“It all started with a wedding. In 1469, Isabella I of Castile married Ferdinand II of Aragon, uniting their two kingdoms and laying the foundation of modern Spain. The kingdom expanded further in 1492 when it forced the Muslims out of Granada. That same year, a self-educated visionary from Genoa came peddling his idea for finding a route to the wealth of Asia, not by rounding Africa, but by sailing westwards. Isabella I, seeing this as a way to circumvent the Portuguese monopoly on the eastern route, sponsored Christopher Columbus’s first Atlantic voyage.”
Bob Pateman, Writer
Hernán Cortés wasn’t the first Spanish leader of an expedition to Mexico. Two previous ones had already set sail from Havana in the early years of the 16th century, after…
How could a Russian who had never even visited Mexico become the first person since the ancient Maya to underderstand their written language? It all started with a few Mayan…
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After escaping European fascism as a child, Friedeberg learned art in a Mexico still dominated by the realist legacy of muralism—a legacy he ultimately rejected.
