Mexico gets shafted when it comes to info available readilly and definitely deserves more recognition. Oddly enough books about 'old California' even though they describe a time anbd place thirty years before the time cited, these books convey a sense of how Mexicans spent their leisure time.
Actually as far as Mexicans are concerned why fuss with success? Bar-B-Que with a hundred of your firends (the neighborhood/town/barrio), encourage the musicians to play, encourage people to sing, loud noisy conversation, on the fringes of the crowd games of dice or cards, things do not truly change. Naturally there were no radios or TVS, and people mostly walked or rode a burro or just maybe a horse, or came in a wagon pulled by oxen, but still animal farts contribute to global warming as much as SUVS and limos and trucks etc.
Enough blathering here are links I think will help.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/10/can/ht10can.htm
""" ca. 1856 Legislation is passed in Mexico that proves to be particularly damaging to Indian peoples, whose communal landholdings are split up and sold to the powerful and wealthy.
• ca. 1858 Mexican president Benito Juárez (1806–1872), of Zapotec heritage, institutes radical changes. The new liberal constitution declares Mexico a representative, democratic, republican nation.
• 1862 A great stone head, standing just under five feet tall, is discovered at Tres Zapotes in the state of Veracruz. The colossal head, a work of the Olmec people of the first millennium B.C., is the first Olmec head to come to light.
• 1863–67 French troops invade Mexico. With the help of conservative Mexicans, Napoleon III of France names the Habsburg Maximilian emperor of Mexico. He is shot by firing squad at Querétaro three years later.
• 1865 Mexico's Museo Nacional is relocated to the Casa Moneda near the Mexican National Palace as its collections grow.
• 1867 Benito Juárez is reelected president of Mexico. The republic is restored and a new constitution written that, among other provisions, confiscates the landholdings of the Catholic church.
• ca. 1870s Depictions of indigenous figures and themes from Mexico's ancient past, such as The Discovery of Pulque by José MarÃa Obregón (1832–1902), and The Deliberation of the Senate of Tlaxcala by Rodrigo Gutiérrez (1848–1903), are painted in Neoclassical style.""
This will sound strange but easier to search for French and Hapsburg Culture since they were imported perhaps forcefully into Mexico thus European Music and Literature was thrust upon society.
Going off target, see if this link works
http://timelines.ws/countries/MEXICO_A.HTML
"""1859 Melchor Ocampo, a Mexican lawyer, scientist and liberal politician, penned a 537-word ode to marriage, which was incorporated as the vows in a new civil marriage law. They were meant to replace religious vows as Mexican liberals stripped away the Roman Catholic Church’s control over much of the country’s political, social and economic life. Conservative foes summarily executed Ocampo by firing squad for promoting the separation of church and state, but kept the amended vows in the new civil marriage law.
(AP, 7/30/06)
1860 In Mexico City the Hosteria de Santo Domingo restaurant began serving Chile en Nogada, a chili dish that displays the national colors (green, white & red).
(WSJ, 9/5/96, p.B1)
1861 Dec, French, British and Spanish troops landed at Veracruz, Mexico, seeking to force Benito Juarez to resume his financial obligations.
(PCh, 1992, p.485)
1862 May 5, At the Battle of Pueblo, a [2,000] 5,000 man Mexican force (cavalry), loyal to Benito Juarez and under the leadership of Gen’l. Ignacio Zaragoza, defeated 6,000 [10,000] French troops sent by Napoleon III. The French were attempting to capture Puebla de Los Angeles, a small town in east-central Mexico. The Battle of Puebla represented a great moral victory for the Mexican government, symbolizing the country's ability to defend its sovereignty against threat by a powerful foreign nation. The event became memorialized in the Cinco de Mayo annual festival. Napoleon had intended to march through to the US and help the Confederacy in the Civil War.
BIG CULTURAL PLUS
1870 Tequila Herradura began producing tequila at the Hacienda San Jose del Refugio in the highlands of Jalisco state. Their tequila was made from 100% blue-agave juice
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/MM/xbm1_print.html
"""Historical information from the latter part of the century shows, however, that by the middle to late 1800s, Tejanoqv musicians were playing Spanish and Mexican dance music less and were adopting a new European style that was trickling in from central Mexico. In the 1860s Maximilian, backed by his French army, ruled Mexico. In his court in Mexico City, and in garrisons throughout the country, the European salon music and dances of the time, such as the polka, waltz, mazurka, and schottische, were popular. These styles, disseminated from France, were taken up by the Mexican people in various parts of the country, but nowhere were they more enthusiastically embraced than in South Texas by the Tejanos. South Texas musical culture was similarly influenced by Germansqv who began immigrating to South and Central Texas in the 1840s. These German Texans also favored European salon music and dances. At times they would hire local Tejano musicians to play for their own celebrations. By the late 1800s, informal Tejano bands of violins, pitos, and guitars were almost exclusively playing European salon music for local dances. But taking root in this frontier area, far from its European and Central Mexican source, this music was being thoroughly adapted to the Tejano taste. At the turn of the century the locally performed polkas, waltzes, and schottisches could truly be called Tejano or "Tex-Mex" rather than European. One of the most unusual styles of música tejana to begin its development at that time is música norteña (music of the north), or "conjunto music," as it is often called. (Conjunto literally means "a musical group.") Música norteña embodied traits of Tejano music but also arose with the appearance of a relatively new instrument that was rapidly becoming popular among Tejanos on the farms and ranchos of South Texas. As a result, in the 1900s música norteña has become identified with the sound of the German diatonic button accordion. This instrument may have been brought and popularized by the Germans and Bohemians settling in Central Texas or by the Germans working in the mining and brewing industries in northern Mexico. Newspaper accounts show that by 1898 Tejanos in rural areas of the South Texas chaparral were playing their Texas-Mexican polkas, waltzes, schottisches, mazurkas, and redowas on a one-row, one-key accordion.""
AUTHORS - - - - a tough one, will have to refer you to Latino Literature on the crass asumption that Mexicans would read Latin Literature but as for purelly Mexican writers during the 1860's that is a harder find.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domingo_Faustino_Sarmiento
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_literature
Peace...