The Pueblo Revolt of 1680

(Wikipedia) The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 — also known as Popé's Rebellion — was an uprising of most of the indigenous Pueblo people against the Spanish colonizers in the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, present day New Mexico. The Pueblo Revolt killed 400 Spanish and drove the remaining 2,000 settlers out of the province.
... For more than 100 years beginning in 1540, the Pueblo Indians of present-day New Mexico were subjected to successive waves of soldiers, missionaries, and settlers. These encounters, referred to as the Entradas, were characterized by violent confrontations between Spanish colonists and Pueblo peoples. The Tiguex War, fought in the winter of 1540-41 by the expedition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado against the twelve or thirteen pueblos of Tiwa Indians, was particularly destructive to Pueblo and Spanish relations. Continued

Border photographer documents Mexican Revolution

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1913, Brownsville photographer Robert Runyon arrived in Matamoros and began compiling a unique record of the Mexican Revolution along the Texas-Mexico border. The Kentucky native arrived in Texas in 1909 and opened a photography studio the following year.
He is best known for his coverage of the revolutionary conflict in northeastern Mexico between 1913 and 1916. He traveled to Matamoros the day after its Federal garrison had been captured by Gen. Lucio Blanco's Constitutionalist revolutionary forces. Continued

Aztec Sacrifice & Pozole

John R. Brinkley

Courtesy of The Radio Historian

(Wikipedia) John Romulus Brinkley (later John Richard Brinkley; July 8, 1885 – May 26, 1942) was an American quack who fraudulently claimed to be a medical doctor. He had no legitimate medical education and bought his medical degree from a "diploma mill". Brinkley became known as the "goat-gland doctor" after he achieved national fame, international notoriety and great wealth through the xenotransplantation of goat testicles into humans. 

Although initially Brinkley promoted this procedure as a means of curing male impotence, eventually he claimed that the technique was a virtual panacea for a wide range of male ailments. He operated clinics and hospitals in several states, and despite the fact that almost from the beginning, detractors and critics in the medical community thoroughly discredited his methods, he was able to continue his activities for almost two decades. 

He was also, almost by accident, an advertising and radio pioneer who began the era of Mexican border blaster radio. Continued

Cinco de Mayo

(Library of Congress) Mexican troops under General Ignacio Zaragoza successfully defended the town of Puebla on May 5, 1862, temporarily halting France’s efforts to establish a puppet regime in Mexico.
With the U.S. absorbed by the Civil War, Emperor Napoleon III hoped to create a French sphere of influence in Latin America. The victory is commemorated as a national holiday in Mexico. Continued

1598: Juan de Oñate makes a formal declaration of his Conquest of New Mexico

(Wikipedia) Juan de Oñate y Salazar (1550–1626) was a conquistador from New Spain, explorer, and colonial governor of the Santa Fe de Nuevo México province in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. He led early Spanish expeditions to the Great Plains and Lower Colorado River Valley, encountering numerous indigenous tribes in their homelands there.
Oñate founded settlements in the province, now part of the present-day American Southwest. Continued

Battle of San Jacinto

 

(Wikipedia) The Battle of San Jacinto, fought on April 21, 1836, in present-day Harris County, Texas, was the decisive battle of the Texas Revolution.
Led by General Sam Houston, the Texian Army engaged and defeated General Antonio López de Santa Anna's Mexican army in a fight that lasted just 18 minutes.
Santa Anna, the President of Mexico, was captured and surrendered the following day and held as a prisoner of war. Three weeks later, he signed the peace treaty that dictated that the Mexican army leave the region, paving the way for the Republic of Texas to become an independent country. Continued

Mexican law invites Anglo colonists

 

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1825, the Mexican legislature, meeting in Saltillo, passed the State Colonization Law of March 24, 1825.
The legislation was designed to bring about the peopling of Coahuila and Texas. It encouraged farming, ranching, and commerce. For a nominal fee, the law granted settlers as much as a square league (4,428.4 acres) of pastureland and a labor (177.1 acres) of farmland.
Immigrants were temporarily free of every kind of tax. Continued

The Punitive Expedition

 

