The Animated History of Mexico

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paleo-indians arriving over the bering land bridge from siberia to build a civilization you need four things people a stable climate access to water and a staple food crop these secret ingredients were bountiful in the south lush rivers domesticated maize plants only the occasional drought and soon enough the Olmecs with access to some of America's most virulent crops three important cities emerged on three rivers systems civilization was born along with it came culture and trade it's a lot easier to pass down knowledge if you all live in one place the Olmecs are considered the mother civilization of all Central America for good reason spreading their way further outward while trading with every other pre-columbian civilization that would follow mysteriously Olmecs eventually faded from their prominence perhaps due to their rivers silting up but the hard work was already done and knowledge had spread all the way down those trade routes [Music] it is not surprising to see the various civilizations that sprang up on those old trade routes the Maya who had existed for centuries in the Guatemalan Highlands had descended into Yucatan for trade and had learned a thing or two about this whole new civilization thing but what made them particularly successful was their abundant access to limestone which is not only great for building cities that can endure all manner of erosion and earthquakes but also great for filtering clean drinking water in underground caves the first major power in the region come in a lee juil you rose up to prominence for its control of the Obsidian trade from there the Maya would spread further into the peten Basin and then into Yucatan building from limestone as they went and then all of a sudden nothing abandoned cities defunct trade networks and derelict monuments the mysterious pre-classical Mayan collapse archaeologists have been scratching their heads about what led to the stand fall was it wall was it famine we just don't know there is nothing written about it nothing we have records of anyway and even less in the way of archaeological findings which only gets more confusing with what comes after the classical Mayan period is probably the one you're most familiar with most of their scientific achievements comes from this era including the Long Count calendar which caused a bit of a stir back in 2012 for its supposed prediction of the end of the world but there is no evidence that the Maya ever actually you know thought this this was both the most prosperous period and the one we know most about with cities and monuments recording dates and events using their calendars and science and engineering feats advancing their understanding of the natural world power returned in the form of powerful city-states not much unlike classical Greece or modern Monaco I guess city-states are a lot rarer these days but anyway as you may expect having a whole bunch of cities in one area competing for resources is kind of a recipe for disaster in the long run and these mine ones were no exception a great example of this was the war between its two most powerful cities Tikal and collect moles a conflict which has its origins in the invasion and subsequent installation of a new dynasty in Tikal by the great city of Teotihuacan wait-wait-wait who the heck are these guys welcome to yet another one of mesoamerica is great mysteries tio to work on was an absolutely massive city all the way over here in the valley of Mexico its people as well as who built it is unfortunately lost to time but at its peak for about five centuries it ruled the trade between the vibrant civilizations of the south and the nomads of the north and with such power and grandiosity they were often meddling in the affairs of cities all over Central America their hostile takeover of the throne of Tikal would so destabilize the geopolitics of the region that the aforementioned war would dominate the later part of the Classic Maya life for three centuries and then almost out of nowhere again nothing cities abandoned and trade ceasing similar to the situation that happened before the classical mine collapse is one of the greatest mysteries of the historical and archaeological world political and mercantile power simply vanished without any obvious historical culprit theories range as to what caused this the constant warring probably didn't help but equally perplexing is that even T ot wakhan itself had collapsed earlier with evidence of riots and looting against the ruling class did whatever caused the great city's inhabitants to rise up against their rulers also eventually lead to the classical mine collapse who knows all we do know is that the Postclassic period would never rise up to the Mies former glory and would remain as a war like in fighting civilization until its own collapse at the hands of the Spanish but now let's return to central Mexico for a moment what became of the ruins of tio2 ikonn well as you'd imagine these guys left one pretty big power vacuum and with such a prosperous area it wasn't long before one of their more militarized subjects the Toltecs filled the void but more of a conquering type than a ruling type it is really their descendants civilizations that become important the Aztecs the Aztecs actually came comparatively late to the pre-columbian game considering how powerful they were but how they actually started was an alliance of three former Toltec cities the most important of which was to not cheat lon and it is here we finally get a great founding myth with unique Mexican flavor the story goes that the Mesha caste people built their city on an island after they had a prophecy of an eagle with a snake landing on a cactus they're not deterred with the prospect of drowning the masochist built an explosively massive City not only easy to defend but also to supply with food and water from the lake that surrounded it the so called triple alliance between Tenochtitlan and its neighbors would form what we now know as the Aztec empire which is quickly able to conquer much of the former Toltec lands and yes they are also known