US troops pursued the guerillas, killing 50 on US soil and 70 more in Mexico. General Pershing failed to capture the Villa dead or alive. Villa was assassinated at Parral in 1923.
(HN, 3/15/98)(MC, 3/15/02)
1916 Mar 19, The First Aerosquadron took off from Columbus, NM, to join Gen. John J. Pershing and his Punitive Expedition for Pancho Villa in Mexico.
(HN, 3/19/99)
1916 Mar 30, Pancho Villa killed 172 at the Guerrero garrison in Mexico.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1916 Mar 31, General Pershing and his army routed Pancho Villa's army in Mexico.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1916 Apr 12, American cavalrymen and Mexican bandit troops clashed at Parrel, Mexico.
(HN, 4/12/99)
1916 Jun 17, American troops under the command of Gen. Jack Pershing marched into Mexico. US Gen’l. Pershing led an unsuccessful punitive expedition against Francisco "Pancho" Villa. [see Mar 31]
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A17)(MC, 6/17/02)
1916 Jun 21, Mexican troops beat a US expeditionary force under Gen Pershing.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1916 The newspaper El Universal was founded.
(SFC, 9/14/96, p.A10)
1917 Jan 19, The Zimmermann Note-a coded message sent to Germany's minister in Mexico by German Foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann, proposed an alliance between Germany and Mexico in the event war broke out between the U.S. and Germany. Intercepted by British naval intelligence, the note proposed, among other things, "We shall give generous financial support, and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona." The message was forwarded by the British to the U.S. State Department, which subsequently released it to the press on March 1.
(HNQ, 7/15/98)
1917 Jan 28, US forces were recalled from Mexico after nearly eleven months of fruitless searching for Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, accused of leading a bloody raid against Columbus, New Mexico.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1917 Feb 5, Mexico's constitution was adopted.
(HFA, '96, p.22)(AP, 2/5/97)
1917 Feb 19, American troops were recalled from the Mexican border.
(HN, 2/19/98)
1917 Feb 28, AP reported that Mexico and Japan would ally with Germany if US enters WW I.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1917 Diego Rivera painted his Cubist "Still Life with Bread and Fruit" while studying in Paris.
(WSJ, 3/17/00, p.W12)
1917 US law began to regulate immigration from Mexico. The US passed special rules to allow Mexicans to enter the US due to the expanding economy.
(Econ, 8/27/16, p.17)(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.5)
1919 Apr 10, Emiliano Zapata (b.c1877), a leader of Mexico's indigenous people during the Mexican Revolution, was assassinated by a government emissary who had come to his southern stronghold in the state of Morelos for peace negotiations. His native language was Nahuatl of the Aztecs.
(SFC, 4/13/96, p.A-10)(MC, 4/10/02)
1919 May 1, In Mexico Pancho Villa married Soledad Seanez Holguin. This was recognized by the state in 1946 after proof showed the pair had both a civil and a church wedding.
(SFC, 7/13/96, p. A19)
c1919 Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros (d.1974) and Diego Rivera, Mexican painters in Paris, decided that the revolution must be expressed in a public art that all could understand.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T5)
1920 Jul 28, Revolutionary and bandit Pancho Villa surrendered to the Mexican government.
(HN, 7/28/98)
1920-1924 Alvaro Obregon (1880-1928), general and statesman, served his first term as president. Obregon was killed by an assassin, who pretended to do his portrait.
(WUD, 1994, p.994)
1921 Fidel Velasquez Sanchez (1900-1997) formed the Union of Milk Workers.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.D8)
1922 Jan 17, Luis Echeverria Alvarez, president Mexico, was born.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1922 Mennonites from Canada and Pennsylvania fled persecution and settled near Chihuahua, Mexico.
(SFEC, 6/1/97, p.T3)(SFEC, 11/5/00, p.T4)
1923 Jul 20, In Mexico Francisco Villa (aka Pancho Villa, b.1877) [Doroteo Arango], general and revolutionist, died in an ambush. In c1999 Friedrich Katz of the Univ. of Chicago published "The Life and Times of Pancho Villa." In 2001 Frank McLynn authored "Villa and Zapata."
(WUD, 1994, p.1593)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A2)(WSJ, 8/21/01, p.A14)(MC, 7/20/02)
1923 Photographers Edward Weston (1886-1958) and Tina Modotti (1896-1942) set up shop in Mexico.
(WSJ, 3/12/97, p.A16)
1924 Jan 16, Katy Jurado (d.2002), Mexican-US film actress, was born as Maria Cristina Jurado Garcia in Guadalajara.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A19)
1924 Jan 24, The wedding of Alma Reed, a New York Times reporter, and Felipe Carrillo, governor of the Yucatan, was to have taken place. Carrillo was executed in Merida, a few days before the wedding, by hacienda owners angry over his planned reforms.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.T6)
1924 The government gave local peasants title to more than 45 sq. miles of land in Mulege on the Baha Peninsula. It was part of a huge nationwide redistribution of land after the Revolution.
