MEXICO CITY HISTORY
The earliest proven presence of human life in the Valley of Mexico dates back to 8,000 years BC. They were primitive, strong and agile hunters, wearing loincloths made of animal fur. Their weapons were lances, darts, knives, flints, punches, bone scrappers, sticks and batons.
The Central and Southern regions of the current Mexican territory had already been densely populated for many years by people who depended on agriculture, activity that was initiated several millenniums before Christ. Some of Mesoamerica own species included corn, pumpkin and beans.
The first complex societies belonged to the Olmeca culture who built ceremonial centers on the plain coasts of Veracruz and Tabasco about 100 years BC.
The central Mexican Altiplano met several civilizations. Some of the most outstanding were the Teotihuacans, who built a commercial, political and religious metropolis and whose cultural influence was extended into Central America and Northern Mexico.
Teotihuacan was destroyed in 700 AD, probably by the Toltecan people, who came from the North, invaded the Altiplano and established their capital city in Tula.
The eighth and ninth centuries were a period of confusion. The great classic civilizations of Mesoamerica collapsed victims of foreign intruders or their own social conflicts.
The post-classic cultures become more warlike as they built great walls and defensive fortifications and worshippe war gods that demanded bloody sacrifices. At the beginning of the twelfth century, the Nahuatl people came from the north and defeated the Toltecas, expanding their power over the Altiplano and assimilating the culture of the defeated towns.
One of those Nahuatl tribes, the Aztecs, settled in the Tenochtitlan Valley, central area of Mexico in 1325, and started an inevitable demographic, economic and military expansion. The Nahuatl name of the Aztec that founded the great Tenochtitlan, “Mexica" gave origin to the name of the city and later to the whole nation.
Founded in 1325, the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan was built on an island in Lake Texcoco, the site of present-day Mexico City. The city was the military and administrative center of the Aztec Empire, which included large parts of Mexico and Central America. Tenochtitlan is estimated to have had a population of about 200,000 people, making it one of the world's largest settlements when Europeans first arrived in the Americas in the early 16th century.
Tenochtitlan, built around a series of temples and pyramids, was organized into a group of calpulli (Aztec fo clans), each forming a loose neighborhood of the city. The calpulli fulfilled different economic roles and each acted as an army battalion. The Aztec emperor was selected from the calpulli leadership.
Mexico City in the Spanish Invasion
In 1519, a group of Spaniards under the leadership of explorer Hernan Cortez arrived in Mexico. In 1521 Cortez conquered the city in an 85-day siege, during which most of Tenochtitlan was destroyed. When the conquest was complete, the population of the city had dwindled to about 30,000 people as a result of the war and the epidemics of unfamiliar European diseases.
The Spaniards began to reconstruct the city soon after they conquered it. Like most Spanish colonial cities, Mexico City was laid out on a grid pattern. The cathedral and the principal administrative buildings were built around a central plaza today known as the Zocalo.
The new European-style city, renamed Mexico City, became the most important settlement in Spain's American colonies. It served as an administrative center, a major military outpost and a base for exporting the mineral and agricultural wealth of the Americas to Spain. The city became the capital of the colony of New Spain, which included Mexico, most of Central America and large sections of what is today the southern United States. Beginning in 1535, a series of royal governors known as viceroys ruled New Spain from Mexico City. The city's upper class grew rich on the profits obtained from the exploitation of Mexican gold and silver mines.
Despite problems with disease, famine and flooding, the city grew. In the 17th century, the Spaniards built massive canals to drain Lake Texcoco. The canals reclaimed land and alleviated chronic flooding. The city's population rose gradually reaching 60,000 by 1600, 105,000 by 1700 and 137,000 by 1800.
Mexico City and the War of Independence
Early in the 19th century, Mexico fought an armed struggle to achieve independence from Spain. In 1821 Agustin de Iturbide, a military officer who joined the independence forces, triumphantly entered Mexico City, which had been largely spared the sieges and looting suffered in other parts of the country. Iturbide declared Mexico an independent nation and proclaimed himself emperor. His rule, however, became despotic and wasteful, and in less than a year, the military forced him to resign.
Mexicans adopted a Republican constitution in 1824, in which powers were shared between the states and the federal government. The constitution created a national congress, which selected Mexico City as the national capital and created the initial boundaries of the Federal District.
