“Poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States.” The famous words attributed to eight-term Mexican President Porfirio Díaz have often been repeated to describe the country he ruled as a ...

HISTORY, as Mexicans see it, is a largely calamitous chronology of conflict with troublesome foreigners. The first, Conquistador Hernán Cortés, landed near Veracruz A.D. 1519 with horses and 600 men, ...

An impressive and confident history of Mexico from the Aztecs to the present, Paul Gillingham’s Mexico: A 500-Year History is at once well-written and yet also somewhat unbalanced. The central theme, ...

In a new book, Paul Gillingham tells the story of a nation that has thrived because of its diversity, not in spite of it. A 17th-century depiction of the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlán, the capital ...