Mexico

United Mexican States
*Estados Unidos Mexicanos*
United Mexican States Estados Unidos Mexicanos
	Flag Coat of arms
	Anthem: "Mexicanos, al grito de guerra"
Capital and largest city	Mexico City
Official languages	Spanish
Government	Federal Republic
Independence
• Water (%)	2.5%
Population
• 2006 estimate	107,449,525 (11th)
• 2000 census	101,879,171
GDP (PPP)	2006 estimate
• Total	$1.122 trillion (13th)
• Per capita	$10,474 (70th)
HDI (2003)	0.814; very high (53rd)
Currency	Peso (MXN)
Time zone	UTC-8 to -6
• Summer (DST)	varies
Calling code	52
ISO 3166 code	MX
Internet TLD	.mx

Mexico (Spanish: México) is a country located in North America, bordered by the United States to the north, and Central America (specifically Belize and Guatemala) to the southeast. It is the northernmost and westernmost country in Latin America, and also the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world.

The official name is the United Mexican States (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos). The country is often referred to by Mexicans as the Mexican Republic (República Mexicana) although this is not the officially recognized title. The term State of Mexico (Estado de Mexico) does not refer to the country, but only to one state within Mexico, located near the centre of the country adjacent to the Federal District.

History

Prehistoric times

The leading theory of the origin of indigenous peoples of the Americas is that they originated from Asians who came to the North American continent across the Bering land bridge. These people traveled southwards and settled throughout the Americas including what is now Mexico.

Although fragments of evidence suggest human habitation of Mexico more than 20,000 years ago, the first solid evidence comes from two kill sites in the northern Basin in Mexico. Hunter-gatherer people are thought to have discovered and inhabited its territory more than 28,000 years ago.

Ancient Mexicans began to selectively breed corn plants around 8,000 B.C. Evidence shows the explosion of pottery works by 2300 B.C. and the beginning of intensive farming between 1800 and 1500 B.C.

When the Aztecs reached the high plains at the beginning of the 14th century, they found a vast, abandoned ceremonial center, which they called Teotihuacan.

Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations

Between 1800 and 300 BC, complex cultures began to form. Some matured into advanced Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations such as the: Olmec, Teotihuacan, Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, Huaxtec, Purepecha, Toltec and Mexica (a.k.a.Aztecs), which flourished for nearly 4,000 years before first contact with Europeans.

These indigenous civilizations are credited with many inventions in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, writing, highly-accurate calendars, fine arts, intensive agriculture, engineering, building pyramid-temples, an abacus calculation, a complex theology, and the wheel. Without any draft animals the wheel was used only as a toy. The only metals they apparently knew how to use were native copper, silver, and gold. They also used alloys like bronze and tumbago. Tumbago is an alloy of silver, copper and gold. Using a process of oxidation, silver and copper are removed from the surface, so the object appears to be solid gold. They also had knowledge of native iron, antimony and lead, but had little use for them. They made their weapons out of obsidian, they fought between tribes for power.

Human sacrifice was a common practice across most Mesoamerican cultures. Ritual cannibalism was also practiced in some cultures.

Spanish conquest

In 1519, the native civilizations of Mexico were invaded by Spanish troops numbering about 600 soldiers, who brought with them superior weaponry and old world diseases. Two years later in 1521, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) was conquered. It is said that the dead from smallpox filled the streets and canals. Hundreds of thousands of Aztecs died of disease. Francisco Hernández de Córdoba explored the shores of southern Mexico in 1517, followed by Juan de Grijalva in 1518. The most important of the early Conquistadores was Hernán Cortés, who entered the country in 1519 from a native coastal town which he renamed "Puerto de la Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz" (today's Veracruz).

Contrary to popular opinion, Spain did not conquer all of Mexico when Cortes conquered Tenochtitlan in 1521. It would take another two centuries after the Siege of Tenochtitlan before the Conquest of Mexico would be complete, as sporadic and ineffective rebellions, attacks, and wars continued against the Spanish by other native people. Disease ran rampant throughout Mexico, dropping the population from about eight million to two million by 1600.

