In 1908, the President of Mexico, Porfirio Dias, gave an interview to an American reporter.

In this interview, he made two statements that attracted a lot of attention.

First, the 78-year-old announced he would not run in the 1910 Mexican presidential election,

which was quite a shocker. Mexico, he said, was ready to move on,

and was ready for a democratically elected president.

If he meant it, it would mean that Porfirio Diaz would not be on the ballot

in a Mexican presidential election for the first time in 30 years, if he meant it.

Second, he offered a lament for his home country, one that was often repeated and remained so to this day.

"'Poor Mexico,' said the president, "'so far from God, so close to the United States.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century. Episode 55, so Far from God.

Human beings have lived in Mexico since about 11,000 BC.

Civilization arose in Mexico independently in about 1,500 BC.

Over the next 3,000 years, five civilizations would rise and fall in Mexico, the

Olmec, the Maya, the Teotihuacan, the Toltec, and the Aztec.

The Aztecs were an alliance of three city states, Texcoco and Tla Copan, both located in the

shores of Lake Texcoco in central Mexico, and Tenochtitlan, a city built on an island in

the same lake.

At the height of their power, these three cities, with a combined population of about 350,000, ruled over a collection of tributary

states with a population totaling some 12 million. Each of these three cities had a leader called

the Speaker. In time, Tenochtitlan became the largest and most powerful of the three cities,

and its speaker came to be called the elder speaker. Europeans would later call this

arrangement the Aztec Empire and refer to the elder speaker as the emperor, although this

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