(SFC, 1/31/97, p.A4)
1924 US labor leader Samuel Gompers visited Mexico.
(SFC, 1/22/98, p.E3)
1924-1928 Plutarco Elias Calles served as president.
(WUD, 1994, p.211)
1925 There was eruption of Popocatepetl volcano outside Mexico City.
(SFC, 7/2/97, p.A9)
1926 Feb 11, The Mexican government nationalized all church property. Pres. Plutarco Elias Calles, founder of the modern Mexican political system, tried to suppress the Church. This fomented the Cristiada, 3 years of rebellion and outright war.
(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(Econ, 1/11/14, p.30)
1926 The evangelical church "Light of the World" was founded by the father of Samuel Joaquin Flores.
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A8,10)
1926-1929 In the "Cristero Wars" several thousand Catholic lay people and priests were killed in Mexico for opposing landowning and political restrictions placed against the church.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristero_War)(WSJ, 11/22/96, p.A12)
1927 Jan 12, U.S. Secretary of State Kellogg claimed that Mexican rebel Plutarco Calles was aiding the communist plot in Nicaragua.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1927 Apr, The last major battle between the Mexican Army and the Yaqui Indians was fought at Cerro del Gallo Mountain. By employing heavy artillery, machine guns, and planes of the Mexican Air Force to shell, bomb, and strafe Yaqui villages, Mexican authorities eventually prevailed.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaqui)
1927 Dec 25, Mexican congress opened land to foreign investors, reversing the 1917 ban enacted to preserve the domestic economy.
(HN, 12/25/98)
1928 Feb 25, In Mexico Toribio Romo Gonzalez (b.1900), a Catholic priest, was killed during the Cristero War. He was canonized as a saint on May 21, 2000, by Pope John Paul II, and later came to be regarded as the patron saint of migrants.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toribio_Romo_Gonz%C3%A1lez)(SFC, 7/17/14, p.D2)
1928 Mar 27, The U.S. accepted the new oil-land laws enacted by Mexico, ending a long-standing dispute between Mexico and the United States.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1928 Jul 28, Mexico's Pres.-elect Alvaro Obregon was murdered. His assassin Juan Excapulario was captured.
(SFC, 7/18/03, p.E5)
1928 Nov 11, Carlos Fuentes, Mexican novelist, was born.
(HN, 11/11/00)
1928 The city of Taxco, famous for its silver shops, was declared a national monument. The highway from Mexico City reached Taxco.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T6)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T7)
1928 Rufino Tamayo painted his "Still Life With Corn."
(WSJ, 3/17/00, p.W12)
1929 The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) began ruling. It was initially called the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) and was cemented by Plutarco Elias Calles. The party was decreed into existence by the incumbent president to reconcile the violent, post-revolutionary factions.
(SFC, 12/14/96, p.A12)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 10/13/97, p.A1)
1929 William Spratling, an architecture professor from Tulane Univ. recruited goldsmiths to teach local men in Taxco and inspired a silver arts renaissance.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T7)
1929-1935 In the US a massive involuntary migration of Mexicans took place as hundreds of thousands of Mexicans were deported south on cattle cars.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.12)
1930 Pres. Pascual Ortiz Rubio was wounded in an assassination attempt the day he took office. From this point till 2000 the sale and public display of alcoholic beverages were banned during patriotic events.
(SFC, 9/16/00, p.A14)
1930 Photographer Tina Modotti was deported from Mexico for her political activities. She bequeathed her photography position at Mexican Folkways Magazine to Alvarez Bravo.
(WSJ, 3/12/97, p.A16)
1930s Sergei Eisenstein made his film "Que Viva Mexico."
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.E3)
1930s Fidel Velasquez Sanchez (1900-1997), a Mexico City baker [dairy worker], rose to power in the union movement. He was a strong anti-communist and rewarded his friends with money and power. He led the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) for 56 years.
(SFC, 6/21/97, p.A10,12)(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.D8)
1930-1939 During the 1930s Great Depression, counties and cities in the American Southwest and Midwest forced Mexican immigrants and their families to leave the US over concerns they were taking jobs away from whites despite their legal right to stay. Around 500,000 to 1 million Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans were pushed out of the US.
(AP, 8/30/15)
1931 Cementos Mexicanos, later called Cemex, was formed when two companies in Monterey joined forces, including one founded by Lorenzo Zambrano Gutierrez.
