Mexico: Overview
Pico de Orizaba is the highest point in Mexico, which also has coastal lowlands and central high
plateaus.
Located in south-central Mexico, Mexico City is the capital and one of the world's largest
metropolises.
Sixty percent of citizens are mestizos, followed by Amerindians and whites.
Almost all residents speak Spanish, and Mexico is the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking
country.
Mexico is an upper-middle-income country, but 40 percent of people live in dire poverty.
Mayan ruins at the Yucatan Peninsula's Chichen Itza receive over 1.2 million visitors annually.
The Land
Mexico is a country in North America. Mexico is bordered to the north by the US states of California,
Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas; by the Pacific Ocean to the west and south; by Belize, Guatamala,
and the Caribbean Sea to the southeast; and by the Gulf of Mexico to the east. Mexico’s terrain consists
of coastal lowlands, central high plateaus, and mountains up to 5,400 meters (18,000 ft) above sea level.
Northern Mexico experiences a temperate climate, while southern Mexico is tropical.
The People
The Mexican population is composed of the following ethnic groups: mestizo (60 percent), Amerindian
(30 percent), white (9 percent), and other (1 percent).
Seventy-seven percent of the country is Roman Catholic, 6 percent is Protestant, and 1 percent is
Jehovah’s Witnesses. The remaining 16 percent practices unspecified religions or does not practice a
religion.
Nearly 93 percent of Mexico’s inhabitants speak only the country’s official language of Spanish. The
remainder of the population speaks various Mayan, Nahuatl, and other regional languages, or a
combination of these and Spanish. Mexico is the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking country.
History
Mexico was home to some of the largest and most complex of the pre-Columbian civilizations in the
Americas, with evidence of settlements dating as far back as 20,000 years. In 1521 the Aztecs were
conquered by the Spanish under Hernando Cortés, who had arrived with his small band of soldiers just
two years before in search of gold.
The Spanish set about almost immediately to enslave the local peoples for mining and farming. Forced
labor and European diseases wreaked havoc on the Indians, reducing the 25 million-plus population by
96 percent by the start of the 1600s. Indian slave labor was replaced during this period with blacks
imported from Africa.
As Spain's power declined in Europe, so too did its control of colonies in the Americas. In 1808, when
Napoléon Bonaparte seized much of Spain, the power base of the Spanish colonists in Mexico was
called into question by the wealthy but less politically influential criollos. In 1810, Father Hidalgo used
his pulpit to call for a rebellion against Spain. After a decade of bloodshed, a severely weakened Spain
granted Mexico independence in 1821.
Fulfilling the ancient warning of "be careful what you wish for," Mexico was plunged into decades of
chaos immediately following independence. During this period, the government changed hands 36
times. During the Santa Anna dictatorship of this period, Texas seceded from Mexico and later joined
the United States in 1845. This action provoked Mexico to enter a disastrous war with the United States
(1846–1848), wherein Mexico lost California, New Mexico, and parts of Texas and Arizona to its more
powerful northern neighbor.
After the calamitous war, Mexico compounded its problems by running up excessive debts with France,
Spain, and Great Britain. By 1862, the three European powers decided to send a joint military force to
Mexico to collect the debts at gunpoint. France even went so far as to openly colonize Mexico and
establish the Austrian Archduke Maximilian as the "Emperor" of Mexico. Mexican resistance under
Santa Anna's replacement, Benito Juárez, unseated the ersatz emperor in 1867.
After Juarez died of a heart attack in 1872, Porfirio Diaz took over and ruled with an iron fist. Mexico
managed to remain at peace after decades of warfare. Peace without freedom was not deemed sufficient
by the population, however, and Díaz was overthrown in 1910. Over the next decade, Mexico's "social
revolution" and numerous civil wars took the lives of an estimated two million people. When peace
returned in the mid-1920s, leadership was still unclear. By 1934, the oddly named Party of
Institutionalized Revolution (PRI) was in control and attempted to reform government and redistribute
national wealth. The PRI remained in control, for better or for worse, until mid-2000.
Numerous political scandals, economic panics, drug wars, and corruption plagued the PRI for decades.
Under the leadership of Vicente Fox of the National Action Party, Mexico was poised to emerge as an
equal partner to its richer northern neighbors. Fox's government was a strong supporter of anti-terrorist
measures, although it withheld its backing for the US approach on the Iraq disarmament issue when
Mexico sat on the UN Security Council in 2003. Domestically, Mexico has its own worrisome
terrorist/separatist movements that flare up on occasion. The Felipe Calderon administration faced many
of the same problems with which Fox's government had to contend.
Current Conditions
Although poverty is widespread (over 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line), Mexico
is considered to be an upper-middle-income country. The tourism industry and remittances from abroad,
mainly from the US, contribute greatly to the Mexican economy. Like many other economies, the
Mexican economy entered into a severe recession in 2008 and 2009. However, in 2010, the Mexican
economy grew by more than 5 percent. The peso was devalued in 1994, and since this time the Mexican
government has made major changes in order to keep the economy stable.
The US is in the process of helping Mexico implement new efforts in intellectual property protection.
Piracy and conterfeiting rates are beginning to decline as Mexico remains committed to cracking down
on these types of offenses.