My review of = Mexico: 500 Years of History, Paul Gillingham

For a few nights, I have been listening to the audio book of Mexico: 500 Yers of History by Paul Gillingham. I have always felt that Americans are shamefully ignorant of the History and Culture of our near neighbors North and South.

I read a history of Canada about 25 years ago when I was on a visit to Toronto, Canada. with my daughter as chaperone with Audubon Marching Band. Also, I read more, including the long narrative poem by Longfellow - EVANGELINE about the expulsion of the Arcadians, when I visited Nova Scotia, twice, many years later. In fact, I had visited Mexico once as well, but I was 18 and didn't know anything about where I was going. Back in the 1960's, a trip to Mexico was a kind of rite of passage for the more bohemian/intellectual/adventurous young people.

Anyhow, it happens that I have been working with a young Friend at Woodbury Friends Meeting, First Day School. Over a couple of years on Sundays, We took a chronological approach to world history from Dinosaurs to the 1600's, the Age of Exploration, and reached the point in time, this Autumn, when explorers from Europe were landing in the Americas. Several Friends will be exploring the topic from Indigenous people to Colonists including Puritans and Quakers, and Mexico, Central America and South America. One Friend has Canadian relatives, one Friend is from Mexico.

Needless to say, in the boiling turmoil that is our current state of affairs in the United States with Trump's persecution of Immigrants, so many of whom are from South America, Central America and Mexico, I felt a burning need to know more about these places, so when I read the review of this book, I knew it was the one for me. I have bought a map of South America to use with my young Friend and to teach myself where countries are down there.

I am writing my observations from only half way through, because it is such a big book and covers so much. What I wanted to mention was that chapter 13 delves into the 'invisible lives' of women in the 1500's and 1600's, in Mexico, the period of the invasion of Mexico by Spain. The first several chapters of the book discuss the invasion and the people involved, but when we get to Chapter 13, we hear about some of the women for whom records miractulously existed.

In Chapter 14 we hear a lot about the mix of races: Of course the Indigenous peopls in their millions, most notqably Mayans and Aztecs and Mexicans, the Spanish, but also the Africans, Portugese, and Germans. The author and several reviewers make the point that Mexico has the most diverse population in the world. There is a lot of discussion in this chapter about racism and racial hierarchy.

If you read CASTE: The Origins of our Discontent, by Isabel Wilkerson, then this will be a fascinating expansion and contrast to that narrative. If you haven't read it, you should!

Well, that's it for me for now. I have Christmas cards to write, but I will come back later after a few more chapters and drop some ideas.

As always if you want to discuss this or anything else, you can reach me by e-mail (not by comments - that blog feature is so polluted by spammers that I can't bear to look at it though blogspot does its best to root out the trash)

wrightj45@yahoo.com A review on-line said this: "As elegantly written as it is powerful in scope, rich in character and anecdote, Mexico uses the latest research to dazzling effect, showing how often Mexico has been a dynamic and vital shaper of world affairs"