By Heather Howsmon
After touring many opulent cathedrals in Mexico, the Church and Hospital of Jesús Nazareno seemed unusually plain. There were no frescos covering the walls, no grand carved marble alters, or organ pipes spanning the width of the church. Just a plain…

By Jeffrey L. Littlejohn
Located in the southern portion of the Yucatan Peninsula, Calakmul sits within an ecological preserve of 819,000 acres, surrounded by a buffer zone of an additional 968,000 acres. Together, this vast territory makes up the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve.…

By Maria Bozic
The legend has it that the Aztecs came to Tenochtitlan to find work as soldiers to protect the city, they were rough and tough nomads that took a liking to the great city, the people of Tenochtitlan didn’t particularly care for the Aztecs and…

By Maria Bozic
The Making of Tradition These indigenous women take textiles and transform them into huipiles to enclose the secret of the Mesoamerican universe. It all starts with the drawing onto a manila paper using pencil to calculate the measurements making a…

By Jazmin E. Palacios
The religious art in Pre-hispanic Mesoamerica featured an abundance of iconographic deities that resembled the most important fauna in the region. It was common to combine the characteristics of multiple animals to create the image of a god, which is…

By Jazmin E. Palacios
In the Zapotec language, the word “guelaguetza” means mutual cooperation, which is based on the idea of reciprocity–“today for you, tomorrow for me” (Bonfil Batalla, 1996, p. 30). The Guelaguetza celebration consists of inhabitants from each of…

By Jazmin E. Palacios
Archaeologist, Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, was born in France on January 27, 1906. He moved to Mexico, becoming a nationalized Mexican on September 3, 1940. Ruz took much pride in his Mexican identity and acquired an admiration for Mexico’s history. In…

By Illeana Moore
The cochineal insect, Dactylopius coccus, can be found on the pads of the nopal cactus. The crushed bodies, fresh or dried, make a bright red dye. Cochineal cultivation is very hard work and requires skill. It takes about 25,000 live insects to…

By Illeana Moore
Throughout the various empires and cultures in ancient Mesoamerica, the act of human and animal sacrifice was a common occurrence. The Maya practiced human and animal sacrifice as well, but had more of a fixation of auto-sacrificial bloodletting than…

By Travis Perez
One of the most important Maya sites is Palenque. With its unique characteristics, it has kept some of the best quality bas reliefs in the whole Maya world, and with the work that Merle Greene Robertson accomplished, the almost four thousand stelas…

By Illeana Moore
Tacos Al Pastor are widely popular throughout Mexico as well as other countries, such as the United States. This dish typically consists of shaved spit-roasted pork, pineapple, onion, and cilantro all on top of a cooked corn tortilla. Of course there…

By Ashleigh Richardson
The children of the Maya came up in two different social classes. Either they were of nobility or they were commoners. Regardless of what social class three things that all children had in common was a symbol of purity, being cross eyed, and social…

By Ashleigh Richardson
Bartholomew de las Casas was born in Seville, Spain in 1474. He was the son of a merchant. He came from a farming and mercantilist background. This would prove crucial in his later years, while helping the Indigenous. He had met the royal family of…

By Travis Perez
In the city of Merida their lies a hidden gem that contains beautiful artworks by a local painter. In the Government Palace, located in the central plaza, artist Fernando Castro Pacheco has painted thirty-one murals that gained him national notoriety…

By Tyler Pointer
The Boturini Codex is an anonymously-created Aztec codex that was made between 1530 and 1541. Its second name is “Tira de la Peregrinacion” which means “The Pilgrimage Strip” and tells the story of a pilgrimage and the events during. A major detail…

By Tyler Pointer
The Televisa Chapultepec Edificio de Servicios is a major example of the growing modernism within Mexico and the intricacy of art in Mexico City. Originally founded as Telesistema Mexicano in 1955, Televisa or “Grupo Televisa, S.A.B.” became what it…

By Tyler Pointer
The eyes of the world were on Mexico when they became the first country in Latin America to host the Olympics in 1968. However, beneath the surface and attention of the five rings, a much larger crisis was shielded from the sight of the public. On…

By Chloe Henze
Located 500 meters west of the Avenue of the Dead is Palacio de Tetitla. Tetitla is one of the numerous housing complexes located around the ceremonial center of Teotihuacan. Tetitla was inhibited from 350 to 550 C.E, and housed between 20 and 100…

By Travis Perez
The stadium’s construction first broke ground in 1962, and was finished in 1966, in preparation for the 1968 Olympics that were held in Mexico. The site cost 260 million pesos, and is the only stadium in the world to have hosted two FIFA World Cup…

By Christina Wicker
Puuc style architecture is predominant in the Puuc region of Mexico. The style came about in the Late Classic period but continued on and advanced during the Terminal Classic period. Puuc style has heavy influences of artistic appreciation with the…

By Christina Wicker
Alfonso Caso started his archaeological career as a professor, and also former student, at the University of Mexico from 1918 to 1940 where his specialty was Oaxacan history and culture. From there he became the Head of the Archaeology department at…

By Christina Wicker
The Popol Vuh is one of the most important stories ever created by the Quiche Maya people. It contains epic tales of the Hero Twins, early migrations and settlements, the creation of the world and even the creation of Man itself. It is also one of…

By Ashleigh Richardson
Cranial Deformation, head flattening, head binding is a form of body alteration in which the skull of a human being is deformed intentionally. It is seen in ancient civilizations across the hemispheres. This procedure takes place while still in…

By Ashlee Ziegenbein
The Church of Santiago Tlatelolco was built as a symbol of the Spanish conquest in 1521. This was the first cathedral built during the period of the Spanish trying to establish a new-found civilization in the Americas. Cortez wanted to make sure to…

By Ashlee Ziegenbein
In the heart of Mexico City, the historical site of Tlatelolco tells a portion of the history the Aztec Empire left behind. Tlatelolco is known as The Plaza of Three Cultures due to this location representing the indigenous Aztec people, the Spanish…

By Ashlee Ziegenbein
Churches and cathedrals hold much more meaning than just their well known purpose as a place of worship. The enormous size and strategic location of theses cathedrals in a colonial city made strength and power the Spanish held over the indigenous…

By Sean Pruetz
North of the main plaza of Izamal is the temple of Kinich Kakmó, an artifical limestone pyramid in the Yucatan dedicated to one of the area's most important and notable deities of the same name. Kinich Kakmó, which is Mayan for "the fire macaw with…

By Sean Pruetz
Amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri) is an edible flowering weed that can be cultivated as a leaf vegetable and as a pseudocereal. Unlike true cereals, which are identified by botanists as a flowering grass, pseudocereals are typically a grain which can be…

By Sean Pruetz
Pulque is a mildly alcoholic beverage made from agave sap, which is then fermented until it acquires a certain level of viscosity. The tradition of making pulque is a millennia-old cultural phenomenon in Mexico. Initially, it was a religious drink in…

By Ana Becerra
The origins of the Maize God was born from a Mayan myth that goes back to the Classic Period of Mesoamerican history. The story of the reincarnation of the Baby Jaguar as the Maize God shows the importance of maize in the Mesoamerican society. The…