Due to the move and other time demands, I haven’t spent much time reading over the last month. However, this morning I had the chance to finish A Brief History of Mexico by Lynn Foster. It was a helpful summary and I especially appreciated the emphasis on Mexico’s political history. The very first book that Yun and I read together was a history of Mexico. My hope is to familiarize myself with the history of the country so when we travel I can have a greater understanding of the things we see.
The appendices of Foster’s book had a nice summary. This is from the first appendix:
Official Name Estados Unidos Mexicanos Government Under the Constitution of 1917, Mexico is a federal republic with a centralized government dominated by the office of the presidency. The presidential term is six years with no reelection. There is a bicameral federal congress composed of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies; legislators may serve only one term. The judiciary forms a third branch of government; judges are appointed by the president. There are many parties, but the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) governed Mexico during most of the 20th century. Recent electoral reforms have strengthened opposition parties such as the conservative PAN (National Action Party) and the progressive PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party). In the 2000 election the PRI presi- dential candidate was defeated for the first time in more than 70 years, and the opposition parties gained a majority of the congressional seats in both houses. In the 2006 presidential elections PAN candidate Felipe Calderón Hinojosa won a narrow victory over PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, by a margin of only .58 percent. Political Divisions States Thirty-one, plus the federal district which includes the capital. Capital Mexico City