(WSJ, 12/11/08, p.A14)
1932 David Alfaro Sigueiros, Mexican artist, arrived in Los Angeles to teach at the LA Art School and spent seven months there. He experimented with new industrial tools and created large outdoor murals. His 80x18 foot mural, “La America Tropical," on City Hall on Olvera Street, commissioned by Christine Sterling, was painted over following completion. Soon thereafter his request for a visa renewal was denied. In 2006 LA and the Getty Foundation began a $7.7 million project to restore the work.
(SFC, 8/4/06, p.E7)(Econ, 9/25/10, p.103)
1932 Mexico abolished the death penalty.
(SFC, 1/16/02, p.A3)
1932 The Los Flamingos Hotel was built in Acapulco, Mexico. John Wayne and a number of Hollywood pals bought it in 1954 and closed it to the public.
(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.C6)
1932 At Monte Alban in the Oaxaca valley the spectacular Tomb 7 was verified as a Zapotec burial chamber.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.A24)
1933 Petromex was formed during the presidency of Abelardo L. Rodriguez.
(www.trinity.edu/jgonzal1/341f96g1.html)
1934 Nov 30, Lazaro Cardenas, following July elections, began serving as PRI president (1934-1940) of Mexico.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, p.A26)
1935 Apr 10, Jorge Mester, conductor (Louisville Orch 1967-79), was born in Mexico City.
(MC, 4/10/02)
1935 Casino gambling was outlawed in Mexico.
(SFC, 6/8/96, p.A7)
1936 Diego Rivera painted "Portrait of the Poet Lalane."
(WSJ, 9/8/00, p.W8)
1936 The Mexican film "Alla en el Rancho" starred cowboy singer Tito Guizar (d.1999 at 91)
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.C5)
1937 Jan 30, Mexico's Pres. Lazaro Cardenas created the AGPN, "Administracion General del Petroleo Nacional." The AGPN became a public organism that would guide the Mexican oil industry. The creation of the AGPN constituted the transformation of Petromex into a publicly driven firm.
(www.trinity.edu/jgonzal1/341f96g1.html)
1937 Enriquez Alferez (d.1999 at 98), Mexican artist, created his "Fountain of the Four Winds" for the New Orleans Lakefront Airport. One of the 4 figures of the sculpture was a well-endowed nude male.
(SFC, 9/14/99, p.A23)
1938 Mar 18, Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized his country's petroleum reserves and took control of foreign-owned oil facilities.
(WSJ, 3/20/96, p.A-1)(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A15)(AP, 3/18/08)
1938 Mar 27, The U.S. stopped buying Mexican silver in reprisal for the Mexican seizure of American oil companies.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1938 Jun 6, Bishop Rafael Guizar Valencia (b.1878) died in Mexico City. He had risked his life to tend the wounded during Mexico’s revolution. In 2006 Pope Benedict XVI named him a saint.
(SFC, 10/16/06, p.A2)
1938 Nov 12, Mexico agreed to compensate the U.S. for land seizures.
(HN, 11/12/98)
1938 Nov 24, Mexico seized oil land adjacent to Texas.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1939 The National Action Party (PAN) was founded in the state of Chihuahua.
(WSJ, 7/1/98, p.A1)
1940 Jul, Avila Camacho was elected president of Mexico. He agreed to compensate the multi-nationals for their oil losses and a new market for Mexican oil opened, i.e. the US.
(www.mexconnect.com)
1940 Aug 20, Ramon Mercador (Mercader) del Rio, a Spanish Communist, posed as a Canadian businessman (aka Frank Jackson) and fatally wounded Leon Trotsky with an alpine ax to the back of the head in Mexico City. Trotsky died the next day.
(WSJ, 3/29/96, p.A-14)(TMC, 1994, p.1940)(SFC, 7/19/96, p.B1)(HN, 8/20/01)
1940 Aug 21, Leon Trotsky, exiled Communist revolutionary, died in Mexico City from wounds inflicted by an assassin the day before. Earlier this year Josef Grigulevich (27), a Lithuania-born KGB agent, established a safe house at Zook's Pharmacy in Santa Fe, NM, for the assassins of Leon Trotsky. The pharmacy, visible in archive photos, was replaced in 1990 by a Haagen-Dazs ice cream shop. Grigulevich was recruited by Soviet strongman Josef Stalin's secret police as a university student in Paris and learned the assassin's trade during the Spanish civil war. He later published 58 books on Latin American history. In 2011 intelligence expert E.B. Held authored "A Spy's Guide to Albuquerque and Santa Fe."
(AP, 8/21/08)(AFP, 2/4/11)
1940 Oct 5, Silvestre Revueltas, Mexican composer: Cuauhnahuac/Planos, died at 40.
(MC, 10/5/01)
1940 Mexico's President Lazaro Cardenas legalized heroin and opened injection rooms. The US cutoff supplies of morphine, a heroin substitute, and Cardenas retreated.
