MEXICO CITY (Reuters) — Mexican and U.S. history has been entwined since Texas revolutionaries occupied a Mexican garrison at the Alamo in late 1835 seeking independence from Mexico.
When President Bush visits Mexican President Vicente Fox Friday, their discussions will likely be dominated by the bilateral issues of drug trafficking, migration and trade.
The following is a chronology of key events in relations between the neighboring nations, marked in the past by mutual meddling, cross-border discord and outright war:
March 1836 — Mexican soldiers retake the Alamo after a 13-day standoff with Texas rebels, but Texas continues its rebellion against the central government.
1845 — U.S. Congress admits Texas into the union.
1846 — War erupts between Mexico and the United States over unoccupied territories north of the Rio Grande, and U.S. troops march south toward the Mexican capital.
September 1847 — Gen. Winfield Scott takes Mexico City. According to legend, the last Mexican resistance comes from young cadets at Chapultepec Castle, who wrap themselves in the Mexican flag and leap off the ramparts to their deaths rather than surrender.
February 1848 — In exchange for $15 million, Mexico signs Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo, surrendering half its territory, or 890,000 square miles, including California, Arizona and New Mexico as well as Texas, to the United States.
October 1910 — Francisco I. Madero slips into Texas to publish his Plan of San Luis Potosi, calling for a Mexican uprising against dictator Porfirio Diaz. A year later Madero is elected Mexico's new president after Diaz goes into exile.
February 1913 — Gen. Victoriano Huerta becomes Mexican president in a pact with political opponents sponsored by U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson.
April 1914 — President Woodrow Wilson, eager to be rid of Huerta and his disastrous presidency, orders Marines to seize the Mexican port of Veracruz in retaliation for the arrest of some American sailors.
November 1914 — Marines leave Veracruz after Huerta flees into exile and revolutionary peasant leader Francisco "Pancho" Villa takes power. His government collapses the following year.
March 1916 — Villa raids Columbus, New Mexico, killing several people and destroying property. Washington dispatches Gen. John J. Pershing and 10,000 troops to Mexico to pursue Villa. He is not found and U.S. troops withdraw 11 months later.
August 1923 — United States and Mexico sign the Bucareli Agreements, calling for protection of foreign-owned land in Mexico from agrarian reform, ratification of foreign oil concessions and new production tax to cover Mexico's foreign debt obligations.
March 1938 — Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas expropriates oil wells from mainly U.S. and British companies and nationalizes them.
April 1942 — Mexico joins Allies after Mexican oil tanker sunk off Florida by a German U-boat.
December 1946 — Miguel Aleman Valdez becomes Mexico's first non-military president since 1929. The ruling party changes its name to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
October 1968 — Growing calls for democracy result in the Tlatelolco massacre, when the army kills around 300 demonstrating students.
February 1982 — President Jose Lopez Portillo, after pledging to "defend the peso like a dog," devalues the local currency as sliding oil prices plunge Mexico toward bankruptcy. Economic crisis ensues.
January 1994 — Zapatista pro-Indian guerrilla movement launches uprising on New Year's Day in poor southern state of Chiapas. North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) takes effect between Mexico, United States and Canada.
December 1994 — Two weeks after taking office, President Ernesto Zedillo is forced to devalue the peso, triggering Mexico's worst economic crisis since the 1930s and prompting a U.S. bailout. Investor confidence in Mexico had eroded earlier in the year by political assassinations, including the murder of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.
July 2000 — Vicente Fox of the National Action Party unseats the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, ending 71 years of single-party rule.