The colonial period

The Spanish defeat of the Mexica in 1521 marked the beginning of the 300 year-long colonial period of Mexico. About 30 million people died in the belic incident^{[citation needed]}. After the fall of Tenochtitlan Mexico City, it would take decades of sporadic warfare to pacify the rest of Mesoamerica. Particularly fierce were the "Chichimeca wars" in the north of Mexico (1576–1606).

During the colonial period, which lasted from 1521 to 1810, Mexico was known as "Nueva España" or "New Spain", whose territories included today's Mexico, the Spanish Caribbean islands, Central America as far south as Costa Rica, an area comprising today's southwestern United States, and the Philippine Islands.

Mexican war of independence

After Napoleon I invaded Spain and put his brother on the Spanish throne, Mexican Conservatives and rich land-owners who supported Spain's Bourbon royal family objected to the comparatively more liberal Napoleonic policies. Thus an unlikely alliance was formed in Mexico: liberales, or Liberals, who favored a democratic Mexico, and conservadores, or Conservatives, who favored Mexico ruled by a Bourbon monarch who would restore the old status quo. These two elements agreed only that Mexico must achieve independence and determine her own destiny.

Taking advantage of the fact that Spain was severely handicapped under the occupation of Napoleon's army, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Catholic priest of Spanish descent and progressive ideas, declared Mexico's independence from Spain in the small town of Dolores on September 16, 1810. This act started the long war that eventually led to the official recognition of independence from Spain in 1821. As with many early leaders in the movement for Mexican independence, Hidalgo was captured by opposing forces and executed. After no European monarch accepted its throne, the newly independent Mexico was ruled by Agustín de Iturbide. After his coronation as Emperor of Mexico he became known as Agustin I, and ruled until his overthrow by republican forces led by Guadalupe Victoria and Antonio López de Santa Anna.

War with the United States

Antonio López de Santa Anna, Former President of Mexico

Many presidents, emperors, and dictators came and went, which brought a long period of instability that lasted most of the 19th century. A dominant figure of the second quarter of that century was the dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna who was president seven different times, many of them unsuccessful.

During this period, many of the mostly unsettled territories in the north were lost to the United States. Santa Anna was Mexico's leader during the conflict with Texas, which declared itself independent from Mexico in 1836 by defeating Santa Anna and the Mexican army. As president, Santa Anna tried to rule during the disastrous Mexican-American War (1846–48). The US government sent troops to Texas in order to secure the territory ignoring Mexican demands for US withdrawal. Mexico saw this as a US intervention in internal affairs by supporting a "rebel" province. In the war that ensued, the United States kept over half of Mexico's territory, including land comprising the present states of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. Mexico lost nearly 2,000.000 km² after the war and received $15 million for the lands from the US.

The struggle for liberal reforms

In 1855 Ignacio Comonfort, leader of the self-described Moderates, was elected president. The Moderados tried to find a middle ground between the nation's Liberals and Conservatives.

The 1857 Constitution

During Comonfort's presidency a new Constitution was drafted. The Constitution of 1857 retained most of the Roman Catholic Church's Colonial era privileges and revenues, but unlike the earlier constitution did not mandate that the Catholic Church be the nation's exclusive religion. Such reforms were unacceptable to the leadership of the clergy and the Conservatives, Comonfort and members of his administration were excommunicated and a revolt was declared.

The War of Reform

This led to the War of Reform, from December 1857 to January 1861. This civil war became increasingly bloody and polarized the nation's politics. Many of the Moderados came over to the side of the Liberales, convinced that the great political power of the Church needed to be curbed. For some time the Liberals and Conservatives had their own governments, the Conservatives in Mexico City and the Liberals headquartered in Veracruz. The war ended with Liberal victory, and Liberal president Benito Juárez moved his administration to Mexico City.

French intervention and an emperor

File:Juarez.JPG

Benito Juárez, The only Indigenous President of Mexico

In the 1860s, the country again suffered a military occupation, this time by France, seeking to establish the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria as Emperor of Mexico, with support from the Roman Catholic clergy and conservative elements of the upper class as well as some indigenous communities. The Second Mexican Empire was then overthrown by President Benito Juárez, with diplomatic and logistical support from the United States and the military expertise of General Porfirio Díaz. General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated the largely unsupported French Army in Mexico at the city of Puebla on May 5, 1862, celebrated as Cinco de Mayo ever since. However, after his death, the city was lost in early 1863, following a renewed French attack which penetrated as far as Mexico City, forcing Juárez to organize a new itinerant government.

