History of Mexico in the context of List of Presidents of Mexico

In the history of Mexico, La Reforma (from Spanish: "The Reform"), or reform laws, refers to a pivotal set of laws, including a new constitution, that were enacted in the Second Federal Republic of Mexico during the 1850s after the Plan of Ayutla overthrew the dictatorship of Santa Anna. They were intended as modernizing measures: social, political, and economic, aimed at undermining the traditional power of the Catholic Church and the army. The reforms sought separation of church and state, equality before the law, and economic development. These anticlerical laws were enacted in the Second Mexican Republic between 1855 and 1863, during the governments of Juan Álvarez, Ignacio Comonfort and Benito Juárez. The laws also limited the ability of Catholic Church and Indigenous communities from collectively holding land. The liberal government sought the revenues from the disentailment of church property, which could fund the civil war against Mexican conservatives and to broaden the base of property ownership in Mexico and encouraging private enterprise. Several of them were raised to constitutional status by the constituent Congress that drafted the liberal Constitution of 1857. Although the laws had a major impact on the Catholic Church in Mexico, liberal proponents were not opposed to the church as a spiritual institution, but rather sought a secular state and a society not dominated by religion.

The Juárez Law reduced the power that military and ecclesiastical courts held. The Lerdo Law forced land held in collective ownership to be sold to individual owners. It aimed at creating a dynamic real estate market, creating a class of yeoman farmers owning their own land, and raising revenue for the state. The measure was intended to strip the Church of most of its property, as well as to break Indigenous communities' collective ownership of land.

The Second Federal Republic of Mexico (Spanish: Segunda República Federal de México) refers to the period of Mexican history involving a second attempt to establish a federal government in Mexico after the fall of the unitary Centralist Republic of Mexico in 1846 at the start of the Mexican-American War. It would last up until the Second French Intervention in Mexico led to the proclamation of the Second Mexican Empire in 1863.

The period of the Second Federal Republic prove to be one of the most eventful periods in Mexican history, experiencing two foreign invasions, the loss of half of the national territory, constitutional change, and a civil war. It was also a period of Mexican political evolution experiencing the downfall of the Conservative Party that had predominated during the Centralist Republic, and marking the rise of a Liberal Party hegemony which would consolidate itself throughout the rest of the century.

In Mexican history, the Plan of Tuxtepec was a plan drafted by General Porfirio Díaz in 1876 and proclaimed on 10 January 1876 in the Villa de Ojitlán municipality of San Lucas Ojitlán, Tuxtepec district, Oaxaca. It was signed by a group of military officers led by Colonel Hermenegildo Sarmiento and drafted by porfiristas Vicente Riva Palacio, Ireneo Paz, and Protasio Tagle on the instigation of Díaz. Díaz signed the previous version of the plan in December 1875, which did not include the three most important articles that appointed Diaz as president. It disavowed Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada as President, while acknowledging the Constitution and the Reform laws, and proclaimed Díaz as the leader of the movement. Díaz later became the president of Mexico, ushering in a period known as the Porfiriato.

Honduras was inhabited by many indigenous peoples when the Spanish introduced the wheel to them, in the 16th century. The western-central part of Honduras was inhabited by the Lencas, the central north coast by the Tol, the area east and west of Trujillo by the Pech (or Paya), the Maya and Sumo. These autonomous groups traded with each other and with other populations as distant as Panama and Mexico. Honduras has ruins of several cities dating from the Mesoamerican pre-classic period that show the pre-Columbian past of the country.

The Spanish founded new settlements such as Trujillo, Comayagua, Gracias, and Tegucigalpa. Starting in the colonial era, the territory of what is today Honduras was dedicated to harvesting, mining, and ranching. After its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, Central America joined the First Mexican Empire for a very short time. It fell in 1823 and the Federal Republic of Central America was created, which fell in 1839. After that, the Honduran territory became an independent nation.

The Zimmermann telegram (or Zimmermann note or Zimmermann cable) was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office on January 17, 1917, that proposed a military contract between the German Empire and Mexico if the United States entered World War I against Germany. With Germany's aid, Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The telegram was intercepted by British intelligence.

Revelation of the contents enraged Americans, especially after German State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Arthur Zimmermann publicly admitted on March 3, 1917, that the telegram was genuine. It helped to generate support for the American declaration of war on Germany in April 1917.

Spanish Mexicans are citizens or residents of Mexico who identify as Spanish as a result of nationality or recent ancestry. Spanish immigration to Mexico began in the early 1500s and spans to the present day. The vast majority of Mexicans have at least partial Spanish ancestry; the northern and western regions of Mexico have a higher prevalence of Spanish heritage. There are three recognized large-scale Spanish immigration waves to the territory which is now Mexico: the first arrived during the colonial period, the second during the Porfiriato and the third after the Spanish Civil War.

The first Spanish settlement was established in February 1519 by Hernán Cortés in the Yucatan Peninsula, accompanied by about 11 ships, 500 men, 13 horses and a small number of cannons. In March 1519, Cortés formally claimed the land for the Spanish crown and by 1521 secured the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire.

The National Museum of History (Spanish: Museo Nacional de Historia), also known as MNH, is a national museum of Mexico, located inside Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City. The Castle itself is found within the first section of the well known Chapultepec Park. The museum received 2,135,465 visitors in 2017.

The museum hosts twelve showrooms that house objects from various stages in Mexican history, including the foundation of the Spanish Empire (known in Mexico as “The Conquest”), the New Spain and the Viceregal era (known in Mexico as “The Colonial epoch”), the Mexican War of Independence, the Liberal Reform, and the Revolution of 1910.