Mexico Hotel

Mexico Hotel

Hotels in Mexico are often required for tourists who require accommodation in the nation. Some may want to go on holiday to the nation of Mexico to see the culture, the entertainment, the history, the tourist attractions and the beaches and other landscapes of the nation. Some may want to see the mountains. Numerous tourists might want a hotel that has a good reputation and good access to scenery. Numerous tourists may require hotels that have access to good prices and good status.

It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the North Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico. The Mexican United States are a federation comprising thirty-one states and a federal district, the capital Mexico City, whose metropolitan area is one of the world's most populous.

Sport in Mexico are the recreational activities of Mexico. The game of football is regarded as the most popular sport in the country; however, basketball, boxing, baseball, golf, wrestling, bullfighting, and charrería are also popular. Football has been played professionally in Mexico since the early 1900s. The first Mexican club, Pachuca C.F., is still well in existence. Mexico’s most successful clubs have been Club Deportivo Guadalajara, Club América, and Toluca and Cruz Azul.

The pre-Columbian history of what now is known as Mexico is known through the work of archaeologists and epigraphers, and through the accounts of the conquistadors, clergymen, and indigenous chroniclers of the immediate post-conquest period. While relatively few parchments (or codices) of the Mixtec and Aztec cultures of the Post-Classic period survived the Spanish conquest, more progress has been made in the area of Mayan archaeology and epigraphy.

Human presence in Mesoamerica was once thought to date back 40,000 years based upon what were believed to be ancient human footprints in the Valley of Mexico, but after further investigation using radioactive dating, it appears this may be untrue. It is currently unclear whether 21,000 year old campfire remains found in the Valley of Mexico are the earliest human remains in Mexico. Indigenous peoples began to selectively breed maize plants around 8,000 BC. Evidence shows a marked increase in pottery working by 2300 BC. and the beginning of intensive corn farming between 1800 and 1500 BC.

Between 1800 and 300 BC, complex cultures began to form. Many matured into advanced pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations such as the: Olmec, Izapa, Teotihuacan, Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, Huastec, Tarascan, "Toltec" and Aztec, which flourished for nearly 4,000 years before the first contact with Europeans.

These civilizations are credited with many inventions and advancements including pyramid-temples, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and theology.

n 1428, the Aztecs led a war of liberation against their rulers from the city of Azcapotzalco, which had subjugated most of the Valley of Mexico's peoples. The revolt was successful, and the Aztecs, through cunning political maneuvers and ferocious fighting skills, managed to pull off a true "rags-to-riches" story: they became the rulers of central Mexico as the leaders of the Triple Alliance.

This Alliance was composed of the city-states of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. At their peak, 350,000 Aztecs presided over a wealthy tribute-empire comprising around 10 million people, almost half of Mexico's then-estimated population of 24 million. This empire stretched from ocean to ocean, and extended into Central America. The westward expansion of the empire was stopped cold by a devastating military defeat at the hands of the Purepecha (who possessed state-of-the-art copper-metal weapons). The empire relied upon a system of taxation (of goods and services) which were collected through an elaborate bureaucracy of tax collectors, courts, civil servants, and local officials who were installed as loyalists to the Triple Alliance (led by Tenochtitlan).

By 1519, the Aztec capital, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, was the largest city in the world with a population of around 350,000 (although some estimates range as high as 500,000). By comparison, the population of London in 1519 was 80,000 people. Tenochtitlan is the site of modern-day Mexico City.

In 1519, the native civilizations of what now is known as Mexico were invaded by Spain, and two years later in 1521, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was conquered by an alliance between Spanish and Tlaxcaltecs (the main enemies of Aztecs). Francisco Hernández de Córdoba explored the shores of South Mexico in 1517, followed by Juan de Grijalva in 1518. The most important of the early Conquistadores was Hernán Cortés, who entered the country in 1519 from a native coastal town which he renamed "Puerto de la Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz" (today's Veracruz).