for their extensive practice of human sacrifice yeah because the idea was that the gods blessed them when given human blood kind of hard to argue that when you're the most powerful empire in the continent at the time and one way they captured slaves for human sacrifice was through ritual warfare the so-called flower wars the Aztecs have earned their place firmly within the Mexican national consciousness thanks in large part to them being the last great formidable Empire in North America when the Spanish arrived now I've used the term pre-columbian a lot during this video and that's not because the famous sailor Christopher Columbus ever actually went to Mexico but rather refers to an event called the Columbian Exchange the eastern hemispheres discovery of this new world which would eventually become known as America was massively important to history hard to overstate really the period was the largest cultural religious and economic exchange the world has ever known fundamentally and irrevocably changing the trajectory of both the old world and the new concurrent to this exchange was conquest if you are going to pick a European nation to discover and then begin the conquest of Central America with the least amount of chaos you probably wouldn't want to have picked 16th century Spain they were after all at the end of the Reconquista a centuries long process of expelling muslims jews practitioners of paganism and witchcraft from Iberia backed by the Catholic Church at the same time they were increasingly hungry to gain wealth previously controlled by the Muslims and they're just discovered a previously unknown landmass to the west so it seemed like the perfect place to start driven by tales of golden cities and swathe of people to convert to Christianity early colonizers of Central America were conquerors so called conquistadors such as the famous Hernan Cortes cleverly a-lying himself with various cities that the Aztecs had conquered Cortes destroyed Tenochtitlan and upon its ruins would build a new city Mexico meaning place of the mishegoss the vice reality of New Spain would be the new power in the region merchants conquistadors explorers and pirates soon arrived in the thousands to this new colony many enslaving the natives in a system called the encomienda along with them came missionaries and religious zealots with the goal of converting the heathens from what they perceived to be their barbaric pagan religion burning their historical and scientific writings fearing them as being works of the devil the Spanish conquests were particularly devastating period for Mexico the Maya for example were weakened disunited and should have been easy pickings but they took decades to conquer fighting in dense jungle in guerrilla warfare ambushing the Spanish and laying complicated booby traps forever fueling the idea that the new world was a barbaric and uncivilized place the real war however was not against the Spanish but against diseases measles influenza typhoid yellow fever and especially smallpox Amerindian peoples of the new world had no exposure to these diseases before the Colombian exchange combining these epidemics with asymmetric warfare against the more advanced weaponry and technology of the Europeans modern estimates of area and the death rate of these conquests some ranging as high as 90% to the north with the Chi Chi Mecca a confederation of nomadic Indians who were so powerful that the Spanish fought the longest and most expensive war of their entire colonial venture trying to subjugate them being defeated time and time again before eventually resorting to diplomacy but why were the Spanish willing to compromise Silva many of the most prominent conquistadors were motivated by wealth when the Aztec gold turned out to be not quite Bountiful as expected explorers went in search of minerals elsewhere and they found the jackpot in zakat oz silver flooded the market from this mind making colonizers and the spanish rich beyond measure New Spain silver production was rivaled only by Peru and so bountiful that the inflation rate would not only flood the international market but also bring about the temporary economic collapse of both New Spain and even China how's that for a weird achievement besides silver and cash crops the Spanish mane as it was known also dealt in other less savory trade slaves although relatively few African slaves ended up in Mexico itself the wealth created by those silver mines has a lot to do with the demand increase for these West African captives and so the transatlantic slave trade was born like elsewhere in Latin America New Spain enforced a strict caste system which defined a social hierarchy on racial grounds with Spaniards at the top followed by Spaniards born in New Spain then mixed-race and finally the lowest of them all Native American Indians let's not mince words here this was a way of controlling people making it harder for the disenfranchised to succeed in society and also keeping their elites loyal and happy it is in this strange new geopolitical landscape that the defining characteristics formed of what it meant to be Mexican or what it eventually meant anyway and perhaps nothing was more important than the identity of being Catholic Catholicism was already immensely important to the Spaniards but to make it a truly Mexican religion it would need to appeal to everyone else and so it would be by the miraculous operation of Our Lady of Guadalupe perhaps no greater symbol of Mexico's devout the image which appeared to an Aztec named juan diego was interpreted as a christian incarnation of the goddess tainot scene and to the spaniards as a native incarnation of the Virgin Mary as a mestizo she was half Spaniard half native and so the lady would forever symbolize the unity of these two races and the faith would spread throughout the land blending Christian beliefs with American ones forming a truly unique flavor of Christianity even blending long practiced traditions of venerating the dead with hallowtide to form what would become known as dia de Muertos the Day of the Dead in fact cultural blending in essence is what makes Mexico what it is today everything