{"id":3251,"date":"2013-07-17T14:17:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T18:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/?p=3251"},"modified":"2013-07-17T14:17:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T18:17:39","slug":"history-of-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/?p=3251","title":{"rendered":"history of Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Due to the move and other time demands, I haven&#8217;t spent much time reading over the last month. However, this morning I had the chance to finish\u00a0<em>A Brief History of Mexico<\/em> by Lynn Foster. It was a helpful summary and I especially appreciated the emphasis on Mexico&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>The appendices of Foster&#8217;s book had a nice summary. This is from the first appendix:<\/p>\n<pre>Official Name\r\nEstados Unidos Mexicanos\r\n\r\nGovernment\r\nUnder the Constitution of 1917, Mexico is a <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">federal republic<\/span> with a\r\ncentralized government dominated by the office of the presidency. The\r\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">presidential term is six years with no reelection<\/span>. There is a bicameral\r\nfederal <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">congress composed of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies<\/span>;\r\nlegislators may serve only one term. The <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">judiciary forms a third branch<\/span>\r\nof government; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">judges are appointed by the president<\/span>.\r\n   There are many parties, but the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">PRI (Institutional Revolutionary\r\nParty) governed Mexico during most of the 20th century<\/span>. Recent\r\nelectoral reforms have strengthened opposition parties such as the\r\nconservative <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">PAN<\/span> (National Action Party) and the progressive <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">PRD<\/span>\r\n(Democratic Revolutionary Party). In the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">2000 election the PRI presi-\r\ndential candidate was defeated for the first time in more than 70 years<\/span>,\r\nand the opposition parties gained a majority of the congressional seats\r\nin both houses. In the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">2006 presidential elections PAN candidate Felipe\r\nCalder\u00f3n<\/span> Hinojosa won a narrow victory over PRD candidate Andr\u00e9s\r\nManuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, by a margin of only .58 percent.\r\n\r\nPolitical Divisions\r\nStates\r\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Thirty-one, plus the federal district<\/span> which includes the capital.\r\nCapital\r\nMexico City<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Due to the move and other time demands, I haven&#8217;t spent much time reading over the last month. However, this morning I had the chance to finish\u00a0A Brief History of Mexico by Lynn Foster. It was a helpful summary and &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/?p=3251\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-mexico-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}