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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
