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Mexico Information

Mexico (i/ ˈ m ɛ k s ɨ k oʊ /; Spanish: México, IPA: [ˈmexiko] ( listen)),[14] officially the United Mexican States[15] (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos (help·info)), is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico.[16] Covering almost two million square kilometres (over 760,000 sq mi),[2] Mexico is the fifth largest country in the Americas by total area and the thirteenth largest independent nation in the world. With an estimated population of over 112 million,[9] it is the eleventh most populous country and the most populous Spanish-speaking country. Mexico is a federation comprising thirty-one states and a Federal District, the capital city.

In Pre-Columbian Mexico many cultures matured into advanced civilizations such as the Olmec, the Toltec, the Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, the Maya and the Aztec before the first contact with Europeans. In 1521, Spain conquered and colonized the territory from its base in México-Tenochtitlan, which was administered as the Viceroyalty of New Spain. This territory would eventually become Mexico as the colony's independence was recognized in 1821. The post-independence period was characterized by economic instability, the Mexican-American War and territorial cession to the United States, a civil war, two empires and a domestic dictatorship. The latter led to the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the country's current political system. Elections held in July 2000 marked the first time that an opposition party won the presidency from the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Mexico has one of the world's largest economies, and is considered both a regional power and middle power, by Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[17][18] In addition, Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD (since 1994), and considered an upper-middle income country by the World Bank.[19] Mexico is considered a newly industrialized country[20][21][22][23] and an emerging power.[24] It has the thirteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity. The economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners, especially the United States.[25][26] Mexico ranks fifth in the world and first in the Americas by number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites with 31,[27][28][29] and in 2007 was the tenth most visited country in the world with 21.4 million international arrivals per year.[30]

Contents

Etymology

Main article: Name of Mexico Image of Mexico-Tenochtitlan from the Codex Mendoza

After New Spain won independence from Spain, it was decided that the new country would be named after its capital, Mexico City, which was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Aztec capital of México-Tenochtitlan. The name comes from the Nahuatl language, but its meaning is not well known.

Mēxihco was the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely, the Valley of Mexico, and its people, the Mexica, and surrounding territories which became the future State of Mexico as a division of New Spain prior to independence (compare Latium). It is generally considered to be a toponym for the valley which became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result, or vice versa.

The suffix -co is the Nahuatl locative, making the word a place name. Beyond that, the etymology is uncertain. It has been suggested that it is derived from Mextli or Mēxihtli, a secret name for the god of war and patron of the Aztecs, Huitzilopochtli, in which case Mēxihco means "Place where Huitzilopochtli lives".[31] Another hypothesis[32] suggests that Mēxihco derives from a portmanteau of the Nahuatl words for "moon" (mētztli) and navel (xīctli). This meaning ("Place at the Center of the Moon") might then refer to Tenochtitlan's position in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The system of interconnected lakes, of which Texcoco formed the center, had the form of a rabbit, which the Mesoamericans pareidolically associated with the moon. Still another hypothesis suggests that it is derived from Mēctli, the goddess of maguey.[32]

The name of the city-state was transliterated to Spanish as México with the phonetic value of the letter <x> in Medieval Spanish, which represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ]. This sound, as well as the voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ], represented by a <j>, evolved into a voiceless velar fricative [x] during the 16th century. This led to the use of the variant Méjico in many publications in Spanish, most notably in Spain, whereas in Mexico and most other Spanish–speaking countries México was the preferred spelling. In recent years the Real Academia Española, which regulates the Spanish language, determined that both variants are acceptable in Spanish but that the normative recommended spelling is México.[33] The majority of publications in all Spanish-speaking countries now adhere to the new norm, even though the alternative variant is still occasionally used. In English, the <x> in Mexico represents neither the original nor the current sound, but the consonant cluster [ks].

The official name of the country has changed as the form of government has changed. On two occasions (1821–1823 and 1863–1867), the country was known as Imperio Mexicano (Mexican Empire). All three federal constitutions (1824, 1857 and 1917, the current constitution) used the name Estados Unidos Mexicanos[34]—or the variants Estados Unidos mexicanos[35] and Estados-Unidos Mexicanos,[36] all of which have been translated as "United Mexican States". The term República Mexicana, "Mexican Republic" was used in the 1836 Constitutional Laws.[37]

History

Main article: History of Mexico Archaeological sites of Chichén-Itzá, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World View of Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan, a large precolumbian city, which had as many as 150,000 inhabitants at its height in the 5th century. Aztec jade mask from the 14th century depicting the god Xipe Totec.

Ancient cultures

Archaic period

The earliest human remains in Mexico are chips of stone tools found near campfire remains in the Valley of Mexico and radiocarbon-dated to c. 23,000 years ago.[38] Mexico is the site of the domestication of maize and beans which caused a transition from paleo-Indian hunter-gatherers to sedentary agricultural villages beginning around 7000 BCE.

Classic periods

In the subsequent formative areas maize cultivation and cultural traits such as a complex mythological and religious complex, a vigesimal numeric system, were diffused from the Mexican cultures to the rest of the Mesoamerican culture area.[39] In this period villages began to become socially stratified and develop into chiefdoms, and the development of large ceremonial centers.[40]

Among the earliest complex civilizations in Mexico was the Olmec culture which flourish on the gulf coast from around 1500 BCE. Olmec cultural traits diffused through Mexico into other formative era cultures in Chiapas, Oaxaca and the Valley of Mexico. The formative period saw the spread of distinct religious and symbolic traditions, as well as artistic and architectural complexes.[41] In the subsequent pre-classical period, complex centers began to develop among the Maya with centers at Calakmul and the Zapotec at Monte Albán. During this period the first true Mesoamerican writing systems were developed in the Epi-Olmec and the Zapotec cultures, and the Mesoamerican writing tradition reached its height in the Classic Maya Hieroglyphic script.[42]

In Central Mexico, the height of the classic period saw the ascendancy of Teotihuacan which formed a military and commercial empire whose political influence stretched south into the Maya area and north. At its peak, Teotihuacan, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas, had a population of more than 150,000 people.[43] At the collapse of Teotihuacán around 600 CE, competition between several important political centers in central Mexico such as Xochicalco and Cholula ensued. At this time during the Epi-Classic Nahua peoples began moving south into Mesoamerica from the North, and became poli