Mexico
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.
A chronological documentary of 2,805 moments spanning 1200–2026 on Loreline.
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.
- - The Dresden Codex, page 43. A section of the Maya astronomical book, showing part of its Venus table. The manuscript dates from around the twelfth or thirteenth century. It is the oldest surviving book written in the Americas and sits in Dresden.
- - The feather headdress in Vienna. A fan of quetzal and cotinga feathers worked with gold, made in Mexico around 1515. Held at the Weltmuseum in Vienna. Mexico has asked for its return more than once; Austria holds that the piece is too fragile to travel.
- - The Mapa Quinatzin. Leaf two of the manuscript, with the ground plan of Nezahualcóyotl's palace at Texcoco. Painted in the sixteenth century, this copy dated 1543. The plan names the rooms of a court that had already been dismantled.
- - José Juárez on the apparitions, 1656. A painting of the image and the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe. By José Juárez, 1656. The four-apparition narrative was fixed in print by Miguel Sánchez in 1648, more than a century after the claimed events.
- - Luis de Mena's casta painting. A single canvas combining the Virgin of Guadalupe with a grid of casta types, fruits and scenes of colonial life. Painted around 1750. Casta paintings sorted the population of New Spain by descent, and putting the Virgin at the top of one made her the roof over that whole system.
- - Codex Mendoza, engraved. An eighteenth-century print reproducing folio 2 recto of the codex. Held in the Rijksmuseum print room. The Mendoza was made around 1541 for Charles the Fifth, was taken by French pirates, and ended in Oxford.
- - Las Tortilleras, about 1836. Women making tortillas, a hand-coloured lithograph after Pierre-Frédéric Lehnert. Early nineteenth-century Mexico. Grinding nixtamal on the metate was several hours of a woman's day before mills arrived.
- - The battlefield at Cerro Gordo, 1847. A surveyed plan of the fighting of 17 and 18 April 1847, drawn from surveys by Major Turnbull and Captain McClellan. Veracruz. Scott's army landed at Veracruz and forced the pass on the road to the capital.
- - Nebel's Cerro Gordo. A hand-coloured lithograph of the battle of 18 April 1847. Published 1851 after Carl Nebel. Nebel's plates are the best-known images of the war and were drawn from the American side.
- - The Battle of Churubusco, 1847. A hand-coloured lithograph of the fighting of 20 August 1847 in the war with the United States. Published 1851 after Carl Nebel. The convent was defended until the ammunition ran out.
- - Cerro Gordo, detail. A cropped view of Nebel's lithograph of the battle. Published 1851. Santa Anna lost his wooden leg to an Illinois regiment at Cerro Gordo, and it is still in Springfield.
- - Churubusco, detail. A cropped view of Nebel's lithograph of the battle of 20 August 1847. Published 1851. The Saint Patrick's Battalion, Irish deserters from the US army, fought here for Mexico and were hanged for it.
- - Rancheros in 1856. A detail of the lithograph of Mexican costume, campesinos or rancheros, from México y sus alrededores. Published 1856. The charro suit as national dress was standardised much later, in the 1930s.
- - Charnay at Teotihuacan. Three albumen views on one page, the Avenue of the Dead and the Pyramid of the Moon among them. Published 1883 from Désiré Charnay's Mexican campaign. Charnay was among the first to photograph the site systematically.
- - The Charnay excavations. The Pyramid of the Sun seen from the Moon, with an idol found nearby and the dig itself. Teotihuacan, 1883. Charnay worked with French government backing and shipped casts and photographs back to Paris.
- - The calendar stone in the museum court, 1883. An albumen print of the Sun Stone standing in the courtyard of the old national museum. Mexico City, 1883. The stone was unearthed in the Zócalo in 1790 and mounted on the cathedral wall for most of the nineteenth century.
- - The idol called Teoyaomiqui, 1883. Two views of a colossal Mexica stone figure, front and side. Photographed in Mexico in 1883. Nineteenth-century writers called it Teoyaomiqui; it is now identified as Coatlicue.
- - Ancient pottery and an Aztec statue, 1883. Vessels grouped around a standing stone figure, printed three views to a page. Mexico, 1883. Photographs like these were how European collectors first assessed Mexican antiquity.
- - A pulque shop around 1900. A photochrom print of a pulquería at Tacubaya. About 1884 to 1900. Pulque was the working drink of the central plateau and the shops were painted with names and pictures on the outside.
- - The Atlas mexicano. Sheets from the atlas, the maps dated between 1884 and 1886. The survey was the Porfirian state describing its own territory.
- - Reading the Codex en Cruz. Instructions for following the cross-shaped reading order of the codex, drawn by Eugène Goupil. Published 1889. Goupil's collection of Mexican manuscripts went to the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.
- - Posada's trusting calaveras. A broadsheet relief print on red ground, titled Calaveras de confianza que les dará su pitanza. Drawn by José Guadalupe Posada and published by Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, about 1890. Posada died in 1913 in poverty and was buried in a common grave.
- - Copper stills. Copper vessels and their curved pipework fill the still house. Photographed at Tequila, Jalisco, in 1893. The fermented low-alcohol wash is the mosto, and the first pass yields an intermediate spirit called the ordinario.
