[dufekin]

A few notes:

* Mexico actually once was a major world power, with its own (almost certainly indigenous) written language. Mexico City was an impeccably clean and splendid city, and easily among the most populous in the world. Then Cortes brought smallpox and cocolitzi erupted.

* We owe the domestication of teosite into corn to the (ancient) Mexicans. This crop has served as the cornerstone of the American economy for a millennium.

* Mexico is not a "third-world" backwater but a free, democratic federal republic with a service-based economy only now emerging into the modern world. It enjoys one of the highest standards of living in Latin America (excluding Caribbean tourist resort countries). Mexico is a land of grinding poverty and corruption only by comparison to its neighbor to the north.

* The nation has prospered (by the standards of the rest of the world, not the US) despite decades of abject misrule, widespread corruption, occasional disastrous experiments in communism, and deep-rooted class barriers reflecting intense economic stratification.

* And last, but not least, even lowly Mexico can beat the French in battle!

[HiTech RedNeck]

* And last, but not least, even lowly Mexico can beat the French in battle!

Even a small town in Mexico could lick the French in battle. Shoot they'd lay down, eat cheese, curl their tails up, and beg to be taken prisoner!

[DuncanWaring]

Mexico City was an impeccably clean and splendid city,...

Only if you don't consider those rivers of human blood running down off the pyramids to be unsightly.

[walden]

"* Mexico actually once was a major world power, with its own (almost certainly indigenous) written language. Mexico City was an impeccably clean and splendid city, and easily among the most populous in the world. Then Cortes brought smallpox and cocolitzi erupted."

It may have been clean, but that was the Aztec Empire you are talking about, where they practiced HUMAN SACRIFICE. Cortes did Mexico a HUGE favor, and attempts to rewrite history to prove otherwise are intellectually dishonest.

[lewislynn]

Then Cortes brought smallpox and cocolitzi erupted.

It was all down hill form there. I guess it's always someone elses fault.

[jslade]

* And last, but not least, even lowly Mexico can beat the French in battle!

That one got me laughing!