(Econ., 11/21/20, p.30)
1940 Andre Breton held the Int’l. Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City. Included was the photograph "The Good Reputation Sleeping" by Alvarez Bravo.
(WSJ, 3/12/97, p.A16)
1940 The Spanish song "Bésame Mucho" was written Mexican Consuelo Velázquez before her sixteenth birthday. The phrase "besame mucho" can be translated into English as "kiss me a lot". She wrote this song even though she had never been kissed yet at the time. She was inspired by the aria "Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor" from the Spanish 1916 opera Goyescas by Enrique Granados. The lyrics were translated into English by Sunny Skylar.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9same_Mucho)
1940 The Los Angeles city council blocked games of professional women’s football. The LA team went to Mexico and played before a filled stadium.
(SFC, 2/7/03, p.D13)
1940 In Tecate at the foot of Mt. Kuchumaa Rancho La Puerta was opened as a fitness spa, the first in North America.
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.24)
1940 John Steinbeck and marine biologist Doc Ricketts (d.1948) traveled by boat from Monterey to the Sea of Cortez. In 1951 Steinbeck authored "The Log from the Sea of Cortez" based on the trip.
(SFC, 2/22/02, p.A21)
1940s Agustin Andrade and Ignacio Alcazar, cousins, started ice cream shops in Mexico City. Their enterprises expanded and came to be known the La Michoacana ice cream shops. Popsicle shops, known as paleterias, later established the economic base for the village of Tocumbo. Martin Gonzalez later authored a history of Mexico's ice cream industry.
(SFEC, 3/26/00, p.A19)
1940-1955 Mexican cinema turned out some 100 films a year during this period, later dubbed as the golden age of Mexican cinema.
(Econ, 11/20/10, p.45)
1941 In Mexico Rev. Marcial Maciel founded the Legion of Christ, a conservative Roman Catholic order to minister to the wealthy and multiply its beneficial impact on society. In 1946 Pope Pius XII ordered Father Maciel to recruit Latin American leaders. In 1997 8 men went public with allegations of sexual abuse by Father Maciel dating to the 1940s and 1950s.
(WSJ, 1/21/06, p.A13)
1941 Fidel Velasquez Sanchez (1900-1997) was first elected head of the Confederation of Mexican Workers.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.D8)
1941 The film "The Forgotten Village" was made by Herbert Kline. He was assisted by John Steinbeck in the story about peasant life in Mexico.
(SFC, 2/13/99, p.A24)
1942 Jan 5, Tina Modotti (b.1896), Italian born actress, model, photographer and secret agent, died in Mexico City. She had been expelled from Mexico in 1930 but returned incognito in 1939. In 1999 her biography by Pino Cacucci was translated into English.
(SFEC, 7/25/99, BR p.1)(SFC, 9/2/06, p.E3)(http://tinyurl.com/lklsy)
1942 Jul 2, Vincente Fox Quesada, elected president in 2000, was born.
(SFC, 7/3/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 7/3/00, p.A8)
1942 Aug 4, The "Bracero Program," began running under the auspices of the US Dept. of Labor. It sent Mexican workers to the US to help the labor shortage created by World War II. From 1942-1949 10% of their wages was deposited with the National Bank of Rural Credit, Banrural (Banco Nacional de Credito Agricola, a predecessor of Banrural). The program ended in 1964. Workers in 1999 demanded to know the status of the fund. Mexican banking officials in 1999 reported no evidence of the funds. In 2001 a suit for $500 million was filed for deposits and interest from 1942-1949.
(SFC, 8/6/99, p.A16)(SFC, 10/6/99, p.A16)(SSFC, 7/15/01, p.A4)(SFC, 1/16/04, p.A19)
1942 Sep 5, Eduardo Mata, Mexico City Mexico, conductor (Improvisaciones), was born.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1943 The evangelical church "Light of the World" began a relationship with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The cult provided crowds at political rallies in exchange political leverage.
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A8,10)
1943 The Lacandon people of southern Mexico went almost extinct. By 2019 their population had grown significantly, yet remains small, at approximately 650 speakers of the Lacandon language. Their ancestral home in Chiapas state is the last pocket of tropical rain forest in North America.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacandon)(SSFC, 10/13/19, p.A23)
1943 Parcutin Volcano in central Mexico began a 9-year eruption.
(AM, 3/04, p.50)
1944 Jun 1, The government of Mexico abolished the traditional afternoon siesta. [see Apr 1, 1999]
(Web Tech news, 6/1/99)
1944 Mexico and the US signed a treaty allowing cross-border flows of water to each other.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A2)
1944 Dr. Norman Borlaug (b.1914), a microbiologist on the staff of the du Pont de Nemours Foundation, arrived in Mexico to deal with the failure of the wheat crop caused by stem rust. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for developing new strains of wheat as well as systems for fertilizing and nurturing growth.