- - The horno. A brick oven stands open with agave stacked inside it. Tequila, Jalisco, 1898. Cooking runs long and low rather than hot and fast, which is what gives the cooked core its sweetness.
- - The horno. Quartered cores are packed into a masonry chamber. Tequila, Jalisco, 1898. Cooking runs long and low rather than hot and fast, which is what gives the cooked core its sweetness.
- - Díaz and his cabinet. Porfirio Díaz with his ministers. About 1900. Díaz held power for over thirty years and left for Paris in May 1911.
- - Orozco and his staff. The general with his officers. About 1900 to 1912. Orozco's men wore red bands and were known as colorados.
- - Rebels flagging down a train. Insurgents stopping a train on the line. About 1900 to 1913. The railway is the setting of a great many corridos, since it is how the Revolution moved.
- - The Great Temple imagined, 1900. An illustration of the sacred precinct and the Templo Mayor as they stood in the sixteenth century. Drawn in 1900. Reconstructions of this kind were made from the chroniclers, decades before anyone dug the site.
- - Hacienda Uxmal, 1901. A stereo view of the hacienda archway with a high-wheeled volan coche standing in front. Yucatán, 1901. The card misspells the name as Ixmal.
- - From the Nunnery to the pyramid. A stereo card looking out of the quadrangle towards the Pyramid of the Magician. Uxmal, Yucatán, 1901. Stereographs were the mass medium through which most people first saw these sites.
- - Inside the Nunnery quadrangle. A stereo view from a room out into the courtyard. Uxmal, Yucatán, 1901. The Library of Congress holds the card in its stereograph collection.
- - Looking out from the Great Pyramid. A stereo view across the ruins from the top of the pyramid, captioned in the language of its day. Uxmal, Yucatán, 1901. Its title, the passing of a noble race, is a period assumption rather than a fact.
- - The Governor's Palace from the pyramid. A stereo card looking down on the rear of the long building. Uxmal, Yucatán, 1901. Its mosaic frieze runs about 100 metres and is built from thousands of separately cut stones.
- - Lords in canoes, Codex Zouche-Nuttall. Three lords paddle out to take a city on an island, drawn in the screenfold's register bands. Page 75 of the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, in a 1902 facsimile. The manuscript is Mixtec, painted on deerskin before the conquest, and it reads in a boustrophedon path guided by red lines.
- - Agave mirabilis at Las Vigas, 1903. A flowering plant photographed with a man standing beside it for scale, possibly on 26 August 1903. Las Vigas, Veracruz. The flowering stalk of a large agave can reach eight metres in a few weeks.
- - The agave landscape. Ranked agave covers the ground in long curving lines. Recorded at Tequila, Jalisco, 1904. What was inscribed is a working landscape rather than a monument, fields included.
- - Bowditch on the Maya calendar, 1904. A plate from Charles Bowditch's study of Mexican and Central American calendar systems. Published 1904. Bowditch funded much of the early Maya work at Harvard and worked on the numeral system himself.
- - Bureau of American Ethnology bulletin, 1904. A plate from the Smithsonian's ethnology series on Mesoamerican material. Washington, 1904. American institutions published much of the early comparative work on the codices.
- - Another plate from the 1904 bulletin. A further illustration from the Bureau of American Ethnology's Mesoamerican volume. Washington, 1904. These plates put line drawings of the codices into circulation long before colour facsimiles.
- - A third plate from the 1904 bulletin. Another illustration from the Smithsonian ethnology series. Washington, 1904. Bureau of American Ethnology bulletins were the main channel for this material in English.
- - The agave landscape. Ranked agave covers the ground in long curving lines. Photographed at Tequila, Sonora, in 1905. Archaeological remains of the Teuchitlán tradition, roughly AD 200 to 900, sit inside the World Heritage boundary among the rows.
- - The quay at Coatzacoalcos, 1907. Shipping alongside and a glimpse of the town on the Bay of Campeche. Veracruz, 1907. Coatzacoalcos was the Gulf end of the Tehuantepec railway, which carried freight between the two oceans before the Panama Canal.
- - Pascual Orozco. A glass plate portrait of the Chihuahua leader, captioned in its day as a bandit chief. About 1908. Orozco won Ciudad Juárez for Madero in 1911 and then rebelled against him the following year.
- - Pancho Villa. A glass plate negative of Francisco Villa. About 1908. Villa attracted more corridos than any other figure of the Revolution, and they were being sold as printed broadsheets while he was still alive.
- - General Felipe Ángeles. A portrait of the artillery general on a glass plate. About 1908. Ángeles was a trained professional soldier who joined Villa, and he was court-martialled and shot in 1919.
- - Colonel Estrada. A glass plate portrait of a Mexican officer. About 1908. Officers on both sides sat for the same commercial photographers.
- - The National Palace, 1909. A glass plate negative of the palace on the Zócalo. Mexico City, 1909. Rivera did not begin painting its stairway until 1929, twenty years after this was taken.
- - Sombreros in the market, 1909. Hats stacked at a market stall in the capital. Mexico City, 1909. Straw and palm hat weaving was one of the largest rural crafts in the country.
- - The agave landscape. The fields sit under the cone that laid down their soil. Photographed at Tequila, Jalisco, in 1909. The appellation covers all of Jalisco plus named municipalities of Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit and Tamaulipas, five states in total.
…and 2,755 more moments.
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