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Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together
25 Mar 2026 25 published claims 2 attributable people
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evaluation 11belief 10observation 1uncertainty 1recommendation 1prediction 1
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25 published records
“It’s an end to other empires’ pretensions. It’s the beginning of stabilization led by a brilliantly gifted, and this is a word I would almost never use, but a brilliantly gifted politician, Porfirio Díaz, who benefits from this being a time of a global boom when the rest of the world, the industrial world, craves Mexican resources.”
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“” Yes, frankly, given the plethora of archaeological sites in Mexico, I think Monte Albán is the most boring, large one by a country mile.”
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“Foreigners are untouchable. Because much of Yucatán, the Yucatán economy centers on tourism, the Riviera Maya, Cozumel, et cetera, there’s an awful lot in these key populated coastal strips of foreigners.”
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“I would say, in part, because one of the traditional tourist attractions of Mexico is precisely indigenous culture, and because of this autonomy, Oaxaca has preserved a multitude of very strong indigenous cultures.”
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“There’s nothing like it in the Americas. It’s one of the key reasons, I think, that again, the countryside stays largely quiescent while it is stripped of resources in the 60 years after Cárdenas leaves office.”
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“Is it Zaachila is the city or the pueblo? It’s again, 30 minutes outside of Oaxaca City, I think.”
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“I think human capital is by far the biggest problem. Then the slow rate at which small informal businesses are willing to enter the more heavily regulated sector is a real bottleneck.”
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“In case you find that to be inverse snobbery, I would say that underneath the taqueria, there’s a hidden, quite smart restaurant.”
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“There and, I would say, the northern Sierra of Puebla is also strong concentrations.”
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“For Nahuatl-speaking villages, it’s the best place to go in Mexico, I think, that I know of.”
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“I would say no, actually, and that generally cargo holders work as intermediaries with the state in the 20th century.”
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“Now more recently, Mexico has a reputation for being very violent, but Yucatán is especially peaceful. There are years where it’s had a lower murder rate, I think, than Finland.”
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“I think that’s one of the reasons why the British can really appreciate Mexico, is we’ve got a similarly dark sense of humor.”
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“I think that Mexicans would absolutely agree with you. I would beg to, in part, differ.”
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“I would guess it’s, I don’t know, 20, 25 minutes outside of the main city, so it’s easy to get there.”
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“I would then tell them to fly to, I think, probably Zacatecas, because the Baroque splendor of Mexico, it’s not captured anywhere with the same intensity.”
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“He has a new book out: Mexico: A 500-Year History. It is, in my view, the single best introduction to the history of Mexico and will be one of the best nonfiction books of this year, 2026.”
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“One is this really joined-up noncoercive population control of the ’70s and ’80s, which was a global model. Mexico hosted the global conference on this, I think twice or three times.”
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“If it’s repression, then generally, conciliation works better. This extremely complex equation, I think, is what keeps the army out of politics, what keeps relative peace and relative buy-in to this unequal single-party state.”
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“The cargo system whereby you, an indigenous zone, assume political office with absolutely zero payoff and at quite considerable cost in terms of cash and time, it makes sense because it brings the brightest and best into office over and over again.”
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“Most people in villages—this depends very much where you go—but the reason half the men aren’t there is precisely because they have migrated to work, whether it be migrating to cities, whether it be migrating to the north.”
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“I think that if you look at it not in question of a few years or maybe a decade, but over a longer time, Mexican economic growth has been impressive.”
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“One of the reasons that this population control works is because you get far more people going through those critical first three years of primary school.”
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“The other is You Dreamed of Empires in English, which is a retelling of the conquest as this glorified heist by a bunch of fortunate thugs, which I think most historians would agree with, and has some twists in it which are stunning.”
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“” The idea of electing judges is a really poor idea, I think, in Mexico because of the interest of local drug-trading organizations in having sympathetic judges.”
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