Before you go to Mexico: eras, customs, phrases and what is still there

Eras in a line

Before 1492 (15000 BC–1492) — Mesoamerica, from central Mexico to Honduras, saw three thousand years of cities before the Spanish arrived.
Empire and the colonial Americas (1492–1808) — Spain governed its American lands through viceroys who represented the king: New Spain from 1535 (Mexico City) and Peru from 1542 (Lima), joined in the…
Revolutions and new nations (1808–1898) — The first decades of independence were hard.
Revolution, war and dictatorship (1898–1975) — The call to arms of 20 November 1910 against the thirty-year rule of Porfirio Díaz began a decade of revolution in which perhaps a million people died or left…
Democracy and today (1975–) — Since 1990 almost every Spanish-speaking country has chosen its governments at the ballot box, though democracy has been tested by economic collapse (Argentina…

Día de Muertos — The first days of November, when families build an altar for their dead, spend a night in the cemetery, and nobody is sad: the dead are back for a visit.
Las posadas and the Christmas season — From 16 December, nine nights of candlelit processions, a song at the door asking for shelter, hot ponche, tamales and a seven-pointed piñata, ending with…
La hora latina: the elastic hour — An invitation for eight means you may arrive from eight.
The quinceañera — A girl's fifteenth birthday: a mass, a full-skirted dress, a waltz with her father, the last doll, and a party paid for by a dozen godparents.

Las familias recuerdan a sus muertos con alegría. — Families remember their dead with joy.
En México, la Navidad empieza el 16 de diciembre con las posadas. — In Mexico, Christmas begins on the 16th of December with the posadas.
Si a usted lo invitan a una casa a las ocho y llega a las ocho, se encontrará con el anfitrión en pantuflas. — If you are invited to a house at eight and arrive at eight, you will find your host in slippers.
En México, los quince años de una chica son una fiesta enorme. — In Mexico, a girl's fifteenth birthday is an enormous party.
Lo trajeron los libaneses, hace cien años. Ellos lo hacían con cordero. — The Lebanese brought it, a hundred years ago. They made it with lamb.
Es famosa por sus mariachis. — It is famous for its mariachis.

The Classic Maya: Tikal, Palenque and the collapse — You can walk among the temples of Maya cities such as Tikal and Palenque, where the buildings raised under King Pakal still stand.
Teotihuacan, city of the gods — At Teotihuacan, fifty kilometres from Mexico City, you can walk the avenue lined with temples and look up at the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon.
The Mexica found Tenochtitlan — Mexico City stands where the island city stood; it is also where tacos al pastor took their pork-and-pineapple form, carved from the spinning trompo.