(Wikipedia) ... Trouble between the United States and Pancho Villa had been growing since October 1915, when the United States government officially recognized Villa's rival and former ally Venustiano Carranza as head of the government of Mexico. The U.S. also provided rail transportation through the United States, from Eagle Pass, Texas to Douglas, Arizona, for the movement of more than 5,000 Carrancista forces to fight Villa at the Battle of Agua Prieta; Villa's seasoned División del Norte was smashed.
Feeling betrayed, Villa began attacking U.S. nationals and their property in northern Mexico. On November 26, 1915, Villa sent a force to attack the city of Nogales and in the course of the ensuing battle, engaged with American forces before withdrawing. Continued

Zimmermann Telegram

Library of Congress

(Wikipedia) The Zimmermann Telegram (or Zimmermann Note or Zimmerman Cable) was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico in the prior event of the United States entering World War I against Germany. Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The proposal was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence.
Revelation of the contents enraged American public opinion, especially after the German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann publicly admitted the telegram was genuine on March 3, and helped generate support for the United States declaration of war on Germany in April.
The decryption was described as the most significant intelligence triumph for Britain during World War I, and one of the earliest occasions on which a piece of signals intelligence influenced world events. Continued

Tom Pickett

(Wikipedia) Tom Pickett (1858 – May 14, 1934) was a 19th-century American cowboy, professional gambler and, as both a lawman and outlaw at various points in his life, was an associate of Dave Rudabaugh and later Billy the Kid.
Born in Camp Throckmorton, Wise County, Texas, Pickett began rustling cattle as a teenager growing up in Decatur and was eventually arrested for stealing cattle at age 17. His father, then a member of the state legislature and ex-Confederate officer, was forced to mortgage the family home in order to pay his son's fine.
While in Kansas City, he would meet outlaw Dave Rudabaugh and traveled with him to the New Mexico Territory after being indicted in Cooke County for cattle rustling in 1879. He served as a peace officer for the Dodge City Gang in Las Vegas until the two were run out of town after Rudabaugh killed a deputy sheriff.
He later had a brief stint as town marshal of Golden, New Mexico. However, he was later run out of town by a lynch mob in 1882. Continued

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Painting at
Our Lady of Guadalupe
RC Church, Clovis, NM

(Wikipedia) Our Lady of Guadalupe (Spanish: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe), also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe (Spanish: Virgen de Guadalupe), is a Roman Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary associated with a venerated image enshrined within the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The basilica is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the world, and the world's third most-visited sacred site. Pope Leo XIII granted the venerated image a Canonical Coronation on 12 October 1895.
Official Catholic accounts state that the Virgin Mary appeared four times before Juan Diego and one more before Juan Diego's uncle. According to these accounts the first apparition occurred on the morning of December 9, 1531, when a native Mexican peasant named Juan Diego saw a vision of a maiden at a place called the Hill of Tepeyac, which would become part of Villa de Guadalupe, a suburb of Mexico City. Speaking to Juan Diego in his native Nahuatl language (the language of the Aztec empire), the maiden identified herself as the Virgin Mary, "mother of the very true deity" and asked for a church to be built at that site in her honor. Continued

Don José Manuel Gallegos

(Library of Congress) José Manuel Gallegos was born in Spanish colonial Mexico, in the town of Abiquiú, Nuevo México, on October 30, 1815. His people were Hispanos, descendants of early Spanish settlers.
... Suspended from the priesthood for refusing to accept the authority of French religious superior, Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy (who became the subject of Willa Cather‘s novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop), Gallegos put increasing energy into his political life.
He was elected to the New Mexico Territorial House of Representatives in 1860 as the representative from Santa Fe, served as speaker of the House from 1860-62, treasurer of the territory from 1865-66, and superintendent of New Mexico Indian affairs in 1868. He was reelected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a delegate from 1871-73. Continued