Order, progress, and the Díaz dictatorship

Porfirio Díaz, Another Mexican President

After the victory, there was resentment by Conservatives against President Juárez (who they thought concentrated too much power and wanted to be re-elected) so one of the army's generals, named Porfirio Díaz, rebelled against the government with the proclamation of the Plan de Tuxtepec in 1876.

Díaz became the new president. During a period of more than thirty years (1876–1911) while he was the strong man in Mexico, the country's infrastructure improved greatly thanks to investments from other countries. This period of relative prosperity and peace is known as the Porfiriato. But the people were not happy with the form of government during the Porfiriato: it was attracting investors because the pay for workers was very low, which produced a very steep social division: only a small group of investors (domestic and foreign) were getting rich, but the vast majority of the people remained in abject poverty. Democracy was completely suppressed, and dissent was dealt with in repressive, often brutal ways (see, for example, Nogales, Veracruz).

Towards the end of World War I a secret proposal was devised by Germany, articulated in a diplomatic message that became known as the Zimmerman telegram. The proposal, which was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence, asked Mexico to join the German war effort in exchange for German support in reclaiming Mexico's former territories in the southwestern United States. Its discovery became one of the many contributing factors to eventual US involvement in the war.

The Mexican economic miracle

During the next four decades, Mexico experienced impressive economic growth (from a very low base), and historians call this period "El Milagro Mexicano", the Mexican Miracle. This was in spite of falling foreign confidence in investment during the worldwide great depression. The assumption of mineral rights and subsequent nationalization of the oil industry into PEMEX during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas del Río was a popular move.

The Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution, sometimes called the Mexican Revolution of 1910, was a violent social and cultural movement, colored by socialist, nationalist, and anarchist tendencies. It began with the popular rejection of dictator Porfirio Díaz Mori in 1910 and continued even after the promulgation of a new constitution in 1917.

NAFTA

On January 1 1994, Mexico became a full member of the North American Free Trade Agreement, joining the United States of America and Canada in a large and prosperous economic bloc. On March 23 2005, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America was signed by the elected leaders of those countries.

The end of the PRI's hegemony

Even though it was frequently accused of corruption, influence peddling and blatant election fraud, the PRI managed to retain a firm grip on political power in Mexico until the end of the 20th century. Almost all public offices were held by members of the PRI.

It was not until the 1980s that the PRI lost the first state governorship, an event that marked the beginning of the party's loss of hegemony. Through the electoral reforms started by president Carlos Salinas de Gortari and consolidated by president Ernesto Zedillo, by the mid 1990s the PRI had lost its majority in Congress. In 2000, after seventy years, the PRI lost a presidential elections to a candidate of the National Action Party (PAN), Vicente Fox. He was the 69th president of Mexico. The continued non-PAN majority in the Congress of Mexico prevented him from implementing most of his proposed reforms.

Government and politics

Error: no page names specified (help). Government and politics of Mexico takes place in a framework of a federal presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Mexico is both head of state and head of government, and of a pluriform multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of the Congress of the Union. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.

Political divisions

See also: Mexican state name etymologies.

Mexico is divided into 31 states (estados) and a federal district. Each state has its own constitution and its citizens elect a governor as well as representatives to their respective state congresses.

States of Mexico (excluding the islands)

The Federal District is a special political division in Mexico, where the national capital, Mexico City, is located. It enjoys more limited local rule than the nation's "free and sovereign states": only since 1997 have its citizens been able to elect a Head of Government, whose powers are still more curtailed than those of a state governor. Much of the capital city's metropolitan area overflows the limits of the Federal District.

