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Mexico Travel :: States around Mexico City

State of Puebla

The state of Puebla is the site of one of the most important archeological finds in the New World. In caves of the Tehuacan Valley archeologists found tiny ears of domesticated corn dated around 3000 BC. These are the earliest yet discoveries of this crop, which became Mexico's 'staff of life' and without which the great developments of pre-Hispanic civilizations would have been impossible. Researchers theorize that corn was first domesticated between 7000 and 5000 BC, somewhere in the Puebla-Oaxaca region. The Pueb-la-area cultures were first influenced by the Olmecs and then by Teotihuacan and the Totonacs (in the region near El Tajin). The city of Cholula, which has an Olmec-style patio, possesses pure Teotihuacan-style murals on the exterior of the earliest pyramid. Around AD 900, the Olmeca-Xicallanca conquered Cholula and dedicated the Great Pyramid to the Feathered Serpent. By the time of the last reconstruction, this structure was the largest man-made object in the New World and rivalled the Pyramid of Cheops. In AD 1292, the Olmeca-Xicallanca were toppled by the Tolteca-Chichimeca and by the next century Cholula was an independent city-state. The Great Pyramid was abandoned in favor of a new temple to Quetzalcoatl.

In the 15th century, after decades of war, the Aztecs finally defeated the Cholulans and forced them to pay tribute to Tenochtitlan. By this time, Cholula was one of the most important religious centers in central Mexico-they had a temple for every day of the year-and was also known for high-quality ceramics that Motecuhzoma II dined off in the imperial palace. When Cortes advanced upon the Valley of Mexico in 1519, he stopped in Cholula, and his subsequent actions in the city remain controversial today. What is sure is that his troops massacred as many as 6,000 unarmed Cholulans in the main plaza. The question is: did he massacre them in self-defense, because they were planning to slaughter the Spaniards, or was this merely a way of broadcasting his power and ruthlessness to the Aztecs? Was he a mass-murderer or a simply a cunning general? The reality probably lies in between.

After the Conquest, the Spanish destroyed Cholula's 365 temples and declared they would replace every one of them with a Christian chapel (they only completed 40). In 1531, the city of Puebla was founded a few kilometers east, perhaps as a Catholic response to Cholula. Puebla, with its early ceramic and textile industries, quickly grew into Mexico's second most important city. Since many religious orders and a Jesuit college were based here, the city also became known as one of the most pious and conservative in Mexico, a reputation it retains today. The majority of the local Indians died in epidemics and their lands were taken over for large farms and cattle estates.

In 1811, Morelos entered the state with his insurgent army and fought the royalists successfully for five years until the tide of battle turned. The conservatives captured Puebla from the anti-clerical liberals in 1856, with much assistance from the pious citizenry. On May 5,1862, Puebla was the scene of the most famous victory of the Mexican army. In a bloody, day-long battle, a troop of 2,000 Mexicans repelled 6,000 French soldiers weakened by Montezuma's Revenge. The hero of the day was a young general named Porffrio Diaz, who was catapulted to fame and eventually became Mexico's supreme dictator. The French returned a year later and bombarded and besieged Puebla. After two months of starvation and shell-shock, the Mexicans relinquished the city.

In 1910, a revolutionary activist named Aquiles Serdan was on the verge of calling for the armed overthrow of the dictator Diaz when a squad of soldiers circled his house in downtown Puebla and massacred him and his family, making them the first martyrs of the Mexican Revolution. The 1910-20 economic and political chaos led to severe starvation in Puebla and other cities. In 1920, President Carranza, on the run from Al-varo Obregon's army, was assassinated in the small town of Tlaxcalantongo by an Obre-gonista in his own bodyguard. Two of Puebla's post-Revolution governors, Manuel Avila Camacho and Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (a dour conservative responsible for the 1968 Tlate-lolco student massacre), have gone on to become president.

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