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Selected biography 1
Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/1
Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (8 May 1753 – 30 July 1811), more commonly known as Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla or simply Miguel Hidalgo, was a Mexican Catholic priest and a leader of the Mexican War of Independence.
As a priest, Hidalgo served in a church in Dolores, Mexico. After his arrival, he was shocked by the poverty he found. He tried to help the poor by showing them how to grow olives and grapes, but in Mexico, growing these crops was discouraged or prohibited by the authorities due to Spanish imports of the items. In 1810 he gave the speech, "The Cry of Dolores", calling upon the people to protect the interest of their King Fernando VII (held captive by Napoleon) by revolting against the European-born Spaniards who had overthrown the Spanish Viceroy.
He marched across Mexico and gathered an army of nearly 90,000 poor farmers and Mexican civilians who attacked and killed both Spanish Peninsulares and Creole elites. Hidalgo's troops lacked training and were poorly armed. These troops ran into a clan of 6,000 well trained and armed Spanish troops, and most fled or were killed at the Battle of Calderón Bridge on 17 January 1811, Hidalgo was executed by a firing squad on 30 July 1811 at Chihuahua, Chihuahua.
Selected biography 2
Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/2
José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori (Spanish pronunciation: [porˈfiɾjo ˈðias]; 15 September 1830 – 2 July 1915), commonly known as Porfirio Díaz, was a Mexican soldier and politician, who served seven terms as President of Mexico, totaling nearly three decades between 1876 and 1911. A veteran of the Reform War and the French intervention in Mexico, Díaz rose to the rank of General, leading republican troops against the French-imposed Emperor Maximilian. Seizing power in a coup in 1876, Díaz and his allies ruled Mexico for the next thirty-five years, a period known as the Porfiriato.
Díaz is a controversial figure in Mexican history, with the status of villain among the revolutionaries who overthrew him, and something of a hero in the business community. The Porfiriato was marked by significant internal stability (known as the "paz porfiriana"), modernization, and economic growth. There was heavy investment in mining and railways from American and British business. However, Díaz's regime grew unpopular due to repression and political stagnation, and he fell from power during the Mexican Revolution, after he imprisoned his electoral rival and declared himself the winner of an eighth term in office. Díaz fled to France, where he died in exile four years later.
Selected biography 3
Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/3
José Doroteo Arango Arámbula (5 June 1878 – 20 July 1923) – better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or his nickname Pancho Villa – was one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals.
As commander of the División del Norte (Division of the North), he was the veritable caudillo of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, which, given its size, mineral wealth, and proximity to the United States of America, provided him with extensive resources. Villa was also provisional Governor of Chihuahua in 1913 and 1914. Although he was prevented from being accepted into the "panteón" of national heroes until some 20 years after his death, today his memory is honored by Mexicans. In addition, numerous streets and neighborhoods in Mexico are named in his honor.
Villa and his supporters seized hacienda land for distribution to peasants and soldiers. He robbed and commandeered trains and, like the other revolutionary generals, printed fiat money to pay for his cause. Villa's men and supporters became known as Villistas during the revolution from 1910 to roughly 1920.
Villa's dominance in northern Mexico was broken in 1915 through a series of defeats he suffered at Celaya and Agua Prieta at the hands of Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles. After Villa's famous raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916, U.S. Army General John J. Pershing tried unsuccessfully to capture Villa in a nine-month pursuit that ended when the United States entered into World War I and Pershing was called back. Villa retired in 1920 and was given a large estate, which he turned into a "military colony" for his former soldiers. In 1923, he decided to reinvolve himself in Mexican politics and as a result was assassinated, most likely on the orders of Obregón.
Selected biography 4
Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/4
Benito Pablo Juárez García (ⓘ), (21 March 1806 – 18 July 1872), commonly known as Benito Juárez, was a Mexican lawyer and politician of Zapotec origin from Oaxaca who served as the president of Mexico for five terms: 1858–1861 as interim, then 1861–1865, 1865–1867, 1867–1871 and 1871–1872 as constitutional president. He resisted the French occupation of Mexico, overthrew the Second Mexican Empire, restored the Republic, and used liberal measures to modernize the country.
Selected biography 5
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Vicente Fox Quesada (Spanish pronunciation: [biˈsente ˈfoks keˈsaða]; born July 2, 1942) is a Mexican businessman who was President of Mexico from December 1, 2000 to November 30, 2006 under the National Action Party (PAN). He is also the Co-President of the Centrist Democrat International, an international organization of Christian democratic political parties.
Fox was elected President of Mexico in the 2000 presidential election, a historically significant election that made him the first president elected from an opposition party since Francisco I. Madero in 1910 and the first one in 71 years to defeat, with 42 percent of the vote, the then-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
After serving as president of Mexico for six years, President Fox returned to his home state of Guanajuato, where he resides with his wife and family. Since leaving the presidency, Vicente Fox has been involved in public speaking and the construction of the Vicente Fox Center of Studies, Library and Museum.