Contrary to popular opinion, Spain did not conquer all the empire when Cortes conquered Tenochtitlan in 1521. It would take another two centuries after the Siege of Tenochtitlan before the Conquest of the Aztec Empire would be complete, as rebellions, attacks, and wars continued against the Spanish by other native peoples.

The Aztecs' religious beliefs were based on a great fear that the universe would cease functioning without a constant offering of human sacrifice. They sacrificed thousands of people on special occasions. This belief is thought to have been common throughout Nahuatl people. In order to acquire captives in times of peace, the Aztec resorted to a form of "ritual warfare", or flower war. Tlaxcalteca and other Nahuatl nations were forced into such wars, and, not particularly liking the idea of being a perpetual source of human sacrifices, they willingly joined the Spaniard forces against the Aztecs. The small Spanish force, consisting of about 600 men schooled in European warfare and equipped with steel weapons and armor, was reinforced with thousands of indigenous Indian allies. Their use of ambush during indigenous ceremonies allowed the Spanish to avoid fighting the best native warriors in direct armed battle, such as during The Feast of Huitzilopochtli.

The Spanish defeat of the Aztecs in 1521 marked the beginning of the 300 year-long colonial period called the New Spain. After the fall of Tenochtitlan, it would take decades of sporadic warfare to pacify the rest of Mesoamerica. Particularly fierce was the Chichimeca War in the north of the New Spain (1576-1606).

The Council of Indies and the Mendecant establishments that arose in Mesoamerica as early as 1524 labored to generate capital for the broken crown of Spain and convert the Indian populations to Catholicism. Over the period of conquest (1519-c1600s) and the following Colonial periods the sponsorship of Mendecant friars and a process of religious syncretism combined the Pre-Hispanic cultures with Spanish socio-religious tradition. The resulting hodgepodge of culture was a pluriethnic State that relied on the repartimiento of peasant "Republic of Indians" labor to accomplish any work considered necessary. The existing feudal system of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican culture was replaced by the encomienda feudal-style system of Spain, probably adapted to the pre-Hispanic tradition. It was finally replaced by a debt-based inscription of labor that led to wide-spread revitalization movements and prompted the revolution that ended the colonial state of New Spain.
Miner's gear from the colonial period in Mexico on display at the Historical Archive and Museum of Mining in Pachuca.

During the colonial period, which lasted from 1521 to 1810, Mexico was known as "la Nueva España" or "New Spain" (as aforementioned), whose territories included today's Mexico. ("Mexico" in this period only meant the area that is the Valley of Mexico.) This entity was part of an epoymous viceroyalty, which joined with it the Spanish Caribbean islands, Central America as far south as Costa Rica, the area comprising today's southwestern United States, and the Philippines. Since Spaniards conquered areas with high civilizations and dense populations, which could provide the settlers with a sufficient labor source and a population to catechize, Spaniards in the sixteenth century tended not to develop the territories that had nomadic peoples, which were harder to conquer (and in fact, with the exception of the Amazon Basin, were not subdued until the nineteenth century). The Spanish did explore a good part of North America looking for more treasure-laden societies. These explorers claimed the land as was their practice, but finding no treasures or sedentary Indian tribes, they returned to the areas in Mexico, which had already been conquered. It was not until the eighteenth century that a concerted effort was made to settle the northern frontier in what is now the United States. The end result is that a lot of historic and contemporary maps often misrepresent the areas Spain claimed as areas they actually controlled. The Indians who lived in these areas were out of reach of Hispanic society and were able to maintain their culture well into the nineteenth century.

After Napoleon I invaded Spain in 1807 and put his brother, Joseph on the Spanish throne, Mexican Conservatives and rich land-owners who supported Spain's Bourbon royal family objected to the comparatively liberal Napoleonic policies. Thus an unlikely alliance was formed in Mexico: liberales, or Liberals, who favored a democratic Mexico, and conservadores, or Conservatives, who favored a Mexico ruled by a Bourbon monarch who would restore the status quo ante. These two elements agreed only that Mexico must achieve independence and determine her own destiny.

