A vast mansion lies abandoned on the shores of Lake Chapala. Even in ruins, it looks breathtaking. This is Hacienda La Bella Cristina, Porfirio Díaz’s former favorite vacation retreat in Jalisco. Built in 1907 with elegant French architecture, it could easily be mistaken for a scene from Pride and Prejudice. It’s located in the town […]

A man who could be a tiger at the negotiating table and a seducer at dinner. A man who inspired equal parts terror and admiration. A man who built a media empire that for decades dictated what Mexico saw, thought, and dreamed. Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, “El Tigre” (The Tiger), was the most powerful businessman Mexico […]

The telephone was invented in 1876. Two years later, in 1878, there was already one in Mexico. That’s no small feat: it means that while Graham Bell was still perfecting his invention, Porfirio Díaz was already installing it in the National Palace. The Minister of Development, the writer Vicente Riva Palacio, met the businessman Alfred […]

While Mexico declared its neutrality in World War II, a network of Nazi spies operated in the streets of Mexico City, the factories of Monterrey, and the salons of the political elite. The government was slow to detect it, but the Americans tracked it obsessively. The main agent of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence […]

The Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City took 240 years to build. That’s not a typo. Two centuries and forty years, from 1573 to 1813, with dozens of architects, viceroys, archbishops, earthquakes, floods, and even a fire along the way. And it all began because Hernán Cortés needed to wipe the Aztec gods off the map […]

At the beginning of the Porfiriato, the only railroad in the country was the Mexico City-Veracruz line. Porfirio Díaz dedicated a significant portion of his efforts and capital to building railway lines that connected major Mexican cities with the main ports and borders. By 1910, an astonishing 19,280 km had been built (out of the […]

The history of Mexico did not begin with an embrace. It did not begin with a solemn declaration. It did not begin with a speech of unity. It began with gunshots. Not the shots of a battle, but those of a firing squad. On July 19, 1824, in Padilla, Tamaulipas, Agustín de Iturbide, the man […]

A priest who didn’t just preach from the pulpit. A politician who refused to bow to the powerful. A liberal who championed federalism when most still favored a centralist empire. His name is Miguel Ramos Arizpe. He was born in northern Mexico, in Coahuila, when the country was still a viceroyalty. He was a priest, […]

When people claim that Mexico has less of a football tradition than the major powers, it’s impossible to ignore the various aspects that make the Aztec nation one of the most football-mad. That’s why it’s worth remembering the first World Cup, when the Mexican national team traveled for nearly a month to participate in the […]

Among the many powerful images preserved from the Mexican Revolution, one photograph stands out.It shows a young woman dressed in revolutionary attire — wearing bandoliers across her chest and holding weapons like the soldiers of the era.Her name is Herlinda Wong Chew.The portrait, preserved by the El Paso Museum of History, identifies her as a […]