from food music the a fermented religion alcohol and even its people is a blend of Spanish and Amerindian influences today Mexico is the largest mixed-race nation in the world with more than 80 percent of its citizens belonging to the mestizo classification although life was already hard in new spain due to the economic collapse it was the new spanish monarchy the Bourbons reforming the colony that really made life more difficult the Bourbon reforms aimed to boost the production and exports in the new world and to make the colony more economically dependent on Spain itself and in a time when mestizos and criollos with a vast majority of the population it's not hard to see that the elite peninsulares with only ones who really benefited from this the growing discontent was also taking place during the Enlightenment when all sorts of power dynamics were being scrutinized so it makes sense that revolution was soon on the doorstep all it needed was a catalyst which would come confusingly in the form of the French when a pauline invaded Spain he basically through centuries of political establishment out the window putting his brother on the throne and making all manner of a mess in Spain's colonies who really didn't know how to react when instability arrives in long-established power dynamics that is usually when revolutions happen and with new spain it is no different peninsulares CH is one of the old Bourbon King back the criollos just wanted to get rid of the peninsulares and the mestizos just wanted to get rid of both the peninsulares and the Creoles because they couldn't really tell the difference anyway soon the whole nation was up in arms with competing aims that changed over time but toward the end of the uprising it was all gung-ho for independence getting all the factions to agree what they were fighting for was the real challenge however and would only be duct-taped together in a compromise called the three guarantees Mexico would be founded on the principles of unity independence from Spain and Catholicism the war lasted 11 years fought not only with Napoleonic Spain but also the restored Bourbons the new nation would be named after their Aztec ancestors upon which they had built their capital city by the Aztecs never called themself Aztecs but rather Mexico's and their land was Mexico but history tends to call this era the first Mexican Empire because one it had an emperor and to it ruled much of what we call Central America as well and putting it diplomatically the Empire came to an end after just two years mostly because factions who supported one of the three guarantees always just kind of felt that they didn't much care for the other two beyond you know winning a war and so the whole thing kind of just fell apart because nation-building is hard so hard in fact that the next century is what you would call a very messy time if mr. e is a great word for pre-columbian Mexico then instability would be the word for post-independence split into two factions the Liberals and the Conservatives constantly overthrowing one another Central America politely opted out in 1823 Texas impolitely opted out in 1835 when the second Mexican Republic came to power they wanted Texas back which was a bit hard for them to do when the United States annexed it in 1845 Mexico would fight a devastating war with the u.s. losing not only Texas but nearly half of their territory in the process which as you can imagine didn't really help with stability so if you've ever wondered why this half of America has so many Spanish names now you know better sharing the blame for Mexico's instability though would be an early charismatic leader named Lopez de Santa Ana serving as president a whopping twelve times as an autocrat deeply unpopular for losing the war and ceding so much land to America he was exiled in 1855 the same year a radical new set of changes called the liberal reform came into place which as you might guess with a name like that ruffled more than a few conservative feathers which began the reform war only with the help of the United States with the Liberals under Benito Juarez able to push the Conservatives back I really wish I had more time to talk about this era but the main thing to take away here is that the conservative elites continued to be a problem in Mexico quietly waiting for an opportunity to strike and come back to power and that opportunity rather confusingly again was French turns out that wars are pretty expensive and Mexico was beginning to rack up something of a significant debt especially with France France also saw a really good opportunity to work with the conservative monarchists to bring back the Mexican Empire so as to counteract the influence of the growing United States fair enough really and so began the second French Intervention in Mexico because believe it or not they'd actually briefly done this before back in 1938 during the pastry war good name by the way there is nothing quite like a foreign enemy to rally the country together after briefly declaring the second Mexican Empire the French was soon driven out one of the most famous legacies of the war was the Battle of Puebla where on the 5th of May or Cinco DeMayo the numerically inferior and outgunned Mexican army defeated the French providing a huge morale boost to the nation especially for the Liberals who had defended the country rather than the Conservatives who had supported the French but before anyone really had time to bask in his great victory a general named Porfirio Diaz led a coup against the president in 1876 mainly because he was against the practice of presidents serving more than one term just by the way he served seven terms himself porphyria was something of a dictator and established order with an iron fist running unopposed in a bid to provide some stability for Mexico to encourage foreign investment and for all intents and purposes that country did modernize and the economy did start doing really well if by that you mean that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer but so what else is new unfortunately Porfirio hadn't really made a plan for a world without Porfirio and after failing to step