File:Plzliber.PNG

Plaza de la Liberacion & Cathedral

Largest cities

The following is a list of the principal Metropolitan Areas of Mexico [1] in order of population estimated for the year 2005:

Rank	City	State	Population	Region
01	Mexico city	Distrito Federal	19.01 million	Center South
02	Guadalajara	Jalisco	3.90 million	West
03	Monterrey	Nuevo Leon	3.52 million	North East
04	Toluca*	México	1.99 million	Center South
05	Puebla	Puebla	1.88 million	East
06	Tijuana	Baja California	1.57 million	North West
07	Ciudad Juárez	Chihuahua	1.47 million	North West
08	León	Guanajuato	1.44 million	Center
09	Torreón	Coahuila	1.06 million	North East
10	Poza Rica	Veracruz	0.99 million
11	San Luis Potosí	San Luis Potosí	0.93 million	Center
12	Mérida	Yucatán	0.92 million	South East
13	Querétaro	Querétaro	0.91 million	Center
14	Mexicali	Baja California	0.84 million
15	Aguascalientes	Aguascalientes	0.83 million	Center
16	Culiacán	Sinaloa	0.80 million
17	Acapulco de Juarez	Guerrero	0.76 million
18	Chihuahua	Chihuahua	0.73 million	North East
19	Celaya	Guanajuato	0.73 million
20	Cuernavaca*	Morelos	0.72 million	Center South
21	Tuxtla Gutiérrez	Chiapas	0.72 million
22	Tampico	Tamaulipas	0.70 million

* - sometimes included in an extended metropolitan area definition for Mexico City

Geography and Climate

File:Mexico - 1.jpg

Copper Canyon in the state of Chihuahua

Situated in the southwestern part of mainland North America and roughly triangular in shape, Mexico stretches more than 3,000 kilometres (1,875 mi) from northwest to southeast. Its width is varied, from more than 2,000 kilometres (1,250 mi) in the north and less than 220 kilometres (137 mi) at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the south.

Mexico is bordered by the United States to the North, and Belize and Guatemala to the Southeast. Baja California in the west is a 1,250 kilometre (775 mi) peninsula and forms the Gulf of California. In the east are the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Campeche, which is formed by Mexico's other peninsula, the Yucatán. The center of Mexico is a great, high plateau, open to the north, with mountain chains on the east and west and with ocean-front lowlands lying outside of them. (See list of mountains in Mexico). Mexico is about one-fourth the size of the United States.

The terrain and climate vary from rocky deserts in the north to tropical rain forest in the south. Mexico's major rivers include the Río Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande) on the northern border and the Usumacinta on its southern borders, respectively, together with the Grijalva, Balsas, Pánuco, and Yaqui in the interior. The Tropic of Cancer effectively divides the country into temperate and tropical zones. Land north of the twenty-fourth parallel experiences cooler temperatures during the winter months. South of the point, temperatures are fairly constant year round and vary solely as a function of elevation.

On September 19, 1985, an earthquake measuring approximately 8.0 on the Richter scale struck Michoacán and inflicted severe damage on Mexico City. Estimates of the number of dead range from 6,500 with 30,000 injured. (see 1985 Mexico City earthquake). The country also is fairly frequently struck by hurricanes, mainly on the south and east coasts and on the particularly exposed Yucatan Peninsula.

Economy

Looking along Reforma from Chapultepec Castle

According to the World Bank, Mexico ranks 12th in the world in regard to GDP and has the fourth per capita income in Latin America; and it is firmly established as an upper middle-income country. Since the economic crisis of 1994–1995 the country has made an impressive economic recovery. According to the director for Colombia and Mexico of the World Bank, the population below the poverty level has decreased from 24.2% to 17.6% in the general population and from 42% to 27.9% in rural areas from 2000-2004 [2].

Mexico has a mixed economy that recently entered the trillion dollar class. It contains a mixture of modern and outmoded industry and agriculture, increasingly dominated by the private sector. The number of state-owned enterprises in Mexico has fallen from more than 1,000 in 1982 to fewer than 200 in 1999. Recent administrations have expanded competition in seaports, railroads, telecommunications, electricity generation, natural gas distribution, and airports.

A strong export sector helped to cushion the economy's decline in 1995 and led the recovery in 1996–1999. Private consumption became the leading driver of growth, accompanied by increased employment and higher wages.

