Some forty scholarly works, written by historians on both sides of the Border, form the basis for this non-scholarly attempt to provide a short, simple story of events between the Spanish conquest of Mexico five centuries ago and Mexico’s dominance of itself since its independence of two hundred years. Better analysis of events here described in a factually chronologic way can be found in the writer’s historical sources. A reader knowing little of Mexico’s history can get a good start with this writer’s try to show what the large and beautiful land to the south has met and overcome on the way to what it has, and what it will become.