The history of Mexico, a country located in the southern portion of North America, covers a period of more than three millennia. First populated more than 13,000 years ago, the territory had complex indigenous civilizations before being conquered by the Spanish in the 16th century.
From 1519, the Spaniards absorbed the native peoples into Spain's vast colonial empire, and fused Mexico's long-established Mesoamerican civilizations with European culture. Perhaps nothing better represents this hybrid background than Mexico's languages: the country is both the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world and home to the largest number of Native American language speakers in North America. For three centuries Mexico was part of the Spanish Empire, whose legacy is a country with a Spanish-speaking, Catholic and largely Western culture.
After a protracted struggle (1810-1821) Mexico declared its independence from Spain in 1821 via the Treaty of Córdoba. A brief period of monarchy (1821–23), called the First Mexican Empire, was followed by the founding of the Republic of Mexico, established under a federal constitution in 1824. Mexico continues to be constituted as a federated republic.
The period of the late 1820s to the early 1850s was dominated by criollo military man turned president Antonio López de Santa Anna. In 1846, the Mexican American War was provoked by the United States, ending two years later with Mexico ceding almost half of its territory via treaty to the United States. Even though Santa Anna bore significant responsibility for the disastrous defeat, he returned to office. He was overthrown by Mexican liberals, ushering in the period of the La Reforma or Liberal Reform. The Constitution of 1857 codified the principles of liberalism in law, especially separation of church and state, equality before the law, that included stripping corporate entities (the Catholic Church and indigenous communities) of special status. The Reform sparked a civil war between liberals defending the constitution and conservatives, who opposed it. The War of the Reform saw the defeat of the conservatives on the battlefield, but conservatives remained strong and took the opportunity to invite foreign intervention against the liberals in order to forward their own cause.
France invaded Mexico (1861), nominally to collect on defaulted loans to the liberal government of Benito Juárez, but it went further and at the invitation of Mexican conservatives seeking to restore monarchy in Mexico set Maximilian I on the Mexican throne. The US was engaged in its own Civil War (1861–65), so did not attempt to block the foreign intervention. Abraham Lincoln consistently supported the Mexican liberals. At the end of the civil war in the US and the triumph of the Union forces, the US actively aided Mexican liberals against Maximilian's regime. France withdrew its support of Maximilian in 1867 and his monarchist rule collapsed in 1867 and Maximilian executed.
With the end of the Second Mexican Empire, the period often called the Restored Republic (1867-1876) brought back Benito Juárez as president. Following his death from a heart attack, Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada succeed him. He was overthrown by liberal military man Porfirio Diaz, who after consolidating power ushered in a period of stability and economic growth. The half-century of economic stagnation and political chaos following independence ended.
Porfirio Díaz held power from 1876-1911, promoting "order and progress" that saw the modernization of the economy and the flow of foreign investment to the country. The period is generally called the Porfiriato, which ended with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. Under Díaz, Mexico's industry and infrastructure was modernized by a strong, stable but autocratic central government. Increased tax revenues and better administration brought dramatic improvements in public safety, public health, railways, mining, industry, foreign trade, and national finances.
Although little had been done for the nation's poor, the sparking forces of the Mexican Revolution were elites outside Díaz's inner circle, such as Francisco Madero, a member of one of the richest land owning families in Mexico, plus liberal intellectuals, and industrial labor activists. The fraudulent election of 1910 keeping 80 year old Díaz in power brought opposition elements together, unleashing a 10 year civil war known as the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). The conflict was not a unified one, but took place mainly in Mexico's north with organized armies of movement under leaders such as Pancho Villa and Alvaro Obregón and in the center of Mexico, particularly the state of Morelos with guerrilla peasants fighting under the leadership of Emiliano Zapata. The war killed a tenth of the nation's population and drove many northern Mexicans across the U.S. border to escape the fighting. The Revolution ended the system of large landed estates, or haciendas that had originated with the Spanish Conquest.
Following the formation in 1929 of the precursor to the center-left Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), this single party controlled national and state politics after 1929, and nationalized the oil industry in the 1930s. Following World War II, where Mexico had been a strong ally of the United States and had benefited significantly by supplying metals to build war materiel as well as guest farm workers, who freed U.S. American men to fight in the two front war. Mexico emerged from World War II with wealth and political stability and unleashed a major period of economic growth, often called the Mexican Miracle. It was organized around the principles of import substitution industrialization, with the creation of many state-owned industrial enterprises. The population grew rapidly and became more urbanized while many others moved to the United States. Mexico's economy was further integrated with the U.S. after the NAFTA agreement began lowering trade barriers in 1994. Seven decades of PRI rule ended in the year 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). In the face of extremely violent drug wars, the PRI returned to power in 2012, promising that it had reformed itself.
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Zacatecas , officially Free and Sovereign State of Zacatecas (Spanish: Estado Libre y Soberano de Zacatecas), is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 58 municipalities and its capital city is Zacatecas.
Zacatecas is located in North-Central Mexico. It is bordered by the states of Durango to the northwest, Coahuila to the north, Nayarit to the west, San Luis Potosí and Nuevo León to the east, and Jalisco, Guanajuato and Aguascalientes to the south.
The state is best known for its rich deposits of silver and other minerals, its colonial architecture and its importance during the Mexican revolution. Its main economic activities are mining, agriculture and tourism.
Zacatecas is a city and municipality in Mexico, and the capital and largest city of the state of Zacatecas. Located in the north-central Mexico, the city had its start as a Spanish mining camp in the mid-16th century. Native Americans had already known about the area's rich deposits of silver and other minerals. Due to the wealth that the mines provided, Zacatecas quickly became one of the most important cities in New Spain, with much of its silver enriching the Spanish crown. The area saw battles during the turbulent 19th century, but the next major event was the Battle of Zacatecas during the Mexican Revolution when Francisco Villa captured the town, an event still celebrated every anniversary. Today, the colonial part of the city is a World Heritage Site, due to the Baroque and other structures built during its mining days. Mining still remains an important industry. The name Zacatecas is derived from the Zacateco people and has its roots in Nahuatl. The name means "people of the grasslands."
Indigeous peoples
The first people to populate the area arrived approximately 10,000 years ago, when the climate was wetter and warmer, with different vegetation and wildlife. Eventually, the area became dominated by Chichimeca tribes such as the Caxcans, Guachichils, Guamares, Huichols, Zacatecos and others, with the Zacatecos being the most numerous in the area the city is today. These peoples were mining silver and other metals in these hills long before the Europeans arrived, making the area important in pre-Columbian times.
