Many people from New Mexico are familiar with the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and how it drove the Spanish and mestizo population out of the region for several years. What many people do not know is that the Pueblo Revolt was actually part of a larger regional rebellion against Spanish rule.

In July and August of 1781, two separate legs of an expedition arrived at the San Gabriel Mission with the intention of establishing a new Spanish settlement called “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles,” nine miles west of the mission. After a journey of 950 miles from Álamos (Sonora) through hostile Indian territory, fifty-six soldiers and eleven settlers (pobladores) and their families had arrived in San Gabriel and among their ranks were:

Most people living in Los Angeles today have probably never heard of the Expedition of 1781. However, if this expedition had not taken place or fulfilled its objectives, Los Angeles would not have turned 238 years old in September 2019. This expedition of almost a thousand miles founded a small pueblo on the outskirts of the extensive Spanish Empire. That small pueblo, now known as Los Angeles, would eventually form the nucleus of a thriving multi-ethnic, multicultural urban center with a population of almost 10 million people.

The state of Tlaxcala is located in center-south Mexico. Its neighbors are the States of México (on the east), Hidalgo (on the north) and Puebla (on the north, west and south). The small state of Tlaxcala lies just north of Heroica Puebla and is surrounded by the State of Puebla on all sides, except the northwest. Tlaxcala is the smallest of Mexico’s 31 states, with an area of only 4,016 square kilometers, representing 0.2% of the national territory. Only the Federal District is smaller.

From its founding in 1781, Los Angeles has had an important cultural link to the Mexican state of Sonora. A significant number of the inhabitants of Los Angeles during its first few decades were natives of Sinaloa and Sonora. And many of those migrants from the south were of Yaqui, Mayo or Totorame descent. By the time they came to California, most of those people were Christianized indios, mestizos and mulatos who were citizens of the Spanish Empire and had lost many elements of their original indigenous heritage and culture. Nevertheless, for many Angelinos, a distinct bond between Los Angeles and Sonora remained. And some Angelinos recognized their genetic link to the Yaqui Indians of southern Sonora.

The State of Oaxaca is located in the south of Mexico where the Eastern Sierra Madre and the Southern Sierra Madre mountain ranges merge. Oaxaca shares common borders with Guerrero (on the west), Puebla (on the north), Veracruz (on the north and northeast), and Chiapas (on the east). Oaxaca also shares a long coastline with the Pacific Ocean on its south.

The land-locked state of San Luis Potosí (SLP) is located in center-north Mexico. With a surface area of 61,138 square kilometers (representing 3.1% of the total area of the Mexican Republic), San Luis Potosí is politically divided into 58 municipios and touches nine other Mexican states. The state is adjacent to Coahuila on the north, Nuevo León on the northeast, and Tamaulipas on the northeast. Additionally, San Luis Potosí has a common border with Veracruz Llave (on the east), Guanajuato, Querétaro and Hidalgo on the south, Jalisco on the southwest, and Zacatecas to the west.

It has been a well-established fact that the long-lived dictatorship of General Porfirio Díaz (1876 — 1911) ushered in an era of significant Mexican immigration. During the Porfiriato, the Mexican government sponsored the influx of foreign capital and immigrants as an essential ingredient to its nation building strategy.

The Mexican State of Hidalgo is located in Mexico’s Central Plateau and shares common borders with San Luis Potosí on the north, Puebla on the east, Tlaxcala on the southeast, the state of Mexico on the south, Querétaro on the west, and Veracruz on the northeast. Politically, Hidalgo is divided into eighty-four municipios and has a surface area of 20,813 square kilometers, or 1.1% of the national territory, making it the twenty-sixth largest state of Mexico.

Morelos is a land-locked state located in south central Mexico and is surrounded by the States of Mexico (on the west and northeast), Puebla (on the east), Guerrero (on the south), and the Distrito Federal (on the north). As the third smallest federal entity in the Mexican Republic (after Distrito Federal and Tlaxcala), Morelos is made up of 4,879 square kilometers (1,884 square miles), representing 0.2% of the national territory.

The state of Chihuahua is located within the northwest central plains of the Mexican Republic. Bordered by the United States (Texas and New Mexico) on the north and northeast, Chihuahua has a common border with Sonora (on the west and south) and with Sinaloa (on the southwest). The state of Coahuila de Zaragoza lay to the east, while Durango shares much of Chihuahua’s southern boundary.