(WSJ, 1/17/07, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug)
1945 The film "Campeon Sin Corona" (Champion Without a Crown) starred David Silva and was directed by Hector Alejandro Galindo.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.A25)
1946 The Int’l. Whaling Commission prohibited the hunting of gray whales worldwide when their numbers were down to the thousands.
(SFEM, 5/7/00, p.9)
1946-1952 Miguel Aleman Valdez was president of Mexico. He was known as the "Enterprise President." He gave the PRI a pro-business cast and an odor of corruption. He built a showcase campus for UNAM.
(WSJ, 11/19/96, p.A18)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 9/1/99, p.A8)
1947 Jul 20, Carlos Santana, legendary guitar player, was born in Autlan, Mexico.
(SSFC, 10/14/07, Par p.18)
1948 Jan 28, A plane chartered by US Immigration Services left Oakland, Ca., carrying 32 people, including 28 Mexicans. Many were part of the bracero program and had finished their government-sponsored work contracts. 20 miles West of Coalinga an engine exploded, a wing broke off and more than 100 witnesses watched bodies and luggage thrown from the fireball. There were no survivors.
(http://tinyurl.com/ky6debf)
1948 The Mexican film "Nosotros Los Pobres" (We the Poor) starred Katy Jurado (d.2002) and Pedro Infante.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A19)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosotros_los_pobres)
1948 The film "Una Familia de Tantas" (One Family of Many) was directed by Hector Alejandro Galindo.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.A25)
1948 In London, England, Joaquin Capilla (19) of Mexico won a bronze medal for platform diving.
(AP, 5/9/10)
1950 Jul 5, In Mexico City the English-language News newspaper was founded by Romulo O'Farrill, Sr.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_News_(Mexico_City))
1950 Octavio Paz (36), poet and essayist, published "The Labyrinth of Solitude," his classical study of the Mexican character.
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A17)(Econ, 11/18/06, Survey p.4)
1950 The Mexican film "Los Olvidados" was directed by Luis Bunuel. It was released in the US as "The Young and the Damned." It was a study of social pathology among the urban poor in Mexico City.
(WSJ, 3/30/01, p.W6)(SFC, 8/9/07, p.B5)
1950 The Mexican film “Un Dia de Vida" (One Day of Life) by Emilio Fernandez told the story of a dissident army officer sentenced to death for protesting military complicity in the assassination of Emiliano Zapata.
(SFC, 7/7/14, p.E2)
1950 The Mina El Eden in Zacateca was closed.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T3)
1951 Sep 6, William Burroughs (1914-1997), writer, shot and killed his wife Joan Vollmer (27) in Mexico City. He claimed to be trying to shoot a glass off her head, a la William Tell, during a day of drinking and drugs but shot her in the head.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.B6)(Internet)
1951 Oct 15, Dr. Carl Djerassi (27), Prof. of chemistry at Stanford Univ., developed the birth control pill in Mexico City while working for Palo Alto based Syntex Corp. He synthesized norethindrone, a steroid oral contraceptive. In 2001 Carl Djerassi authored "This Man’s Pill: Reflections on the 50th Birthday of the Pill." Djerassi synthesized a key hormone in the pill in Mexico City in 1951. Serle won FDA ok to market the pill May 11, 1960.
(SJSVB, 4/8/96, p.8)(SSFC, 10/14/01, Par p.13)(SSFC, 10/21/01, p.R6)
1951 Dec. 17, Raul and Carlos Salinas, aged 5 and 3, played with their friend Gustavo Zapata at their home in Mexico City. While playing they snatched a rifle from a closet and shot a servant just below the eye, killed her and continued playing. Newspaper reports of the time indicated that Carlos pulled the trigger.
(WSJ, 2/8/96, p.A-6)
1951 Dec 27, Ernesto Zedillo was born.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A20)
1952 The film "El Bruto" starred Katy Jurado (1924-2002) and was directed by Luis Bunuel. Jurado won an Ariel, Mexico’s highest acting award, for her performance.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A19)
1952 In Mexico City Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, built the order’s 1st school, Instituto Cumbres (The Heights), with funds donated by Flora Baragan de Garza, the Monterey widow of one of the wealthiest men in Mexico.
(WSJ, 1/21/06, p.A1)
1952 In Mexico Amalia Hernandez (d.2000 at 83) founded the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, DB p.47)(SFC, 11/8/00, p.B7)
1952 In the 15th Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, Joaquin Capilla (23) of Mexico won an Olympic silver medal, for platform diving.