Selected biography 6
Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/6
Luis Buñuel Portolés (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈlwiz βuˈɲwel portoˈles]; February 22, 1900 - July 29, 1983) was a Spanish filmmaker who worked in Spain, Mexico and France.
When Luis Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in the New York Times called him "an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later". His first picture—made in the silent era—was called "the most famous short film ever made" by critic Roger Ebert, and his last film—made 48 years later—won him Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics. Writer Octavio Paz called Buñuel's work "the marriage of the film image to the poetic image, creating a new reality...scandalous and subversive".
Often associated with the surrealist movement of the 1920s, Buñuel created films from the 1920s through the 1970s. His work spans two continents, three languages, and nearly every film genre, including experimental film, documentary, melodrama, satire, musical, erotica, comedy, romance, costume dramas, fantasy, crime film, adventure, and western. Despite this variety, filmmaker John Huston believed that, regardless of genre, a Buñuel film is so distinctive as to be instantly recognizable, or, as Ingmar Bergman put it, "Buñuel nearly always made Buñuel films".
Selected biography 7
Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/7
Frida Kahlo de Rivera (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈfɾiða ˈkalo]; born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón; July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter who is best known for her self-portraits.
Kahlo's life began and ended in Mexico City, in her home known as the Blue House. Her work has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.
Mexican culture and Amerindian cultural tradition are important in her work, which has been sometimes characterized as naïve art or folk art. Her work has also been described as surrealist, and in 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo's art as a "ribbon around a bomb". Frida rejected the "surrealist" label; she believed that her work reflected more of her reality than her dreams.
Kahlo had a volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. She suffered lifelong health problems, many caused by a traffic accident she survived as a teenager. Recovering from her injuries isolated her from other people, and this isolation influenced her works, many of which are self-portraits of one sort or another. Kahlo suggested, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." She also stated, "I was born a bitch. I was born a painter."
Selected biography 8
Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/8
St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474–1548), commonly referred to as Juan Diego, is the first Roman Catholic indigenous American saint. He is said to have been granted an apparition of the Virgin Mary on four separate occasions in December 1531 at the hill of Tepeyac, then outside but now well within metropolitan Mexico City. The Basilica of Guadalupe located at the foot of the hill of Tepeyac claims to possess Juan Diego's mantle or cloak (known as a tilma) on which an image of the Virgin is said to have been impressed by a miracle as a pledge of the authenticity of the apparitions. These apparitions and the imparting of the miraculous image (together known as the Guadalupe event, in Spanish "el acontecimiento Guadalupano") are the basis of the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe which is ubiquitous in Mexico, prevalent throughout the Spanish-speaking Americas, and increasingly widespread beyond. As a result, the Basilica of Guadalupe is now the world's major centre of pilgrimage for Roman Catholics, receiving 22 million visitors in 2010, the vast bulk of whom were pilgrims. Juan Diego was beatified in 1990, and canonized in 2002.
Selected biography 9
Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/9
Carlos Slim Helú (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈkaɾlos esˈlim eˈlu]; born January 28, 1940) is a Mexican business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. From 2010 to 2013, Slim was ranked as the richest person in the world. Known as the "Warren Buffett of Mexico", Slim has extensive holdings in a considerable number of Mexican companies through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso, SA de CV, have amassed interests in the fields of communications, real estate, airlines, media, technology, retailing, and finance. Presently, Slim is the chairman and chief executive of telecommunications companies Telmex and América Móvil.
Selected biography 10
Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/10
Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa GCB (Spanish pronunciation: [feˈlipe kaldeˈɾon] ⓘ; born August 18, 1962) is a Mexican politician who served as President of Mexico from December 1, 2006 to November 30, 2012. He is a member of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), one of the three major Mexican political parties.
Prior to the presidency, Calderón received two master's degrees and went on to work within the PAN while it was still an important opposition party. Calderón served as National President of the party, Federal Deputy, and Secretary of Energy in Vicente Fox's cabinet.
He served in the cabinet of the previous administration up until he resigned to run for the Presidency and secured his party's nomination. The Federal Electoral Institute's official electoral results gave Felipe Calderón the largest vote total and the presidency but the decision was contested by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Calderón's victory was confirmed on September 5, 2006 by the Federal Electoral Tribunal.
Selected biography 11
Portal:Mexico/Selected biography/11
Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno Reyes, known casually as Mario Moreno, and known professionally as Cantinflas (August 12, 1911 – April 20, 1993), was a Mexican comic film actor, producer, and screenwriter. He often portrayed impoverished campesinos or a peasant of pelado origin. The character came to be associated with the national identity of Mexico, and allowed Cantinflas to establish a long, successful film career that included a foray into Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin once commented that he was the best comedian alive, and Moreno has been referred to as the "Charlie Chaplin of Mexico". To audiences in the United States, he is best remembered as co-starring with David Niven in the Academy Award winner for Best Picture film Around the World in 80 Days, for which Moreno won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.