Morelos is a land-locked state located in south central Mexico and is surrounded by the States of México (on the west and northeast), Puebla (on the east), Guerrero (on the south), and the Distrito Federal (on the north). As the third smallest federal entity in the Mexican Republic (after Distrito Federal and Tlaxcala), Morelos is made up of 4,879 square kilometers (1,884 square miles), representing 0.2% of the national territory.

The State of Michoacán de Ocampo, located in the west central part of the Mexican Republic, occupies 58,599 square kilometers (22,625 square miles) and is the sixteenth largest state in Mexico, taking up 3% of the national territory. With a population that was tallied at 4,584,471 in the 2010 census, Michoacán is ranked ninth among the Mexican states and the Distrito Federal in population.

The landlocked State of Guanajuato — located in the center of the Mexican Republic — shares borders with San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas on the north, with Querétaro on the east, the state of México on the southeast, Jalisco on the west, and Michoacán on the south. Guanajuato is a relatively small state ‒ twenty-second in terms of size among the Republic’s thirty-one states ‒ with a surface area of 30,768 square kilometers of territory, giving it 1.6% of the national territory. Politically, the state is divided into 46 municipios.

Spanish forces first entered the coastal region of Sinaloa and Sonora in the 1531 when the professional lawyer turned Conquistador, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, led an expedition of 300 Spaniards and 10,000 Indian allies (Tlaxcalans, Aztecs and Tarascans) into area. In March 1531, Guzmán’s army reached the site of present-day Culiacán (now in Sinaloa), where his force engaged an army of 30,000 warriors in a pitched battle. The indigenous forces were decisively defeated and, as Professor Peter Gerhard notes, the victors “proceeded to enslave as many people as they could catch.” The indigenous people confronted by Guzmán belonged to the Cáhita language group, which spoke eighteen closely related dialects in both Sinaloa and Sonora.

The State of Sinaloa, with a surface area of 58,200 square kilometers (22,471 square miles) is basically a narrow strip of land running along the Pacific Ocean and represents only 2.9% of the national territory, ranking it as the 17th largest state. Sinaloa is bordered to the north by Sonora and Chihuahua; to the south, by Nayarit; to the east by Durango, and to the west, by the Gulf of California.

The Mexican state of Guerrero is located in the southern coastal region of the Mexican Republic. Guerrero covers an area of 63,597 square kilometers, occupying 3.2% of the national territory. The state is bordered to the north by the states of Michoacán, Mexico and Morelos; to the east, by Puebla and Oaxaca; and to the south, by the Pacific Ocean. Politically, Guerrero is divided into eighty-one municipios. As the fourteenth largest Mexican state, Guerrero covers an area of 63,596 square kilometers, occupying 3.2% of the national territory.

The state of Yucatán is located in northern half of the Yucatán Peninsula of southeastern Mexico. It is surrounded by the Mexican states of Campeche (southwest) and Quintana Roo (southeast) and by the Gulf of Mexico. The twentieth largest state in the Mexican Republic, Yucatán is made up of 39,524 square kilometers, or 2.0% of Mexico’s total land area, and is 20th largest state in the Mexican Republic, The State is about half the size of Maine and shares a 342-kilometer coastline with the Gulf of Mexico. The state of Yucatán has 106 municipalities. The capital of Yucatán is Mérida.

The state of Coahuila is located in the northern reaches of the Mexican Republic. Bordered by the United States (Texas) on its northern border, Coahuila also touches the state of Chihuahua on its west, Durango on the southwest, Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí on the south, and Nuevo León on the east. As the third largest Mexican state, Coahuila is made up of 151,595 square kilometers, which is equal to 7.7% of the national territory.

Located in the southwestern portion of the Yucatán Peninsula along the Gulf of Mexico, the State of Campeche was named after the ancient Maya Kingdom of Ah Kin Pech (Canpech). Campeche is bounded on the north and northeast by the State of Yucatán, on the east by the State of Quintana Roo, on the southeast by the nation of Belize, on the southwest by the State of Tabasco, and on the south by the Petén Department of Guatemala. Campeche also shares 404 kilometers (251 miles) of coastline with the Gulf of Mexico on its west and northwest.