The United Mexican States is a federal republic composed of 32 federal entities: 31 states and Mexico City, an autonomous entity. According to the Constitution of 1917, the states of the federation are free and sovereign in all matters concerning their internal affairs. Each state has its own congress and constitution.
Benito Pablo Juárez García was a Mexican Liberal lawyer and statesman who served as the 26th president of Mexico from 1858 until his death in office in 1872. As a Zapotec man, he was the first indigenous president of Mexico and the first indigenous head of state in the postcolonial Americas. Previously, he had served as Governor of Oaxaca and had later ascended to a variety of federal posts including Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Public Education, and President of the Supreme Court. During his presidency he led the Liberals to victory in the Reform War and in the Second French intervention in Mexico.
Maximilian I was an Austrian archduke who became emperor of the Second Mexican Empire from 10 April 1864 until his execution by the Mexican Republic on 19 June 1867.
Charlotte of Belgium, known by the Spanish version of her name, Carlota, was by birth a princess of Belgium and member of the House of Wettin in the branch of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. As the wife of Archduke Maximilian of Austria, Viceroy of Lombardy–Venetia and later Emperor of Mexico, she became Archduchess of Austria and Empress of Mexico. She was daughter, granddaughter, sister, sister in-law, cousin and wife of reigning or deposed sovereigns throughout Europe and Mexico.
The territory of the United States and its overseas possessions has evolved over time, from the colonial era to the present day. It includes formally organized territories, proposed and failed states, unrecognized breakaway states, international and interstate purchases, cessions, and land grants, and historical military departments and administrative districts. The last section lists informal regions from American vernacular geography known by popular nicknames and linked by geographical, cultural, or economic similarities, some of which are still in use today.
Miguel Gregorio de la Luz Atenógenes Miramón y Tarelo, known as Miguel Miramón, was a Mexican conservative general who became president of Mexico at the age of twenty seven during the Reform War, serving between February 1859 and December 1860. He was the first Mexican president to be born after the Mexican War of Independence.
The Second Mexican Empire, officially the Mexican Empire, was a constitutional monarchy established in Mexico by Mexican monarchists in conjunction with the Second French Empire. The period is sometimes referred to as the Second French intervention in Mexico. French Emperor Napoleon III, with the support of the Mexican conservatives, clergy, and nobility, established a monarchist ally in the Americas intended as a restraint upon the growing power of the United States. It has been viewed as both an independent Mexican monarchy and as a client state of France. Invited to become emperor of Mexico by Mexican monarchists who had lost a bloody civil war against Mexican liberals was Austrian Archduke Maximilian, of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, who had ancestral links to rulers of colonial Mexico. His ascension to the throne was then ratified through a fraudulent referendum. Maximilian's wife and empress consort of Mexico was the Belgian princess Charlotte of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, known in Mexico as "Carlota".
There were three Imperial Orders of the Mexican Empire, which were Orders of chivalry created to reward Heads of state and prominent people during the two periods of the Mexican Empire—the Imperial Order of Guadalupe, the Imperial Order of the Mexican Eagle, and the Imperial Order of Saint Charles.
The second French intervention in Mexico, also known as the Second Franco-Mexican War (1861–1867), was a military invasion of the Republic of Mexico by the French Empire of Napoleon III, purportedly to force the collection of Mexican debts in conjunction with Great Britain and Spain. Mexican conservatives supported the invasion, since they had been defeated by the liberal government of Benito Juárez in a three-year civil war. Defeated on the battlefield, conservatives sought the aid of France to effect regime change and establish a monarchy in Mexico, a plan that meshed with Napoleon III's plans to re-establish the presence of the French Empire in the Americas. Although the French invasion displaced Juárez's Republican government from the Mexican capital and the monarchy of Archduke Maximilian was established, the Second Mexican Empire collapsed within a few years. Material aid from the United States, whose four-year civil war ended in 1865, invigorated the Republican fight against the regime of Maximilian, and the 1866 decision of Napoleon III to withdraw military support for Maximilian's regime accelerated the monarchy's collapse. Maximilian and two Mexican generals were executed by firing squad on 19 June 1867, ending this period of Mexican history.
The Mexican Army is the combined land and air branch and is the largest part of the Mexican Armed Forces; it is also known as the National Defense Army.
Costa Rica is administratively divided into seven provinces which are subdivided into 84 cantons, and these are further subdivided into districts. Cantons are the only administrative division in Costa Rica that possess local government in the form of municipalities. Each municipality has its own mayor and several representatives, all of them chosen via municipal elections every four years.
Mexico has experienced many changes in territorial organization during its history as an independent state. The territorial boundaries of Mexico were affected by presidential and imperial decrees. One such decree was the Law of Bases for the Convocation of the Constituent Congress to the Constitutive Act of the Mexican Federation, which determined the national land area as the result of integration of the jurisdictions that corresponded to New Spain, the Captaincy General of Yucatán, the Captaincy General of Guatemala and the autonomous Kingdoms of East and West. The decree resulted in the independence from Spain.
The House of Iturbide is a former Imperial House of Mexico. It was founded by the Sovereign Mexican Constituent Congress on 22 June 1822 when the newly independent Mexican congress confirmed Agustín I's title of Constitutional Emperor of Mexico. He was baptized with the names of Saints Cosmas and Damian at the cathedral there. The last name Iturbide was originally from the Basque Country, Spain. Emperor Agustín abdicated and lived in exile with the prohibition on returning to Mexico. Despite that ban, he returned, was captured, and executed. Grandchildren of Emperor Agustín were adopted by Maximilian I of Mexico (1864-67), who had no biological children, and granted some status in the empheral Second Mexican Empire.
Corregimiento is a Spanish term used for country subdivisions for royal administrative purposes, ensuring districts were under crown control as opposed to local elites. A corregimiento was usually headed by a corregidor.
The New Virginia Colony was a colonization plan in central Mexico, to resettle ex-Confederates after the American Civil War. The largest settlement was Carlota, named for Empress Carlota and located near Córdoba, Veracruz; by early 1866, it was described as "thriving" and had a population of almost 500. Other settlements were planned near Tampico, Monterrey, Cuernavaca, and Chihuahua.
The Arizona Department (1865—1867) was a department of the Second Mexican Empire, located in the present-day state of Sonora in Northwestern Mexico.
The Conservative Party was one of two major factions in Mexican political thought that emerged in the years after independence, the other being the Liberals.
The Aguascalientes Department (1865−1867) was a department of the Second Mexican Empire, located in the present-day states of Aguascalientes, Jalisco, and Zacatecas in Central Mexico.
The Imperial Academy of Science and Literature was founded by Emperor Maximilian under the Second Mexican Empire by a decree published on April 10, 1865, with the aim of promoting and protecting the activities of professional academics. It was to be composed of three departments: science and mathematics, philosophy and history, and philology and literature.