Battle of Tres Castillos

(Wikipedia) The Battle of Tres Castillos, October 14-15, 1880, in Chihuahua State, Mexico resulted in the death of the Chiricahua Apache chieftain Victorio and the death or capture of most of his followers.
The battle ended Victorio's War, a 14-month long odyssey of fight and flight by the Apaches in southern New Mexico, western Texas, and Chihuahua.
Mexican Colonel Joaquin Terrazas and 260 men surrounded the Apache and killed 62 men, including Victorio, and 16 women and children, and captured 68 women and children. Three Mexicans were killed.
Victorio had little ammunition to resist the attack. Continued

A Hundred Years Ago Today: Battle of Ambos Nogales

 

(Wikipedia) The Battle of Ambos Nogales (The Battle of Both Nogales), or as it is known in Mexico La batalla del 27 de agosto (The Battle of 27 August), was an engagement fought on 27 August 1918 between Mexican forces and elements of US Army troops of the 35th Infantry Regiment, who were reinforced by the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, and commanded by Lt. Col. Frederick J. Herman.
The American soldiers and militia forces were stationed in Nogales, Arizona, and the Mexican soldiers and armed Mexican militia were in Nogales, Sonora. This battle was notable for being a significant confrontation between US and Mexican forces during the Border War which took place in the context of the Mexican Revolution and the First World War. Continued

Alexander Doniphan

(Wikipedia) … In 1846, at the beginning of the Mexican–American War Doniphan was commissioned as Colonel of the 1st Regiment of Missouri Mounted Volunteers, and served in several campaigns, including General Stephen W. Kearny's capture of Santa Fe and an invasion of northern Mexico (present day northern New Mexico).
After Santa Fe was secure, Kearny left Doniphan in charge in New Mexico, and departed towards California on September 25, 1846. Doniphan's orders were to wait until General Sterling Price arrived with the Second Missouri Mounted Volunteers, who were coming from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; after they arrived he was to lead them to Chihuahua via El Paso, Texas. They were to link up with the Brigadier General John E. Wool, who was moving southwest from San Antonio, Texas toward Guerrero and Monclova, Coahuila, to attack Monterrey, Nuevo León from the west. Kearny had known that the Navajo people were going on the war path.
With the Spanish gone, the Navajos wanted to test these new American soldiers; hence, as Doniphan waited for Price, the Navajos mounted a raid and kidnapped 20 Mexican families. Continued

Maximilian I of Mexico

 

(Wikipedia) Maximilian (Spanish: Maximiliano; born Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph; 6 July 1832 – 19 June 1867) was the only monarch of the Second Mexican Empire. He was a younger brother of the Austrian emperor Francis Joseph I. After a distinguished career in the Austrian Navy, he accepted an offer by Napoleon III of France to rule Mexico.
France (along with the United Kingdom and Spain, who both withdrew the following year after negotiating agreements with Mexico's democratic government) had invaded Mexico in the winter of 1861, as part of the War of the French Intervention. Seeking to legitimize French rule in the Americas, Napoleon III invited Maximilian to establish a new Mexican monarchy for him. With the support of the French army, and a group of conservative Mexican monarchists hostile to the liberal administration of new Mexican President Benito Juárez, Maximilian traveled to Mexico. Once there, he declared himself Emperor of Mexico on 10 April 1864. Continued

American Revolution reaches Texas

British West Florida (Wikipedia)

(TDbD) On this day in 1779, Spain came to the aid of the rebelling American colonists by formally declaring war on Great Britain.
The primary role played by Texas in the conflict was to supply Spanish forces mounting an assault on British territory from Louisiana. King Carlos III commissioned Bernardo de Gálvez to conduct a campaign against the British along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast. Continued

How Frida Kahlo Invented ‘Frida Kahlo’

Diego Rivera and Frida (Kahlo)
by Carl Van Vechten (LoC)

(Daily Beast) … Born near Mexico City in 1907 to a German father and a mother of Spanish and Indian descent, Kahlo’s family taught her about style from a young age.
Early photographs of her family feature women wearing traditional starched lace headdress from the Oaxaca region.
Another shows her mother, Matilde Calderón y Gonzalez, wearing some of the European fashions that were popular prior to the Mexican Revolution. Continued

"Two common methods of hauling water in Old Mexico and southwestern United States"

Encinal, Tex., 1905 (National Archives)