SITE SEEING THROUGH TIJUANA MUSEUM

Today Dan and I decided that we would check out some culture here in Tijuana, so we took a walk three blocks down the road to the museum. I was amazed at the findings and asked if I could take some pictures. I was told that I could without a flash and not of the pictures hanging on the wall. Quite surprised to see a huge collection of history, which included the Spanish, French, Americans, and even the Chinese. I was able to get some awesome pictures of the beginning history of Mexico to the time the Catholics began settling in. I was not aware of some of the things that I ran across for this was never brought up in any of my history courses in school. I was fascinated by what I saw and read. Here is a brief history and some awesome pictures of Mexico’s culture from the beginning to present. Enjoy!

The history of Mexico, a country located in the southern portion of
North America, covers a period of more than two millennia. First populated more than 13,000 years ago, the country produced complex indigenous civilizations before being conquered by the Spanish in the 16th Century.

Since the Spanish Conquest, Mexico has fused its long-established native 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 on the continent.

In 1519, the first Spaniards arrived and absorbed the native peoples into Spain's vast colonial empire. For three centuries, Mexico was a colony, during which time its indigenous population fell by more than half. After a protracted struggle, formal independence from Spain was recognized in 1810. In 1846, the

Mexican American War broke out, ending two years later with Mexico ceding almost half of its territory to the United States. Later in the 19th century, France invaded Mexico (1861) and set Maximilian I on the Mexican throne, which lasted until 1867. The Mexican Revolution (1910–1929) resulted in the death of 10 percent of the nation's population, but brought to an end the system of large landholdings that had originated with the Spanish Conquest.

From the end of the Mexican Revolution, to the mid-1990s, Mexico was dominated by one political party, the authoritarian Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Beginning in the 1990s, the one-party political system established during the Mexican Revolution began to give way to a nascent democracy. True democracy was realized in the year 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox, the first president to not be from the PRI.

The Catholic Church's influence was felt in the region when missionaries began arriving in 1523. The missionaries built many monasteries and converted millions of people to Catholicism.