Few would list Mexico as an ally of the US during the Second World War. Sadly, Mexico s aid to the US has been largely ignored by historians and is mostly absent from American history books. When Mexican aviators had the opportunity to show their courage in battle, they did so with valour. General Douglas MacArthur commended the pilots and 150 support personnel. The thirty-one pilots of Mexican Expeditionary Force 201st Fighter Squadron flew missions supporting troops in the Philippines and sorties over Formosa. The Aztec Eagles helped the Allies defeat Japan, end the isolationism of Mexico and paved the way for important agreements between the United States and Mexico. They helped modernise the Mexican Air Force and demonstrated that Mexico could mount a successful expeditionary force. Significant as these achievements were, perhaps the unit s most important legacy is that the Aztec Eagles fought for dignity, creating pride throughout their homeland. That pride endures and is evident today as the story of the Aztec Eagles can be heard across the nation.

A photo-illustrated book about the Aztec Eagles, Mexico's World War II Air Force squadron interwoven with the story of Sergeant Angel Bocanegra, whose service was rewarded with the building of a school in his village.

In April of 1945, just before the end of the Second World War, Mexico sent an air contingent to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the Allied Forces: the 201st Fighter Squadron. The six-year war that had wrought so much havoc would be over in just three months: the group of Mexican pilots flew through the last, rapidly-closing gap in order to finish on the side of the victors. The thirty pilots who made up the air squadron did not fight Nazi Germany or Italian fascism, but Japanese imperialism in Luzon and Formosa. The mission dripped with symbolism: during colonial times, the Philippines had been administrated from New Spain (modern-day Mexico), and there were multiple cultural and social links between the two peoples. The best of the Mexican Air Force arrived in the Far East to form part of the end of the biggest naval battle in history, under the command of the legendary General Douglas MacArthur. The great adventure of the 201st Squadron was a hastily-added footnote; a small Mexican coda on a worldwide conflagration that was already coming to an end. Back home, the exploits of the thirty pilots in charge of those Republic P-47 Thunderbolts had society in a state of excitement, and the faraway location lent any news of them a heroic, legendary air. Upon their return from the front, they were greeted triumphantly in Mexico City. But once the frenzy had passed, the young pilots were forgotten. Their triumph lay not in the bombs they dropped on Luzon and Formosa, nor in the homages paid to them at home, nor in the kisses planted on them by young Filipina women, immortalized in iconic black-and-white photographs. Their greatest achievement was somewhat less ostentatious, but more enduring: the 201st Squadron enabled Mexico to join the ranks of nations who lost sons on the battlefield. The sacrifice of those who fought against the Japanese empire earned Mexico the respect of conquering powers and bought the country a one-way ticket to modernity, a voice in global post-war negotiations and, above all, an improvement to its hitherto hostile relationship with the US. This is the story, told for the first time, of the 201st Squadron, and the thirty pilots who won their place to fight in the skies and contribute, albeit modestly, to the fall of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. Using unedited sources, declassified reports, old military files, and the testimonies of pilots and other contemporary witnesses, this book revives important characters, the missions, heroic facts, and tragedies, and analyzes the legacy of the 201st Squadron like never before.

The culmination of recent restoration and analysis, these richly illustrated essays examine the history and meaning of one of Mesoamerica's surviving documents dating from the 1540s.

The untold story of Mexican aviators in WWII, including their role in the Battle of the Philippines, is revealed in this illustrated military history. When Mexico’s neighbor to the north entered World War II, German U-Boats began haunting the North American coastline. And when the Kriegsmarine torpedoed Mexican tankers, the young republic was drawn into the global conflict. At first, Mexico was forced to defend its coastline and shipping with general purpose biplanes. But it quickly organized a modern aviation force equal to the task. The newly formed Mexican Naval Aviation established its first squadron to patrol the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, the Mexican Air Force experienced its most rapid growth since it was established in 1915. In 1944, it sent combat pilots to fight alongside the U.S. in the liberation of the Philippines. Even before Mexico’s official involvement, Mexican nationals were volunteering for the Allied air forces of the British Commonwealth and the Free French naval and air forces. Using photos and archival testimony, Mexicans at War sheds much-needed light on Mexican involvement in the Second World War. The introduction also provides a detailed overview of Mexican military aviation from the Mexican Revolution to WWII.

A dramatic rethinking of the encounter between Montezuma and Hernando Cortés that completely overturns what we know about the Spanish conquest of the Americas On November 8, 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction—the prelude to the Spanish seizure of Mexico City and to European colonization of the mainland of the Americas—has long been the symbol of Cortés’s bold and brilliant military genius. Montezuma, on the other hand, is remembered as a coward who gave away a vast empire and touched off a wave of colonial invasions across the hemisphere. But is this really what happened? In a departure from traditional tellings, When Montezuma Met Cortés uses “the Meeting”—as Restall dubs their first encounter—as the entry point into a comprehensive reevaluation of both Cortés and Montezuma. Drawing on rare primary sources and overlooked accounts by conquistadors and Aztecs alike, Restall explores Cortés’s and Montezuma’s posthumous reputations, their achievements and failures, and the worlds in which they lived—leading, step by step, to a dramatic inversion of the old story. As Restall takes us through this sweeping, revisionist account of a pivotal moment in modern civilization, he calls into question our view of the history of the Americas, and, indeed, of history itself.