By Heather Howsmon
After touring many opulent cathedrals in Mexico, the Church and Hospital of Jesús Nazareno seemed unusually plain. There were no frescos covering the walls, no grand carved marble alters, or organ…

By Jeffrey L. Littlejohn
Located in the southern portion of the Yucatan Peninsula, Calakmul sits within an ecological preserve of 819,000 acres, surrounded by a buffer zone of an additional 968,000 acres. Together, this vast…

By Maria Bozic
Chapultepec, seed of power through the centuries. Nothing could be more true as you walk up the middle of chapultepec park in the heart of Mexico City, up the hill to the breathtaking view of the…

By Maria Bozic
Indigenous blouses, better known as huipiles, in Oaxaca, Chiapas reveal as much as they hide. They tell a tale of fertility, enchantment and seduction with the intricate design using the colors of the…

By Jazmin E. Palacios
In the Zapotec language, the word “guelaguetza” means mutual cooperation, which is based on the idea of reciprocity–“today for you, tomorrow for me” (Bonfil Batalla, 1996, p. 30). The Guelaguetza…

By Jazmin E. Palacios
Archaeologist, Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, was born in France on January 27, 1906. He moved to Mexico, becoming a nationalized Mexican on September 3, 1940. Ruz took much pride in his Mexican identity and…

By Illeana Moore
The cochineal insect, Dactylopius coccus, can be found on the pads of the nopal cactus. The crushed bodies, fresh or dried, make a bright red dye. Cochineal cultivation is very hard work and requires…

By Illeana Moore
Throughout the various empires and cultures in ancient Mesoamerica, the act of human and animal sacrifice was a common occurrence. The Maya practiced human and animal sacrifice as well, but had more…

By Travis Perez
One of the most important Maya sites is Palenque. With its unique characteristics, it has kept some of the best quality bas reliefs in the whole Maya world, and with the work that Merle Greene…

By Illeana Moore
Tacos Al Pastor are widely popular throughout Mexico as well as other countries, such as the United States. This dish typically consists of shaved spit-roasted pork, pineapple, onion, and cilantro all…

By Ashleigh Richardson
The children of the Maya came up in two different social classes. Either they were of nobility or they were commoners. Regardless of what social class three things that all children had in common was…

By Tyler Pointer
The Boturini Codex is an anonymously-created Aztec codex that was made between 1530 and 1541. Its second name is “Tira de la Peregrinacion” which means “The Pilgrimage Strip” and tells the story of a…

By Tyler Pointer
The Televisa Chapultepec Edificio de Servicios is a major example of the growing modernism within Mexico and the intricacy of art in Mexico City. Originally founded as Telesistema Mexicano in 1955,…

By Tyler Pointer
The eyes of the world were on Mexico when they became the first country in Latin America to host the Olympics in 1968. However, beneath the surface and attention of the five rings, a much larger…

By Chloe Henze
Located 500 meters west of the Avenue of the Dead is Palacio de Tetitla. Tetitla is one of the numerous housing complexes located around the ceremonial center of Teotihuacan. Tetitla was inhibited…

By Travis Perez
The stadium’s construction first broke ground in 1962, and was finished in 1966, in preparation for the 1968 Olympics that were held in Mexico. The site cost 260 million pesos, and is the only stadium…

By Christina Wicker
Puuc style architecture is predominant in the Puuc region of Mexico. The style came about in the Late Classic period but continued on and advanced during the Terminal Classic period. Puuc style has…

By Christina Wicker
Alfonso Caso started his archaeological career as a professor, and also former student, at the University of Mexico from 1918 to 1940 where his specialty was Oaxacan history and culture. From there he…

By Ashleigh Richardson
Cranial Deformation, head flattening, head binding is a form of body alteration in which the skull of a human being is deformed intentionally. It is seen in ancient civilizations across the…

By Ashlee Ziegenbein
The Church of Santiago Tlatelolco was built as a symbol of the Spanish conquest in 1521. This was the first cathedral built during the period of the Spanish trying to establish a new-found…

By Ashlee Ziegenbein
In the heart of Mexico City, the historical site of Tlatelolco tells a portion of the history the Aztec Empire left behind. Tlatelolco is known as The Plaza of Three Cultures due to this location…

By Ashlee Ziegenbein
Churches and cathedrals hold much more meaning than just their well known purpose as a place of worship. The enormous size and strategic location of theses cathedrals in a colonial city made strength…

By Sean Pruetz
North of the main plaza of Izamal is the temple of Kinich Kakmó, an artifical limestone pyramid in the Yucatan dedicated to one of the area's most important and notable deities of the same name.…

By Sean Pruetz
Amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri) is an edible flowering weed that can be cultivated as a leaf vegetable and as a pseudocereal. Unlike true cereals, which are identified by botanists as a flowering grass,…

By Sean Pruetz
Pulque is a mildly alcoholic beverage made from agave sap, which is then fermented until it acquires a certain level of viscosity. The tradition of making pulque is a millennia-old cultural phenomenon…

By Ana Becerra
The origins of the Maize God was born from a Mayan myth that goes back to the Classic Period of Mesoamerican history. The story of the reincarnation of the Baby Jaguar as the Maize God shows the…