Mexico has entered a new era of macroeconomic stability. Following a 4.1% growth in 2004, real GDP grew 3% in 2005. According to the Bank of Mexico recent economic developments include a record-low inflation of 3.3% in 2005, low interest rates, a lower External debt to GDP ratio (8.9%) and a strong peso. Trade with the United States and Canada has tripled since NAFTA was implemented in 1994.

Mexico has opened its markets to free trade like few other countries have done, lowering its trade barriers with more than 40 countries in 12 Free Trade Agreements, including Japan and the European Union. However more than 85% of the trade is still done with the United States. Government authorities expect that by putting more than 90% of trade under free trade agreements with different countries Mexico will lessen its dependence on the United States. The government is seeking to sign an additional agreement with Mercosur.

Mexico still needs to overcome many structural problems as it strives to modernize its economy and raise living standards. Ongoing economic concerns include low real wages, underemployment for a large segment of the population, inequitable income distribution (top 20% of income earners account for 55% of income), and few advancement opportunities for the largely Amerindian population in the impoverished southern states. If municipalities of Mexico were classified as countries in the HDI World Ranking,San Pedro Garza Garcia, and Benito Juárez, one of the political districts in D.F., would have a similar development than that of Italy, whereas Metlatonoc, Guerrero, would have an HDI similar to that of Malawi [3].

The country has continued to struggle with such issues as economic control and development, especially with the petroleum sector and the evolution of trade relations with the United States. Corruption and crime continue to be chronic problems. The present administration is cognizant of the need to upgrade infrastructure, modernize the tax system and labor laws, and allow private investment in the energy sector, but has been unable to win the support of the opposition-led Congress.

Demographics

With an estimated 2005 population of about 106.5 million, Mexico is the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Mexico is a racially and ethnically diverse country, its main ethnic groups are:

75% Mestizo (mixed white and Indigenous people)
13% Amerindian
11% European (Spanish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, British, Swedish, Irish, and white American).
1% Afro-Mexicans, Middle Easterners, and East Asians.

Mexico is also home for many other Latin American emigrants, including most numerously Argentines(Mexico is home to the largest Argentine population outside of Argentina) [4], Cubans, Brazilians, and other South and Central Americans. The PRI governments in power for most of the 20th century had a policy of granting asylum to fellow Latin Americans fleeing political persecution in their home countries.

According to the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas ("National Council for the Development of Indigenous Peoples"), the Amerindian population in Mexico is approximately 12.7 million. However, the Mexican government does not collect racial information during censuses. In 2004, the National Institute of Statistics, Geography, and Data Processing had estimated this figure to be 12,089,094 (~11.4% of Mexico's population) of indigenous people of which, more than one million do not speak Spanish and almost five million are bilingual (INEGI, 2004).

Judging by the proportion of people speaking indigenous languages, the states with the highest proportion of indigenous people are Yucatán (37.3%), Oaxaca (37.1%), Chiapas (24.6%) and Quintana Roo (23%). The states of Aguascalientes (0.2%), Coahuila (0.2%), Zacatecas (0.2%) and Nuevo León (0.5%) have the lowest proportion of speakers of indigenous languages (INEGI, 2004).

Mexico is the country where the greatest number of U.S citizens live outside the United States. This may be due to the growing economic and business interdependence of the two countries under NAFTA, and also that Mexico is considered an excellent choice for retirees. A clear example of the latter phenomenon is provided by San Miguel de Allende and many towns along the Baja California peninsula and around Guadalajara, Jalisco. The official figures for foreign-born citizens in Mexico are 493,000 (since 2004), with a majority (86.9%) of these born in the United States (with the exception of Chiapas, where the majority of immigrants are from Central America). The five states with more immigrants are Baja California (12.1% of total immigrants), Federal District (11.4%), Jalisco (9.9%), Chihuahua (9%) and Tamaulipas (7.3%). More than 54.6% of the immigrant population are 15 years old or younger, while 9% are 50 or older. The large number of children may be due to the Central American population, or the American population consisting largely of Hispanics, or Americans taking advantage of lower costs of living to raise larger families. 4.2% of male immigrants and 3.8% of female immigrants did not have formal education while 20.2% of male immigrants and 17.7% of female immigrants had a college degree (INEGI, 2004).