(AP, 5/9/10)
1952 The sarcophagus of Lord Pakal was found in the ruins at Palenque by Alberto Ruz L’Huiller.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C5)
1952 Petroleum engineers drilled in the Yucatan and found unexpected igneous rock. It was later thought to have come from a comet that hit about 65 million years ago. Sinkholes scattered around the edge of the resulting 112 mile diameter crater were later believed to result from rocks sinking in the center and causing fractures along the perimeter.
(SFC, 2/4/97, p.A9)
1953 Aug, The border town of Guerrero was founded became Guerrero Viejo after a new dam and flood covered the old town and the 2,500 residents moved to the new Guerrero Nuevo.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.C16)
1953 Sybille Bedford (b.1911), German-born English novelist, published her 1st book, “A Visit to Don Otavio," a travelogue of Mexico.
(WSJ, 5/12/05, p.D8)
1953 The Mexican film “Abismos de Pasion" was directed by Luis Bunuel. It was loose adaptation of Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights" and featured Ernesto Alonso (d.2007).
(SFC, 8/9/07, p.B5)
1953 The Mexican film "Espaldas Mojadas" (Wetbacks) was directed by Hector Alejandro Galindo.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.A25)
1953 Mexico allowed women the right to vote.
(SFC, 12/4/97, p.C6)
1953 Speedy Gonzalez, a cartoon mouse with a Mexican accent, debuted in the US.
(AP, 6/30/05)
1954 Jan 16, Mexico closed its borders to all farm laborers heading for the US following a breakdown in negotiations with the US over renewal of an annual agreement on labor flow.
(SFC, 1/16/04, p.E5)
1954 Jul 13, Frida Kahlo (b.1907), artist, died in Mexico City. Her final painting was an incomplete portrait of Joseph Stalin. Hayden Herrera authored her biography in 1983. Raquel Tibol later authored "Frido Kahlo: An Open Life."
(SFC, 4/22/01, p.D3)(WSJ, 7/6/01, p.W11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo)
1954 The Mexican film "And Tomorrow They Will Be Women" featured Sonia Furio (1937-1996).
(SFC, 12/4/96, p.A17)
1954 On the US-Mexican border the 100,000 acre Falcon Lake, near Zapata, Texas, was created on the Rio Grande's old river bed. It was managed by the bi-national International Water Boundary Commission.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20101001/ts_csm/329598)
1954 The French abandoned their copper mines in Santa Rosalia, Baha.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T11)
1955 Apr 3, In Guadalajara, Mexico, a night train plunged into a canyon and some 300 people were killed.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)(AP, 2/18/04)
1955 June, Gordon Wasson, a vice-president of J.P. Morgan, traveled to Mexico and became one of the first outsiders to eat the hallucinogenic psilocybin mushroom.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.78)
1955 The Mexican film “Ensayo de un Crimen" (The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz) was directed by Luis Bunuel and featured Ernesto Alonso.
(SFC, 8/9/07, p.B5)
1955-1969 Enrique Alonso “Cachirulo" (1928- 2004) actor, writer and producer, directed the “Teatro Fantastico" TV show.
(SFC, 8/30/04, p.B4)
1956 Winston Scott (1909-1971) was appointed as the American CIA station chief in Mexico.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKscottW.htm)
1956 In Australia Joaquin Capilla (27) of Mexico won a bronze medal for springboard diving and a gold for platform diving.
(AP, 5/9/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaqu%C3%ADn_Capilla)
1957 Sep 17, Two male attorneys "stood in" as actress Sophia Loren and producer Carlo Ponti were married by proxy in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Legal issues later forced an annulment; the couple wed in Sevres, France, in 1966.
(AP, 9/17/07)
1957 Life magazine printed R. Gordon Wasson’s “Seeking the Magic Mushroom" detailing his experiences at a religious ritual in Mexico. Wasson, a vice-president of J.P. Morgan, experienced the hallucinogenic psilocybin mushroom during a trip to Mexico in 1955.
(WSJ, 7/11/06, p.B10)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.78)
1957 Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, aka the Iron Mayor of Mexico City, opened a new building for street vendors but left out fruit seller Rico Guillermina (1933-1996) and hundreds of others. She began a crusade and formed the Civic Association of Street Vendors which supported the PRI, who in return disregarded the laws controlling street sales.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A19)
1957 Mexico began allowing artists to pay taxes with donations of their artwork after muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros faced jail time for not paying taxes.
(SFC, 7/24/14, p.A4)
1957 Iusacell obtained a mobile radio telephone concession in Mexico.
(WSJ, 8/7/96, p.A10)
1957 Miguel Covarrubias, Mexican muralist, died. His work included murals for the 1939-1940 World’s Fair in San Francisco.
(SFC, 4/20/01, p.A19)
1957 Diego Rivera, artist, died in Mexico City.
(Hem., 1/96, p.50)
1958 Carlos Fuentes (b.1928), Mexican author, published his first novel “Where the Air Is Clear." It was set in Mexico City in 1956-1957 when he was a student there on the G.I. Bill.