Taking advantage of the fact that Spain was severely handicapped under the occupation of Napoleon's army, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Catholic priest of Spanish descent and progressive ideas, declared Mexico's independence from Spain in the small town of Dolores on September 16, 1810. This act started the long war, the first official document of independence was the Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of Northern America signed in 1813 by the Congress of Anáhuac Eventually led to the official recognition of independence from Spain in 1821 and the creation of the First Mexican Empire. As with many early leaders in the movement for Mexican independence, Hidalgo was captured by opposing forces and executed.

In 1821, Agustín de Iturbide, a former Spanish general who switched sides to fight for Mexican independence, proclaimed himself emperor – officially as a temporary measure until a member of European royalty could be persuaded to become monarch of Mexico (see Mexican Empire for more information). A revolt against Iturbide in 1823 established the United Mexican States. In 1824, "Guadalupe Victoria" became the first president of the new country; his given name was actually Félix Fernández but he chose his new name for symbolic significance: Guadalupe to give thanks for the protection of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Victoria, which means Victory.

Many presidents, dictators, etc. came and went during a long period of instability which lasted most of the 19th century. One of the dominant figures of the second quarter of that century was the dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna.

During this period, nearly half of Mexico's territory was annexed by the United States with the pretext of being "unsettled". Mexico had a population of about 8,000,000 in 1846 of which about 60,000 lived in the northern territories – mostly in New Mexico (53,000) and California (7,000). Santa Anna was Mexico's leader during the conflict with Texas, which declared itself independent from Mexico in 1836 and ensured that independence by defeating the Mexican army and Santa Anna. Santa Anna was in and out of power again during the USA-Mexican War (1846-48). After accepting Texas's application for statehood in 1846, the US government sent troops to Texas in order to secure the territory, subsequently ignoring Mexico's demands for US withdrawal. Mexico saw this as a US intervention in their internal affairs by supporting a rebel province.

Te USA-Mexican War, which lasted from 1846 to 1848. Mexico was defeated by United States forces, which occupied Mexico City and many other parts of the country. The war was terminated with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo which stipulated that, as a condition for peace, Mexico was obligated to sell the mostly vacant northern territories to the United States for US$15 million. Over the next few decades, Americans settled these territories and petitioned for statehood, forming the states of California, Nevada, and Utah, and most of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. Baja California was not included in the USApurchases or in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo despite being occupied by USAtroops at the end of the war.

In 1853, mostly vacant desert territory containing parts of present-day Arizona and New Mexico were sold to the United States in the Gadsden Purchase. This land was sold by President Santa Anna in order to gain personal profit and to pay off his army. The Americans had not realized when they were negotiating the Treaty of Hidalgo (when they accepted the Gila River as the southern USAboundary) that a much easier railroad route to California lay slightly south of the Gila River. The Southern Pacific Railroad, the second transcontinental railroad to California, was built through this purchased land in 1881.

The Gulf of Mexico (Spanish: Golfo de México) is the ninth largest body of water in the world. Considered a smaller part of the Atlantic Ocean, it is an ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. The shape of its basin is roughly oval and approximately 810 nautical miles ( wide and filled with sedimentary rocks and debris. It is part of the Atlantic Ocean through the Florida Straits between the USA and Cuba, and with the Caribbean Sea (with which it forms the American Mediterranean Sea) via the Yucatan Channel between Mexico and Cuba. Tidal ranges are extremely small due to the narrow connection with the ocean. The gulf basin is approximately 615,000 mi². Almost half of the basin is shallow intertidal waters. At its deepest it is 14,383 ft at the Sigsbee Deep, an irregular trough more than 300 nautical miles long.

Post-revolutionary art in Mexico had its expression in the works of renowned artists such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Juan O'Gorman. Diego Rivera, the most well-known figure of Mexican Muralism, painted the Man at the Crossroads at the Rockefeller Center in New York City, a huge mural that was destroyed the next year due to the inclusion of a portrait of Russian communist leader Lenin. Some of Rivera's murals are displayed at the Mexican National Palace and the Palace of Fine Arts.

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