# Mexico > A chronological documentary of 2,805 moments spanning 1200–2026. > Source: https://loreline.live/loreline/mexico · Loreline (loreline.live) A country told through the things it makes and keeps. Agave fields on a volcanic slope in Jalisco that took a plant seven to fourteen years to fill, and the men who cut them with a blade on a pole. Pyramids whose builders left no name and no language, a city founded on a date chosen in 1925, painted books that survived the burning, and a wall in Mexico City that is legal to photograph because the law says so. Also the parts people argue about: whether the Day of the Dead is ancient or a modern arrangement of something European, whether the parade in the capital is a tradition or something invented for a Bond film in 2015, and whether a black clay pot has been black for centuries or since a potter changed her firing in the 1950s. The archive is in Spanish where Spanish is the right language, because the English version of this story is thinner and more touristic. _Curated by Olivier · last updated 2026-09-20._ ## Eras - **Manuscripts**, The painted books. Screenfold manuscripts on bark paper and deerskin, the ones that survived the burnings and the ones made after the conquest to explain the old world to the new. Azcatitlan, Mendoza, Boturini, Zouche-Nuttall, the Florentine Codex, and the lienzos that were painted to argue a land claim in a Spanish court. - **Tenochtitlan**, The Mexica capital and what is left of it under Mexico City. The Templo Mayor, found by electricity workers in 1978 and excavated to 1982, the Tlaltecuhtli monolith raised in 2006 at nearly twelve tons, the causeways and chinampas, and the lake that is no longer there. The founding date of 13 March 1325 was designated in 1925 to produce a six hundredth anniversary. - **The Virgin**, The Virgin of Guadalupe as an object and a destination. The image on the tilma, the basilicas old and new on Tepeyac, the pilgrimages, the December processions, and four centuries of painted and printed copies that carried the image into every part of the country. - **Ceramics**, Ceramics and the crafts around them. Talavera from Puebla with its own denomination of origin, barro negro from Oaxaca, whose black shine dates from a potter changing her firing in the 1950s rather than from antiquity, and the alebrijes, which began as papier-mâché in Mexico City in 1936 and became Oaxacan woodcarving forty years later. - **Son Jarocho**, Son jarocho and the string music of Veracruz. The jarana, the requinto, the harp, the tarima that the dancer plays as a percussion instrument, and the fandango as a communal event rather than a performance. Also the wider regional sones of the Huasteca and Michoacán. - **Pyramids**, The stone cities. Teotihuacan, whose name, language and builders are all unknown and where no evidence of a king has been found for a city of 150,000 people. Monte Albán, Palenque, Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, El Tajín and Cholula. The largest facet on the photographic side, and the oldest. - **Agave**, The wider agave world, which is not tequila and is not governed by the same law. Mezcal, whose denomination of origin explicitly excludes the tequila states, along with pulque, the pulquerías, aguamiel and Mayahuel. Earthen pit ovens rather than masonry hornos, and a plant that has been fermented in Mexico for far longer than anything has been distilled. - **Day of the Dead**, Day of the Dead: ofrendas, cempasúchil, sugar skulls, pan de muerto, and the graveside vigils in Michoacán and Oaxaca. Whether the observance is a continuous pre-Hispanic practice or substantially a twentieth-century arrangement of a Medieval European one is genuinely disputed among Mexican scholars, and both positions are noted. The Mexico City parade was invented for a film in 2015. - **Tequila**, The drink, its landscape and its law. A denomination of origin covering five states, of which only Jalisco is whole, and a plant that needs roughly seven to fourteen years before its core is worth cutting. The jimadores and the coa, the hornos and the tahona, the copper stills, the nineteenth-century haciendas, and the agave landscape inscribed by UNESCO. Founding dates here are marketing: one house alone uses four of them, so each is given with its claim type. - **Ballads**, The narrative ballad, which has carried news, grievance and legend since the nineteenth century. The Revolution corridos and the photographs that ran alongside them, the border ballads, the accordion and bajo sexto of the norteño groups, and the later strains that made the form controversial again. - **Murals**, Painting on public walls, state-sponsored after the Revolution. Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros, and the buildings that hold them. Mexican law permits photographing works visible from public places, which is why these are here, and the same law does not reach the cycles they painted in Detroit, Dartmouth and Los Angeles, which are absent for that reason. - **Film**, Mexican film. The Golden Age of the 1930s to 1950s and its stars, Buñuel's Mexican period, the studios and the picture palaces, the posters and lobby cards which are separate works from the films and often outlive them, and the modern directors who took five Best Director Oscars in six years. - **Mariachi**, The music and the men who play it. Plaza Garibaldi, Cocula and Tecalitlán, the violins, vihuela, guitarrón and the trumpet that only arrived in the 1930s, and the traje de charro that arrived with it. The French "mariage" etymology is disproven: a priest complained about mariachis in 1852, a decade before the French did. - **Food**, Food as a system rather than a menu. The milpa itself, maize and beans and squash grown together, nixtamalization, the metate and the comal, the markets, the moles, and the chiles. The UNESCO listing is narrower than "Mexican food": it inscribes an ancestral community culture and names the cocineras tradicionales of Michoacán as its exemplars. - **Kahlo**, Frida Kahlo without her paintings, which are protected until 2054. The Casa Azul in Coyoacán, the wardrobe sealed after her death and reopened decades later, the Trotsky house up the road, her photographers, her circle and the neighbourhood she lived in. A facet built entirely from the world around the work rather than the work. - **Wrestling**, Lucha libre: the masks, the arenas, the técnicos and rudos, and the poster art. El Santo, who wore his mask for almost fifty years, removed it on live television in late January 1984 and died a week later, and was buried in it. The photographic record here is thin and the facet is carried by film. ## Archive parts This archive is served in 2 chronological parts so each stays quick to fetch. - [1200–2018](https://loreline.live/loreline-text/mexico/1200-2018.md), 1,456 moments - [2019–2026](https://loreline.live/loreline-text/mexico/2019-2026.md), 1,349 moments --- 2,805 moments · Attribution: Loreline (loreline.live) · Public contributions welcome.