Despite its reputation as a major source of illegal immigrants to the United States, Mexico itself experiences illegal immigration from Central America due to similar differences in wages and poverty between there and Mexico as between Mexico and the United States. Mexican authorities are known to be far harsher on illegals than American authorities. Many if not most of the Central American illegals are trying to ultimately get to the United States.

Life expectancy in Mexico increased from 34.7 for men and 33 years for women in 1930 to 72.1 for men and 77.1 years for women in 2002. The states with the highest life expectancy are Baja California (75.9 years) and Nuevo Leon (75.6 years). The Federal District has a life expectancy of the same level as Baja California. The lowest levels are found in Chiapas (72.9), Oaxaca (73.2) and Guerrero (73.2 years), although the first two have had the highest increase (19.9 and 22.3% respectively).

The mortality rate in 1970 was 9.7/1000 people and by 2001 the rate had dropped to 4.9/1000 for men and 3.8/1000 for women. The most common reasons for death in 2001 were heart problems (14.6% for men 17.6% for women) and Cancer (11% for men and 15.8% for women).

Culture, media, and sports

Two of the major television networks based in Mexico are Televisa and TV Azteca. Soap operas (telenovelas) are translated to many languages and seen all over the world with renown names like Verónica Castro, Thalía, and Salma Hayek. Even Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna from Y tu mamá también and current Zegna model act in some of them. Some of their TV shows are modeled after American counterparts like Family Feud (100 Mexicanos Dijeron or "A hundred Mexicans said" in Spanish), Big Brother, American Idol, Saturday Night Live and others. Nationwide news shows like Las Noticias por Adela on Televisa resemble a hybrid between Donahue and Nightline. Local news shows are modeled after American counterparts like the Eyewitness News and Action News formats.

The favorite sport remains world football (soccer) while baseball is also popular especially in gulf and bordering states. Exhibitions like bull fighting are still practiced and professional wrestling as shown on shows like Lucha Libre. American football is practiced at the major universities like UNAM.

Languages

Spanish is the official language of Mexico and is spoken by the majority of the population. About 7% of the population speak an Amerindian language. The government officially recognizes 62 Amerindian languages. Of these, Nahuatl and Maya are each spoken by 1.5 million, while others, such as Lacandon, are spoken by fewer than 100. The Mexican government has promoted and established bilingual education programs in indigenous rural communities.

Although Spanish is the official language of Mexico, English is widely used in business. As a result, English language skills are much in demand and can lead to an increase in the salary offered by a company. It is also spoken along the U.S. border, in big cities, and in beach resorts. Also, the majority of private schools in Mexico offer what they like to describe as "bilingual" education, both in Spanish and English. English is the main language spoken in U.S. expatriate communities such as those along the coast of Baja California, Jalisco and the town of San Miguel de Allende.

