Porfirio Diaz.

Jos de la Cruz Porfirio Daz Mori (1830-1915) was a Mexican general, President,
politician and dictator. He ruled Mexico with an iron fist for 35 years, from 1876 to
1911. His period of rule, referred to as the Porfiriato, was marked by great progress
and modernization and the Mexican economy boomed. The benefits were felt by
very few, however, as millions of peons labored in virtual slavery. He lost power in
1910-1911 after rigging an election against Francisco I. Madero, which brought
about the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920).
Early Military Career:
Porfirio Daz was born a mestizo, or of mixed Indian-European heritage, in the
state of Oaxaca in 1830. He was born into extreme poverty and never even
reached complete literacy. He dabbled in law, but in 1855 he joined a band of
liberal guerrillas who were fighting a resurgent Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna. He
soon found that the military was his true vocation and he stayed in the army,
fighting against the French and in the civil wars that wracked Mexico in the mid-tolate nineteenth century. He found himself aligned with liberal politician and rising
star Benito Jurez, although they were never personally friendly.

The Battle of Puebla:

On May 5, 1862, Mexican forces under General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated a much
larger and better-equipped force of invading French outside the city of Puebla. This
battle is commemorated every year by Mexicans on Cinco de Mayo. One of the
key players in the battle was young general Porfirio Daz, who led a cavalry unit.
Although the Battle of Puebla only delayed the inevitable French march into Mexico
City, it did make Daz famous and cemented his reputation as one of the best
military minds serving under Juarez.

Daz and Jurez:

Daz continued to fight for the liberal side during the brief rule of Maximilian of
Austria(1864-1867) and was instrumental in reinstating Juarez as President. Their
relationship was still cool, however, and Daz ran against Juarez in 1871. When he

lost, Daz rebelled, and it took Juarez four months to put the insurrection down.
Amnestied in 1872 after Juarez died suddenly, Daz began plotting his return to
power. With the support of the United States and the Catholic Church, he brought
an army into Mexico City in 1876, removing President Sebastin Lerdo de Tejada
and seizing power in a dubious election.

Don Porfirio in Power:

Don Porfirio would remain in power until 1911. He served as President the entire
time except for 1880-1884, when he ruled through his puppet Manuel Gonzlez.
After 1884, he dispensed with the farce of ruling through someone else and reelected himself several times, occasionally needing his hand-picked Congress to
amend the Constitution to allow him to do so. He stayed in power through deft
manipulation of the powerful elements of Mexican society, giving each just enough
of the pie to keep them happy. Only the poor were excluded entirely.

The Economy Under Daz:

Daz created an economic boom by allowing foreign investment to develop
Mexico's vast resources. Money flowed in from the United States and Europe, and
soon mines, plantations and factories were built and humming with production. The
Americans and British invested heavily in mines and oil, the French had large
textile factories and the Germans controlled the drug and hardware industries.
Many Spanish came to Mexico to work as merchants and on the plantations, where
they were despised by the poor laborers. The economy boomed and many miles of
railway track were laid to connect all of the important cities and ports.
The Beginning of the End:
Cracks began appearing in the Porfiriato in the first years of the 20th century. The
economy went into a recession and miners went on strike. Although no voices of
dissent were tolerated in Mexico, exiles living abroad, primarily in the southern
United States, began organizing newspapers, writing editorials against the

powerful and crooked regime. Even many of Daz' supporters were growing
uneasy, because he had picked no heir to his throne, and they worried what would
happen if he left or died suddenly.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Composer Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized on December 17, 1770, in
Bonn, Germany. He was an innovator, widening the scope of sonata, symphony,
concerto and quartet, and combining vocals and instruments in a new way. His
personal life was marked by a struggle against deafness, and some of his most
important works were composed during the last 10 years of his life, when he
was quite unable to hear.
Early Years
Composer and pianist Ludwig Van Beethoven, widely considered the greatest
composer of all time, was born on or about December 16, 1770 in the city of
Bonn in the Electorate of Cologne, a principality of the Holy Roman Empire.
Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Beethoven was baptized on
December 17, 1770.
Since as a matter of law and custom, babies were baptized within 24 hours of
birth, December 16 is his most likely birthdate. However, Beethoven himself
mistakenly believed that he was born two years later, in 1772, and he
stubbornly insisted on the incorrect date even when presented with official
papers that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that 1770 was his true birth
year.
Beethoven had two younger brothers who survived into adulthood, Caspar,
born in 1774, and Johann, born in 1776. Beethoven's mother, Maria Magdalena
van Beethoven, was a slender, genteel, and deeply moralistic woman. His
father, Johann van Beethoven, was a mediocre court singer better known for
his alcoholism than any musical ability. However, Beethoven's grandfather,
godfather and namesake, Kapellmeister Ludwig van Beethoven, was Bonn's
most prosperous and eminent musician, a source of endless pride for young
Ludwig.
Sometime between the births of his two younger brothers, Beethoven's father
began teaching him music with an extraordinary rigor and brutality that

