His father was Mariano Riva Palacio, a moderate liberal, and his mother was María de los Dolores Guerrero Hernández, daughter of independence hero and President of Mexico Vicente Guerrero and María de Guadalupe Hernández.

[4] He had a linear conception of history where the ideologically and politically conservatists are equivalent to the forces of decadence and decay and the liberals are the promotors of the vigor and the progress of a country.

[5] In respect to the discipline of history he established that this was a philosophical and critical activity which studies the great changes and evolutions of the different human groups.

During the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz in 1884, he was accused of conspiracy and was imprisoned, where he wrote his second volume of what became the five-volume México a través de los siglos.

After prison Riva Palacio retired from the military and left for Spain where he met Spanish artists and politicians.