With respect to other European languages brought by immigrants, the case of Chipilo, in the state of Puebla, is unique, and has been documented by several linguists like Carolyn McKay. The immigrants that founded the city of Chipilo in 1882 came from the Veneto region in northern Italy, and thus spoke a northern variant of the Venetian dialect. While other European immigrants assimilated into the Mexican culture, the people of Chipilo retained their language. Nowadays, most of the people who live in the city of Chipilo (and many of those who have migrated to other cities) still speak the unaltered Veneto dialect spoken by their great-grandparents making the Veneto dialect an unrecognized minority language in the city of Puebla. In Huatusco and Colonia Gonzalez, Veracruz, Veneto is still heard too. A similar case is that of the Plautdietsch language, spoken by the descendants of German and Dutch Mennonite immigrants in the states of Chihuahua and Durango. Other German communities lie in Puebla, Mexico City, Sinaloa and Chiapas, with the largest German school outside of Germany being in Mexico City (Alexander von Humboldt school), these represent the large German populations where they still try to preserve the German culture and language. Other strong German communities lie in Sinaloa (Mazatlan), Nuevo Leon, Chiapas (Tapachula) and other parts of Puebla (Nueva Necaxa) where the German culture and language have been preserved to different extents. French is also heard in the state of Veracruz in the cities of Jicaltepec, San Rafael and Mentideros, where the architecture and food is also very French. These French immigrants came from Haute-Saône département in France, especially from Champlitte and Borgonge. Another important French group were the "Barcelonette's" from the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence département, whom interestingly the whole town and surrounding towns immigrated specifically to Mexico to find jobs and work in merchandising, they are well known in Mexico City, Puebla, and Veracruz. Another important French village in Mexico is Santa Rosalía in Baja California Sur, where French language and culture/architecture are still found. Scandinavian languages and traditions can also be heard in Chihuahua, like Swedish and Norwegian in Nueva Escandinavia and other Scandinavian colonies in the north of the country. Russian is heard in the Baja California region of Valle de Guadalupe, thanks to the immigrants from southern Russia who settled these areas. They are the Molokans or "milk eaters", and they preserve their culture in Baja California, with the architecture in their houses and museums, they produce fine wine (Along with the large Italian community that lives near them) and their language and traditions, as well as dresses and festivities. Other Russians belong to a more recent wave of immigration from mainly Russia and Poland and the Ukraine along other Eastern Europeans, who settle mainly in Mexico City and Guadalajara. The Cornish dialect of Cornwall, England disapeard from Mexico in the state of Hidalgo in the early 20th century, especially in the cities of Pachuca and Real del Monte, but the Cornish culture still survives in the architecture, sports, food and many aspects of these cities in central Mexico.

Religion

Mexico is predominantly Roman Catholic (about 89% of the population). It is the nation with the second largest Catholic population, behind Brazil and before the United States. Also, 6% of the population adheres to various Protestant/Restoration faiths (e.g. Latter-day Saints, Pentecostal), and the remaining 5% of the population adhering to other religions or professing no religion. Some of the country's Catholics (notably those of indigenous background) syncretize Catholicism with various elements of Aztec or Mayan religions. The Virgin of Guadalupe has long been a symbol enshrining the major aspirations of Mexican society. According to anthropologist Eric R. Wolf, the Guadalupe symbol links family, politics, and religion; the colonial past and the independent present; and the indigenous and the Mexican. [5]

Judaism has been practiced in Mexico for centuries, and there are estimated to be more than 45,000-50,000 (some estimates say 60,000) Jews in Mexico today. ^[1] Islam is mainly practiced by members of the Arab, Turkish, and other expatriate communities, though there very small percentage of the indigenous population in Chiapas state practices Islam.

Education

Mexico has made impressive improvements in education in the last two decades. In 2004, the literacy rate was at 92.2%, and the youth literacy rate (ages 15-24) was 96%. Primary and secondary education (9 years) is free and mandatory. Even though different bilingual education programs have existed since the 1960s for the indigenous communities, after a constitution reform in the late 1990s, these programs have had a new thrust, and free text books are produced in more than a dozen indigenous languages.

In the 1970's, Mexico became the first country to establish a system of "distance-learning" satellite secondary education, aimed for the little towns and rural communities. In 2005 this system included 30,000 connected schools, 3 million students and 300,000 teachers, who use televised lectures and education science programs, pre-recorded and transmitted through "EduSat", via satellite. Schools that use this system are known as telesecundarias in Mexico. The Mexican distance learning secondary education is also transmitted to some Central American countries and to Colombia, and it is used in some southern regions of the United States as a method of bilingual education.

The two most widely known universities in Mexico are in Mexico City National Autonomous University of Mexico(Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), founded in 1551 and National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), both renowned in Latin American education. However, private universities have enjoyed a better reputation for some time now, because students have given a bad name to the public universities through such events as the student strikes at the UNAM in the 90s. (UNAM has various private campuses around Mexico which were not affected by student disturbances on the Mexico City campuses). The most important private universities are Mexico's Autonomous Technological Institute (ITAM), Monterrey's Technological and Higher Education Institute (ITESM), the Ibero-American University (Universidad Iberoamericana) and recently the Mexico Valley University (Universidad del Valle de Mexico UVM) had shown a very important growing, expanding its contact with other universities around the world.