affected him for the rest of his life. Neighbors provided accounts of the small
boy weeping while he played the clavier, standing atop a footstool to reach the
keys, his father beating him for each hesitation or mistake.
On a near daily basis, Beethoven was flogged, locked in the cellar and deprived
of sleep for extra hours of practice. He studied the violin and clavier with his
father as well as taking additional lessons from organists around town. Whether
in spite of or because of his father's draconian methods, Beethoven was a
prodigiously talented musician from his earliest days and displayed flashes of
the creative imagination that would eventually reach farther than any
composer's before or since.
Hoping that his young son would be recognized as a musical prodigy la
Mozart, Beethoven's father arranged his first public recital for March 26, 1778.
Billed as a "little son of six years," (Mozart's age when he debuted for Empress
Maria Theresia) although he was in fact seven, Beethoven played impressively
but his recital received no press whatsoever. Meanwhile, the musical prodigy
attended a Latin grade school named Tirocinium, where a classmate said, "Not
a sign was to be discovered& of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly
in him afterwards."
Beethoven, who struggled with sums and spelling his entire life, was at best an
average student, and some biographers have hypothesized that he may have
had mild dyslexia. As he put it himself, "Music comes to me more readily than
words." In 1781, at the age of 10, Beethoven withdrew from school to study
music full time with Christian Gottlob Neefe, the newly appointed Court
Organist. Neefe introduced Beethoven to Bach, and at the age of twelve
Beethoven published his first composition, a set of piano variations on a theme
by an obscure classical composer named Dressler.
By 1784, his alcoholism worsening and his voice decaying, Beethoven's father
was no longer able to support his family, and Ludwig van Beethoven formally
requested an official appointment as Assistant Court Organist. Despite his
youth, his request was accepted, and Beethoven was put on the court payroll
with a modest annual salary of 150 florins.
In an effort to facilitate his musical development, in 1787 the court decided to
send Beethoven to Vienna to study with Mozart. Upon his arrival, Beethoven
auditioned for Mozart and the great composer remarked, "Keep your eyes on
him; some day he will give the world something to talk about." However, only a
few weeks after he arrived in Vienna, Beethoven learned that his mother had
fallen desperately ill, and he immediately rushed home to Bonn. She died
several months later, sending her son into a fit of depression that lasted
several years. Remaining in Bonn, Beethoven continued to carve out his
reputation as the city's most promising young court musician.
When the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II died in 1790, a 19-year-old Beethoven
received the immense honor of composing a musical memorial in his honor. For
reasons that remain unclear, Beethoven's composition was never performed,