(WSJ, 6/14/08, p.W10)
1958 Wrestler Rodolfo Guzman (d.1984) began appearing in films as El Santo (The Saint) and went on to star in dozens of films battling criminals, demons, witches and zombies.
(SFEC, 9/19/99, p.A19)
1959 Peñon Woman was found in central Mexico dating back 13,000 years. She shared many of the features found in the Kennewick Man (1996) of Washington State.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.77)
1960 May 6, Jacques Mornard (Ram¢n Mercader), Trotsky's murderer, was freed in Mexico.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1960 Oct 19, The United States and Mexico agreed to the co-construction of a dam on the Rio Grande.
(HN, 10/19/98)
1961 Oscar Lewis, American anthropologist, authored "The Children of Sanchez." He had interviewed a poor, problem-plagued Mexican family for the book, which became a social science landmark, defining what came to be known as "the anthropology of poverty."
(AP, 1/26/04)
1961 The Flying Samaritans had their beginning when Aileen Saunders was forced to land near El Rosario in Baja, California.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, p.T10)
1961 M.S. Swaminathan, adviser to India’s minister of agriculture, invited Norman Borlaug, a plant geneticist who had improved the yield on Mexican wheat, to visit India.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.29)
1961-1968 Octavio Paz, poet and Nobel laureate, served as the Mexican ambassador to India. In 1997 he published "In Light of India."
(SFEC, 8/31/97, BR p.9)
1962 May 23, Ruben Jaramillo, Mexican agrarian reformer, was assassinated along with his family by state forces.
(SFC, 12/31/96, p.C9)(AP, 5/23/04)
1962 The film "El Santo Against the Vampire Woman" starred Rodolfo Guzman.
(SFEC, 9/19/99, p.A19)
1963 Sep 26, Lee Harvey Oswald traveled on a Continental Trailways bus to Mexico.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1963 Sep 27, Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Cuban consulate in Mexico.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1963 Oct 8, Remedios Varo (b.1908), Spanish-born surrealist painter, died in Mexico. Walter Gruen, her 11-year lover and promoter, collected her work and in 1987 attempted to get copyright protection. A Mexican judge denied his request due to Varo’s failure to get a formal divorce from French poet Benjamin Peret. In 1999 the Mexican government tried to seize the paintings on behalf of Mexico but faced a claim by next of kin niece Beatriz Varo. By 2005 Mr. Gruen agreed to give his entire collection to the Mexican government if it gets named after his deceased daughter.
(http://tinyurl.com/b87uu)(WSJ, 9/20/05, p.A1)
1963 In Mexico during the administration of Lopez Mateos soldiers took part in the mutilation killing of a leader of coffee farmers in the community of El Ticui. The event was documented in a 2006 government report on Mexico’s “dirty war."
(AP, 2/27/06)
1963 Winston Scott served as American CIA station chief in Mexico during the time that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Cuban Embassy there. In 2008 Jefferson Morley authored “Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA." Morley proposed that Scott later covered up CIA operations that involved Oswald.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKscottW.htm)(WSJ, 3/20/08, p.D7)
1963 In Guadalajara, Mexico, Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala (b.1878), co-founder of the Congregation of the Servants of St. Margaret Maria and of the Poor, died in the Santa Margarita Hospital she helped found. Zavala, aka Madre Lupita, had decided at 22 to dedicate herself to helping the sick. Her religious mission played out during a period of tension between church and state, when tens of thousands of people were killed during a 1926-1929 uprising by Roman Catholic rebels against anti-clerical laws. She was beatified in 2004 by Pope John Paul II. In 2013 she was canonized as a saint by Pope Francis.
(AP, 4/24/04)(AP, 5/12/13)
1964 Dec 13, In El Paso, Texas, President Johnson and Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz set off an explosion that diverted the Rio Grande, reshaping the U.S.-Mexican border and ending a century-old dispute.
(AP, 12/13/04)
1964 Luis Bunuel made his film "Simon del Desierto" (Simon of the Desert). It was his last film before returning to Europe. It features an ascetic who gets transported to a go-go bar in Greenwich Village.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.E3)
1964 The John Huston film "Night of the Iguana" starred Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon and Elizabeth Taylor. It was filmed in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and featured the work of cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa (1908-1997).
(SFC, 4/29/97, p.A20)(USAT, 1/16/04, p.1D)
1964 Pres. John F. Kennedy ended the bracero program, begun in 1942, that allowed Mexican guest workers to work in the US.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_program)(Econ, 2/4/17, p.26)
1964 Mexico began producing its own version of the Volkswagen Beetle, known as the el vocho.
(SSFC, 9/14/08, p.A10)
1964 The Moctezuma River in Sonora state was dammed.
(SFC, 5/15/99, p.A11)
1965 Mexico’s Border Industrialization Program (BIP) was first introduced. It led to the construction of foreign-owned maquiladoras (assembly plants) to produce goods for export.