down as promised in 1910 and jailing his opponent the country had had enough soon it was revolution Diaz was voted out in favour of one Francisco Madero but to a nation in absolute chaos Madera managed to be unpopular with both the left who thought he was too conservative and the right who thought he was too liberal leading to his own asting and assassination during the ten tragic days Victoria Huerta who had led the coup had taken it too far the country wants a Madero out of office but murder they could not stand by Huerta was himself a stirred by the revolutionaries during the first world war and now with no president and large bands of armed revolutionaries roaming the countryside it's not hard to guess what came next the Mexican civil war with 1.5 million lives lost one in 10 of the total population the devastating war concluded with the constitutionalist faction of venustiano carranza being victorious but stability was not a luxury Mexico would enjoy for long president after President was assassinated in the 1920s before Plutarco caius came to power enraged by what he believed to be the true root of Mexico's problems Catholics another war would erupt with Mexico's devout Christian the armies of Christ - seeking religious freedom the political party established by these revolutionary presidents by the way it would remain in power in Mexico until the year 2000 to give you something of an insight into the rampant instability that characterized Mexico's 20th century Mexico today still has its problems although they have come very far the situation in Latin American countries provides an interesting insight into understanding the post-colonial world we tend to think of the decolonization timeline as America got it first Africa and Asia got at last and all other countries got it some way in between where in that time line had happened really did matter in forming the nations we see today lots of major world events happen in this timeline each with its own influence on the world Mexico was still struggling with the deeply entrenched political status quo of their Spanish rulers during their independence movement providing a petri dish for class warfare class warfare is only exacerbated in times of intellectual proliferation such as during the Enlightenment which if well-armed will almost always escalate to war wars fought not only on the battlefield but also in people's minds conservatives and liberals disagreed on the funda mental way to see the world who they were who they are now and who they want to be and history or the romantic idea of history has arguments to support either side at either time conservatives had after all benefited from the land policies of the Spanish and the Liberals had benefited by the intervention of foreign powers extra points for fighting the French foreign intervention where have we heard that story before if Mexico's history teaches us anything above all else it's that change is sometimes painfully slow and what changes do happen don't necessarily benefit everyone and sometimes if you want that change bad enough you would overthrow the neighboring city revolt against the foreign overlords or take our political opponents whether you stand to benefit or not the most challenging question I've had to ask myself when writing this video was in the Western world when did we stop thinking of stability as a luxury because my intuition says Mexico probably never did the conquistadors have been subjected to centuries of propaganda called the black legend and it is important to understand that the propagators were mostly Spain's rivals the British but dismissing these conquistadors actions a simple exaggeration or myth is equally problematic I've shared a series called the butterfly effect on this channel quite a few times because it really is just a stunning series with gorgeous animations and production quality the episode on hernan cortes is a great way to understanding the beginning of the colonial era in Mexico Hernan Cortes is a very controversial figure not only in Mexican history but arguably the world and it is important for us to understand the less savory periods for intellectual honesty you can watch this series or any other on curiosity streams thousands of documentaries and titles but when you head to curiosity stream comm slash Sweeney while curiosity stream is a great place for high budget documentaries you'll also get free access to nebula where creators like myself and many other educational creators built a platform that we control nebula is a place for us to make different content take risks and be freed from the YouTube algorithm and support of nebula supports all it's created check out some of these amazing nebula originals such as Tom Scott's amazing new show money with Mike Boyd Wendover productions among others all this incredible video on Macau China's golden child by paula mera curiosity stream supports nebula and this channel and by signing up he not only get access to tons of great content but you'll also be supporting myself and other edgy tubers get started today with curiosity stream and nebula by heading to curiosity stream comm slash Sui bah any woo this video took a long time to make thank you all for your patience I hope you enjoyed it hope everyone is staying safe I recorded this script probably like two months before your hearing it's or I'm still stuck in quarantine I hope everyone is staying indoors staying safe and staying healthy alright everyone until next time [Music]

Channel: Suibhne

Views: 1,198,855

Rating: 4.903667 out of 5

Keywords: mexico, history, suibhne, mariachi, history of mexico, suibhne animated history, spanish empire, maya, mayan, aztec, aztecs, toltec, mixtec, zapotec, mesoamerica, meso america, central america, dia de muertos, dia de los muertos, cinco de mayo, texas, france, cortez

Id: Q4kF0lRzGnI

Length: 25min 40sec (1540 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/TheSolarian]

Got some ads and paid promotions at the start, but it's surprisingly good!

I don't browse this place as often as I might, but I thought this was something that would be appreciated here.

Hope you find it enjoyable and informative!