and most assumed the young musician had proven unequal to the task.
However, more than a century later, Johannes Brahms discovered that
Beethoven had in fact composed a "beautiful and noble" piece of music
entitled Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II. It is now considered his
earliest masterpiece.
Composing for Audiences
In 1792, with French revolutionary forces sweeping across the Rhineland into
the Electorate of Cologne, Beethoven decided to leave his hometown for
Vienna once again. Mozart had passed away a year earlier, leaving Joseph
Haydn as the unquestioned greatest composer alive.
Haydn was living in Vienna at the time, and it was with Haydn that the young
Beethoven now intended to study. As his friend and patron Count Waldstein
wrote in a farewell letter, "Mozart's genius mourns and weeps over the death of
his disciple. It found refuge, but no release with the inexhaustible Haydn;
through him, now, it seeks to unite with another. By means of assiduous labor
you will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn."
In Vienna, Beethoven dedicated himself wholeheartedly to musical study with
the most eminent musicians of the age. He studied piano with Haydn, vocal
composition with Antonio Salieri and counterpoint with Johann Albrechtsberger.
Not yet known as a composer, Beethoven quickly established a reputation as a
virtuoso pianist who was especially adept at improvisation.
Beethoven won many patrons among the leading citizens of the Viennese
aristocracy, who provided him with lodging and funds, allowing Beethoven, in
1794, to sever ties with the Electorate of Cologne. Beethoven made his longawaited public debut in Vienna on March 29, 1795. Although there is
considerable debate over which of his early piano concerti he performed that
night, most scholars believe he played what is known as his "first" piano
concerto in C Major. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven decided to publish a series
of three piano trios as his "Opus 1," which were an enormous critical and
financial success.
In the first spring of the new century, on April 2, 1800, Beethoven debuted his
Symphony No. 1 in C major at the Royal Imperial Theater in Vienna. Although
Beethoven would grow to detest the piece -- "In those days I did not know how
to compose," he later remarked -- the graceful and melodious symphony
nevertheless established him as one of Europe's most celebrated composers.
As the new century progressed, Beethoven composed piece after piece that
marked him as a masterful composer reaching his musical maturity. His "Six
String Quartets," published in 1801, demonstrate complete mastery of that
most difficult and cherished of Viennese forms developed by Mozart and
Haydn. Beethoven also composed The Creatures of Prometheus in 1801, a
wildly popular ballet that received 27 performances at the Imperial Court
Theater.

Around this time Beethoven, like all of Europe, watched with a mixture of awe
and terror as Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself First Consul, and later
Emperor, of France. Beethoven admired, abhorred and, to an extent, identified
with Napoleon a man of seemingly superhuman capabilities, only one year
older than himself and also of obscure birth.
In 1804, only weeks after Napoleon proclaimed himself Emperor, Beethoven
debuted his Symphony No. 3 in Napoleon's honor. Later renamed the "Eroica
Symphony" because Beethoven grew disillusioned with Napoleon, it was his
grandest and most original work to date -- so unlike anything heard before that
through weeks of rehearsal, the musicians could not figure out how to play it. A
prominent reviewer proclaimed Eroica, "one of the most original, most sublime,
and most profound products that the entire genre of music has ever exhibited."
Losing Hearing
At the same time as he was composing these great and immortal works,
Beethoven was struggling to come to terms with a shocking and terrible fact,
one that he tried desperately to conceal. He was going deaf. By the turn of the
century, Beethoven struggled to make out the words spoken to him in
conversation.
Beethoven revealed in a heart-wrenching 1801 letter to his friend Franz
Wegeler, "I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years I
have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to
say to people: I am deaf. If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope
with my infirmity; but in my profession it is a terrible handicap." At times driven
to extremes of melancholy by his affliction, Beethoven described his despair in
a long and poignant note that he concealed his entire life.
Dated October 6, 1802 and referred to as "The Heiligenstadt Testament," it
reads in part, "O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or
misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause
which makes me seem that way to you and I would have ended my life -- it was
only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world
until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me."
Almost miraculously, despite his rapidly progressing deafness, Beethoven
continued to compose at a furious pace. From 1803-1812, what is known as his
"middle" or "heroic" period, he composed an opera, six symphonies, four solo
concerti, five string quartets, six string sonatas, seven piano sonatas, five sets
of piano variations, four overtures, four trios, two sextets and 72 songs. The
most famous among these were symphonies No. 3-8, the "Moonlight Sonata,"
the "Kreutzer" violin sonata and Fidelio, his only opera. In terms of the
astonishing output of superlatively complex, original and beautiful music, this
period in Beethoven's life is unrivaled by any of any other composer in history.
Despite his extraordinary output of beautiful music, Beethoven was lonely and
frequently miserable throughout his adult life. Short-tempered, absent-minded,
greedy and suspicious to the point of paranoia, Beethoven feuded with his