(MT, summer 2003, p.22)
1966 In Mexico the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir was completed in southern Chiapas state.
(SSFC, 10/18/15, p.A5)
1967 Feb 14, The first nuclear weapons free zone was established in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Treaty of Tiatelolco was signed in Mexico City. It banned the manufacture, storage or testing of nuclear weapons and the devices for launching them.
(http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/dnp/sub2.asp?ipage=timeline)
1967 May 18, Schoolteacher Lucio Cabanas began a guerrilla campaign in Atoyac de Alvarez, west of Acapulco in the state of Guerrero. The government responded with widespread repression and hundreds of civilians were killed or disappeared.
(SFEC, 9/30/96, p.A12)
1967 May 29, Geronimo Baqueiro Foster (b.1898), Mexican musicologist and composer, died.
(www.dolmetsch.com/cdefsb.htm)
1968 Feb 4, Neal Cassidy (b.1926), friend of Jack Kerouac and one of the Merry Pranksters, died on a Mexican highway.
(SFC, 7/2/97, p.E5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Cassady)
1968 Oct 2, In Mexico soldiers under Pres. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz used automatic weapons and killed some 300 students in the Mexico City Tlatelolco massacre prior to the start of the summer Olympics. The government said only 50 students were killed during gunfire that lasted 5 hours. Luis Echeverria, later president, was the interior minister and the man in charge of public security. He was called before a congressional committee in 1998. Evidence in 1999 confirmed that pre-positioned soldiers fired on the students. In 2002 a special prosecutor said he has found no evidence to support historians' claims that some 300 people died when army troops opened fire on demonstrators in 1968. He put the number killed at 38. A judge dismissed other genocide charges against Echeverria in July 2005, ruling that while he may have been responsible for a separate 1971 student massacre, he could not be tried because the statute of limitations had expired in 1985.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFC, 9/1/96, p.A16)(SFEC, 4/6/97, p.C12)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 2/4/98, p.C2,14)(WSJ, 9/10/98, p.A1)(SFC, 6/28/99, p.A10)(AP, 8/5/02)(AP, 3/27/09)
1968 Oct 12, The summer Games of the 19th Olympiad were officially opened in Mexico City by Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(HN, 10/12/98)
1968 Oct 16, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos (23) sparked controversy at the Mexico City Olympics by giving "black power" salutes during a victory ceremony after they'd won gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter race. In 2011 John Carlos with Dave Zirin authored “The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World."
(AP, 10/16/08)(SSFC, 10/9/11, p.G4)
1968 Oct 18, The US Olympic Committee suspended two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, for giving a black power salute as a protest during a victory ceremony in Mexico City. Bob Beamon soared 29 feet, 2 inches, to set a world record in the long jump. In 1976 Dick Schaap authored “The Perfect Jump."
(AP, 10/18/98)(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.W8)
1968 Oct 27, The 19th Olympic games closed at Mexico City, Mexico.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Summer_Olympics)
1968 There was a rain of hundreds of thousands of maggots on Acapulco.
(SFC, 5/30/98, p.E4)
1969 Feb 8, A meteor shower hit Mexico creating a luminance in the night sky as bright as day. A meteorite weighing over 1 ton fell in Chihuahua, Mexico.
(http://wapi.isu.edu/geo_pgt/Mod05_Meteorites_Ast/mod5.htm)(TMP, KCTS-Video, 1987)
1969 Feb 8, Mexican graphic artist Leopoldo Mendez (b.1902) died. His work mostly focused on engraving for illustrations and other print work generally connected to his political and social activism.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldo_M%C3%A9ndez)
1969 Mar 26, B. Traven (b.1890), novelist and short-story writer, died. He lived most of his life incognito in Mexico. His work included "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1934), "The Death Ship," The Rebellion of the Hanged" and "The General from the Jungle." In 1976 Michael L. Baumann authored "B. Traven, An Introduction." In 2000 Michael L. Baumann authored "Mr. Traven, I Presume."
(SFEC, 10/15/00, BR p.8)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/traven.htm)
1969 Pres. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz decided to name Interior Minister Luis Echeverria Alvarez as the next PRI presidential candidate. He then attributed the selection to labor union chiefs, peasant leaders and party rank-and-file.
(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.A21)
1969-1971 Heberto Castillo (1928-1997), founder of the Party of their Democratic Revolution (1989), was imprisoned for his support of the student movement. He was elected to the senate in 1994. He had studied engineering and as a specialist in structural mathematics invented a 3-dimensional construction form.
(SFEC, 4/6/97, p.C12)
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