Crime and Poverty

There is a great economic polarization between the rich and the poor which has greatly contributed to the high crime rates in Mexico. Mexico has several major families of drug cartels which operate.Mexican drug cartels deliver 60-70% of the methamphetamine supply into the United States. Political corruption has prevented effective crime control efforts. The US State Department has issued travel advisories to US citizens visiting Mexico in regards to the crime problem. (1991,1998,2004,2005) There is no travel advisory currently in effect for Mexico.

A major detraction of Mexico City is its crime. In reference specifically to the City, street crime and kidnappings fill the inhabitants with fear on a daily basis. It is estimated that there are between 2000-3000 crimes committed on the street every day. Approximately 600 are reported (2000 average). Most of these are muggings, although the breakdown of the figures runs the gamut of criminal activity. Curiously for such a violent atmosphere, murders are not a significant part of the problem. These average around 2.5 per day which, given the size of the population is relatively few. To put it in context, Washington, D.C. has a murder rate per capita around 5 times higher.

Chiapas Conflict

In the twentieth century some people in Chiapas felt that their poor and largely agricultural area had been ignored by the government since enactment of the constitution of 1917. One of the chief complaints was that many Indian farmers were required to pay absentee landlords, despite the fact that since the 1920s the Mexican government had been promising the peasants ownership of the land they had farmed and lived on for generations. Article 27 of the 1917 constitution guaranteed indigenous peoples the right to an "ejido" or communal land. As Mexico restructured its economy after the 1982 financial crisis the state sector shrank due to privatizations and reorganization while land reform became less of a priority (it had long since been completed in most of the country, with Chiapas as a notable exception). The Mexican government under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari sought to modernize the traditionally closed and state dominated economy and increase its openness to trade. As part of this process Mexico repealed the constitutional guarantee of communally owned ejidos for rural communities. As the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect on January 1, 1994, the indigenous peoples of Chiapas - struggling to make a living with few resources - felt increasingly left behind.

Such dissatisfaction led to the rise of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Zapatistas, or Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional), which began an armed rebellion against the federal government on January 1, 1994 as a response to the negative impact NAFTA had for the indigenous population especially in Southern Mexico. In that year, thousands of supporters of the anti-globalization movement gathered in Chiapas, and it was from this meeting that the modern movement was born.

The Zapatistas were in principle a peaceful movement that was pushed to use the force of arms to guarantee the indigenous right to ejidos. Subcomandante Marcos, the face of the Zapatistas, succeeded in attracting international attention, with the innovative use of modern information and communication technologies for the struggle of the indigenous peoples in Chiapas.

In August 2003, the EZLN declared all Zapatista territory an autonomous government independent of Mexico. Since then, the armed EZLN has been laying low to some extent working on the government level to implement health care and educational institutions in poor rural indigenous communities that had until then been ignored and discriminated against by the central government.

References

^ Template:Es icon "Advierten una reducción en el número de mexicanos que profesan la religión católica", El Informador, 11 August 2002. Retrieved 15 May 2006.

External links

Template:Wikitravel
AXJ: Political Information about Mexico
[6]: Un Mexico Sin Pejendejadas
News and Information from Mexico (in English, Spanish, French, Italian and German)
[7]: Encyclopaedia Britannica free article on Mexico, its history and its people

Government

Presidencia: Presidency of the Republic
Template:Es icon Gob.mx: Governmental portal (in Spanish)
Template:Es icon Directorio.gob.mx: Official web directory of the Mexican Presidency (in Spanish)
Template:Es icon Cámara de Diputados: Chamber of Deputies (in Spanish)
Template:Es icon Cámara de Senadores: Senate

Information about Mexico

Template:Es icon Mexican Council for Economic and Social Development
Template:Es icon INEGI: National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information (in Spanish)
Template:Es icon Time zones in Mexico
World Bank's assessment of the Mexican economy
Template:Es icon Mexico Development Gateway
Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports regarding Mexico
Historic Maps of Mexico hosted by the Portal to Texas History
Mexico for kids
Justice in Mexico Project
Action For Justice in Mexico Project

Mexican newspapers and news agencies

Template:Link FA

[1] Template:Es icon "Advierten una reducción en el número de mexicanos que profesan la religión católica", El Informador, 11 August 2002. Retrieved 15 May 2006.

[1]