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Conversations with Tyler

Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together

Conversations with Tyler

Conversations with Tyler

Education, Society & Culture

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2026

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Buy tickets for the live Conversations with Tyler recording with Craig Newmark at 92NY!

Tyler calls Paul Gillingham's new book, Mexico: A 500-Year History, the single best introduction to the country's past—and one of the best nonfiction books of 2026. Paul brings both an outsider's eye and ground-level knowledge to Mexican history, having grown up in Cork — a place he'd argue gave him an instinctive feel for fierce local autonomy and land hunger —earning his doctorate on the Mexican Revolution under Alan Knight at Oxford, and doing his fieldwork in the pueblos of Guerrero.

He and Tyler range across five centuries of Mexican history, from why Mexico held together after independence when every other post-colonial superstate collapsed, to why Yucatán is now one of the safest places on earth, what two leaders from Oaxaca tell us about Mexican politics, how Mexico avoided the military coups that plagued the rest of Latin America, what Cárdenas's land reform actually achieved versus what it promised, whether the ejido system held Mexico back, why Mexico worried too much about land and not enough about human capital, how Mexico's fertility rate fell below America's, why Guerrero has been violent for two centuries, why the new judicial reforms are a disaster, where to find the best food in Mexico and Manhattan, what a cache of illicit Mexican silver sitting on a ship in the English Channel has to do with his next book, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded February 27th, 2026.

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:30 - Post-Independence Mexico

00:05:18 - Peace in Yucatán

00:6:54 - Quintana Roo

00:08:24 - Mexican Infrastructure

00:10:26 - Oaxaca

00:13:54 - Great Food Outside Cities

00:16:39 - Leaders from Coahuila

00:17:50 - Military Rule and Civil War in Mexico

00:21:47 - The Cárdenas Regime

00:24:03 - The Ejido System

00:25:49 - Human Capital

00:40:59 - Doing Mexican History as a Brit

00:42:43 - Guerrero

00:48:37 - Michoacán Violence

00:50:44 - Monterrey

00:52:40 - Judicial Reforms

00:54:44 - The Best Mexican Film, Music, and Novel

00:59:42 - The Best Trip Around Mexico

01:04:05 - Outro

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey listeners, this is Dallas, one of the producers of conversations with Tyler.

0:08.5

On April 14th, joined Tyler at the 92nd Street Y in New York City for a live taping of conversations with Tyler,

0:15.1

featuring Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist and Craig Newmark philanthropies.

0:19.8

Tyler and Craig will discuss trust, cybersecurity,

0:22.8

and the building blocks of resilient civic institutions in the digital age,

0:26.8

along with plenty more, I'm sure.

0:28.9

Tickets are selling quickly, so be sure to grab yours before they're gone.

0:32.3

You can find the link to buy tickets at the top of the show notes.

0:35.2

Hope to see you there.

0:44.7

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,

0:46.9

bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.

0:51.1

Learn more at Mercadis.org.

0:53.2

For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with

0:57.0

helpful links, visit Conversationswithtyler.com. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to

1:05.5

Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm chatting with Paul Gillingham. He has a new book out,

1:13.0

Mexico, a 500-year history.

1:19.6

It is, in my view, the single best introduction to the history of Mexico and will be one of the best non-fiction books of this year, 26. Paul, welcome. Thank you very much for those

1:25.6

kind words, and it's a privilege to be here. Thanks for the

1:28.7

invitation. Now, after independence in 1821, why did not the rest of Mexico fragment the way Central

1:37.4

America did a few years later where it splits off from the Mexican Empire? Like what determines the line,

1:43.6

what sticks together with Mexico and what does not? That's a very good question because it's off from the Mexican Empire. Like, what determines the line, what sticks together with Mexico

1:45.2

and what does not? That's a very good question, because it's one of the things that really makes

...

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