brothers, his publishers, his housekeepers, his pupils and his patrons. In one
illustrative incident, Beethoven attempted to break a chair over the head of
Prince Lichnowsky, one of his closest friends and most loyal patrons. Another
time he stood in the doorway of Prince Lobkowitz's palace shouting for all to
hear, "Lobkowitz is a donkey!"
For a variety of reasons that included his crippling shyness and unfortunate
physical appearance, Beethoven never married or had children. He was,
however, desperately in love with a married woman named Antonie Brentano.
Over the course of two days in July of 1812, Beethoven wrote her a long and
beautiful love letter that he never sent. Addressed "to you, my Immortal
Beloved," the letter said in part, "My heart is full of so many things to say to
you -- ah -- there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at
all -- Cheer up -- remain my true, my only love, my all as I am yours."
The death of Beethoven's brother Caspar in 1815 sparked one of the great
trials of his life, a painful legal battle with his sister-in-law, Johanna, over the
custody of Karl van Beethoven, his nephew and her son. The struggle stretched
on for seven years during which both sides spewed ugly defamations at the
other. In the end, Beethoven won the boy's custody, though hardly his
affection.
Acclaimed Works and Death
Somehow, despite his tumultuous personal life, physical infirmity and complete
deafness, Beethoven composed his greatest music -- perhaps the greatest
music ever composed -- near the end of his life. His greatest late works
include Missa Solemnis, a mass that debuted in 1824 and is considered among
his finest achievements, and String Quartet No. 14, which contains seven linked
movements played without a break.
Beethoven's Ninth and final symphony, completed in 1824, remains the
illustrious composer's most towering achievement. The symphony's famous
choral finale, with four vocal soloists and a chorus singing the words of
Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy," is perhaps the most famous piece of
music in history.
While connoisseurs delighted in the symphony's contrapuntal and formal
complexity, the masses found inspiration in the anthem-like vigor of the choral
finale and the concluding invocation of "all humanity."
Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, at the age of 56. An autopsy revealed that
the immediate cause of death was post-hepatitic cirrhosis of the liver. The
autopsy also provided clues to the origins of his deafness. While his quick
temper, chronic diarrhea and deafness are consistent with arterial disease, a
competing theory traces Beethoven's deafness to contracting typhus in the
summer of 1796.

Recently, scientists analyzing a remaining fragment of Beethoven's skull

noticed high levels of lead and hypothesized lead poisoning as a potential
cause of death, but that theory has been largely discredited.
Ludwig van Beethoven is widely considered the greatest composer of all time.
He is the crucial transitional figure connecting the Classical and Romantic ages
of Western music. Beethoven's body of musical compositions stands with
Shakespeare's plays at the outer limits of human accomplishment.
And the fact Beethoven composed his most beautiful and extraordinary music
while deaf is an almost superhuman feat of creative genius, perhaps only
paralleled in the history of artistic achievement by John Milton writing Paradise
Lost while blind. Summing up his life and imminent death during his last days,
Beethoven, who was never as eloquent with words as he was with music,
borrowed a tag line that concluded many Latin plays at the time. "Plaudite,
amici, comoedia finita est," he said. "Applaud friends, the comedy is over."

Que dificil se me hace mantenerme en este viaje

sin saber a donde voy en realidad
si es de ida o de vuelta, si el furgon es la primera
si volver es otra forma de llegar

Que dificil se me hace cargar todo este equipaje

se hace dura una subida al caminar
esta realidad tirana que se rie a carcajadas
por que espera que me canse de buscar
Cada nota, cada idea, cada paso en mi carrera
y la estrofa de mi ultima cancion
cada fecha postergada, la salida y la llegada
y el oxigeno de mi respiracion
todo a pulmon, todo a pulmon
Que dificil se me hace mantenerme con coraje
lejos de la tranza y la prostitucion
defender mi ideologia, buena o mala pero mia
tan humana como la contradiccion
Que dificil se me hace seguir pagando el peaje
de esta ruta de locura y ambicion
un amigo en la carrera una luz y una escalera
y la fuerza de hacer todo a pulmon
Cada nota cada idea, cada paso en mi carrera
y la estrofa de mi ultima cancion
cada fecha postergada, la salida y la llegada
y el oxigeno de mi respiracion
todo a pulmon, todo a pulmon...

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