A tumultuous period followed in the life of the city and the nation. The war for independence left the economy in shambles and various factions in the country could not agree on the political future of the nation. A struggle for power ensued. Over the next 50 years, more than 30 presidents and 50 governments succeeded one another. Often, two or even three groups claimed jurisdiction simultaneously. This lack of stability made obtaining adequate finances difficult for Mexico City and most other Mexican cities. Lacking funding, the city's services and infrastructure suffered.
 Mexico City and Maximilian of Augsburg rule
Such national disarray made Mexico easy prey to foreign intervention. France occupied the capital from 1863 to 1867 and established the Austrian archduke Maximilian briefly as the country's emperor. During his reign, Maximilian dedicated much of the city's treasury to beautification projects and made some lasting changes which still influence the city's appearance. He expanded the palace at what today is Chapultepec Park and built th tree-lined boulevard that is today known as the Paseo de la Reforma.
Forces under the control of Mexico's elected president, Benito Pablo Juarez, overthrew and executed Maximilian in 1867. Juarez ruled until his death in 1872, when a struggle for power again erupted among Mexican politicians and military leaders.
Mexico City and 30 Years of Stability
In 1877, Mexico's long turbulent period ended with the presidency of Porfirio Diaz, a military officer who seized the presidency in a coup. Diaz ran the country with a dictatorial hand. His government erected many magnificent public buildings, and Mexico City assumed the look of a European capital. Construction of the Palace of Fine Arts, whose architecture imitated European styles, began under Diaz as did work on the legislative building now the Monument to th Revolution, a dominating structure of steel and cement. Prominent architects, both Mexican and European, designed other public and private buildings which included a national theater, hospitals, churches and department stores.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the city began to shift to an industrialized base. During the transition, unemployment actually increased as many traditional artisans found themselves without jobs.
Although the country was politically stable and its economy improved, Diaz disregarded the social problems creating unrest throughout the country. The value of wages for workers declined significantly from 1877 to 1910.
Mexico City in the Revolutionary Period
Many workers wanted the right to organize and strike in order to demand better pay, fewer hours and improved working conditions. The government, however, suppressed these working-class demands, which led to a violent revolution in 1910. The Mexican Revolution forced Diaz to leave Mexico in exile and introduced a decade of civil violence. The revolution and its aftermath halted the development of Mexico City. Indeed, the population actually declined betwee 1910 and 1920.
The political revolution led to an equally important revolution in artistic and intellectual circles and the revival of indigenous themes in Mexican artistic and literary schools. Young art students, included among them, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco, eventually supported a movement away from paintings on canvas to present their works in large, public formats on the walls of government and private buildings. They rejected European influences hoping to create works that were accessible to ordinary Mexicans and oriented toward national themes. This nationalistic movement and the dynamic change in style attracted artists and writers from all over the Americas in the 1920s.
By 1920 the political stability had been restored. For a brief period during the 1920s, an elected mayor governed the city, but in 1928 the federal government gave control of the capital to the Department of the Federal District. At the same time, the victors in the revolution seeking to consolidate their political power organized a powerful political party, the National Revolutionary Party (PRN). Eventually the PRN became the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)
The PRI and its leaders monopolized control over local, state and national governments. For the next 60 years, the party never lost an election for the presidency or the governorship of any state. The party was able to maintain tigh control over the administration of the Federal District and Mexico City and in fact, each president and head of the government of the Federal District always belonged to the PRI.
The citizens of Mexico City began to demand more self-government for the city. The first concession of returning power more directly to the residents was the creation of the Assembly for the Federal District in 1988. The Federal District was divided into districts, each of which was represented by an assembly member.
As part of an electoral reform package, the federal government agreed to a 1997 election in which citizens would choose the head of the Federal District. The contest for this position became the most significant electoral race in the 1997 national elections.
Voters decided for an opposition party (PRD) and its candidate took office in December 1997. During the election period of July 2000, the representative of the PRD again won elections for head of government of Mexico City, and so did the representative of the PAN for President of Republic.
In the past elections, held in July 2006, the candidate of the PRD was elected as the new head of government of Mexico City to serve a six-year term.
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