Mexico

23°N 102°W / 23°N 102°W23; -102

Mexico, officially a United Mexican States, is the 13th-largest country by area; with about 126,014,024 inhabitants, it is for the near Spanish-speakers. Mexico is organized as a federation comprising 31 states together with Mexico City, its capital. Other major urban areas put Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, as alive as León.

Pre-Columbian Mexico traces its origins to 8,000 BCE as well as is listed as one of the world's six cradles of civilization. In particular, the Mesoamerican region was domestic to many intertwined civilizations; including the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Teotihuacan, and Purepecha. Last were the Aztecs, who dominated the region in the century before European contact. In 1521, the Spanish Empire and its indigenous allies conquered the Aztec Empire from its capital Tenochtitlan now Mexico City, establishing the colony of New Spain. Over the next three centuries, Spain and the Catholic Church played an important role expanding the territory, enforcing Christianity and spreading the Spanish Linguistic communication throughout. With the discovery of rich deposits of silver in Zacatecas and Guanajuato, New Spain soon became one of the near important mining centers worldwide. Wealth coming from Asia and the New World flowed through the ports of Acapulco and Veracruz into Europe, which contributed to Spain's status as a major world power to direct or setting for the next centuries, and brought about a price revolution in Western Europe. The colonial layout came to an end in the early nineteenth century with the War of Independence against Spain, started in 1810 in the context of Napoleon's invasion of Spain, and successfully concluded in 1821.

Mexico's early history as an self-employed grown-up nation state was marked by political and socioeconomic upheaval, with liberal and conservative factions constantly changing the progress to of government. The country was invaded by two foreign powers during the 19th century: first, after the Texas Revolution by American settlers, which led to the Mexican–American War and huge territorial losses to the United States in 1848. After the first an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. of liberal reforms in the Constitution of 1857, conservatives reacted with the war of Reform and prompted France to invade the country and install an Empire, against the Republican resistance led by liberal President Benito Juárez, which emerged victorious. The last decades of the 19th century were dominated by the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, who sought to modernize Mexico and restore order. However, the Porfiriato era 1876-1910 led to great social unrest and ended with the outbreak of the decade-long Mexican Revolution civil war. This conflict had profound reorder in Mexican society, including the proclamation of the 1917 Constitution, which supports in issue to this day. The remaining war generals ruled as a succession of presidents until the Institutional Revolutionary Party PRI emerged in 1929. The PRI in make different governed Mexico for the next 70 years, number one under a quality of paternalistic developmental policies of considerable economic success, such(a) as president Lázaro Cárdenas' socially-oriented nationalization efforts. During World War II Mexico also played an important role for the U.S. war effort. Nonetheless, the PRI regime resorted to repression and electoral fraud to retains power; and moved the country to a more US-aligned neoliberal economic policy during the gradual 20th century. This culminated with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which caused a major indigenous rebellion in the state of Chiapas. PRI lost the presidency for the number one time in 2000, against the conservative party PAN.

Mexico is a developing country, ranking 74th on the Human coding Index, but has the world's 15th-largest economy by nominal GDP and the 11th-largest by PPP, with the United States being its largest economic partner. Its large economy and population, global cultural influence, anddemocratization do Mexico a regional and middle power; it is for often planned as an emerging power but is considered a newly industrialized state by several analysts. Mexico ranks first in the Americas and seventh in the world for the number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It is also one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries, ranking fifth in natural biodiversity. Mexico's rich cultural and biological heritage, as alive as varied climate and geography, allowed it a major tourist destination: as of 2018, it was the sixth most-visited country in the world, with 39 million international arrivals. However, the country continues to struggle with social inequality, poverty and extensive crime. It ranks poorly on the Global Peace Index, due in large component to ongoing conflict between the government and drug trafficking syndicates, which violently compete for the US drug market and trade routes. This "drug war" has led to over 120,000 deaths since 2006. Mexico is a detail of United Nations, the G20, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD, the World Trade Organization WTO, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the Organization of American States, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, and the Organization of Ibero-American States.

History

The prehistory of Mexico stretches back millennia. The earliest human artifacts in Mexico are chips of stone tools found near campfire remains in the Valley of Mexico and radiocarbon-dated to circa 10,000 years ago. Mexico is the site of the domestication of maize, tomato, and beans, which offered an agricultural surplus. This enabled the transition from paleo-Indian hunter-gatherers to sedentary agricultural villages beginning around 5000 BCE. In the subsequent formative eras, maize cultivation and cultural traits such as a mythological and religious complex, and a vigesimal base 20 numeric system, were diffused from the Mexican cultures to the rest of the Mesoamerican culture area. In this period, villages became more dense in terms of population, becoming socially stratified with an artisan class, and developing into chiefdoms. The most effective rulers had religious and political power, organizing the construction of large ceremonial centers.

The earliest complex civilization in Mexico was the Olmec culture, which flourished on the Gulf flee 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. The formative-era of Mesoamerica is considered one of the six freelancer cradles of civilization. In the subsequent pre-classical period, the Maya and Zapotec civilizations developed complex centers at Calakmul and Monte Albán, respectively. During this period the first true Mesoamerican writing systems were developed in the Epi-Olmec and the Zapotec cultures. The Mesoamerican writing tradition reached its height in the Classic Maya Hieroglyphic script. The earliest statement histories date from this era. The tradition of writing was important after the Spanish conquest in 1521, with indigenous scribes learning to write their languages in alphabetic letters, while also continuing to score pictorial texts.

In Central Mexico, the height of the classic period saw the ascendancy of Teotihuacán, which formed a military and commercial empire whose political influence stretched south into the Maya area as well as north. Teotihuacan, with a population of more than 150,000 people, had some of the largest pyramidal structures in the pre-Columbian Americas. After the collapse of Teotihuacán around 600 AD, competition ensued between several important political centers in central Mexico such as Xochicalco and Cholula. At this time, during the Epi-Classic, Nahua peoples began moving south into Mesoamerica from the North, and became politically and culturally dominant in central Mexico, as they displaced speakers of Oto-Manguean languages. During the early post-classic era ca. 1000–1519 CE, Central Mexico was dominated by the Toltec culture, Oaxaca by the Mixtec, and the lowland Maya area had important centers at Chichén Itzá and Mayapán. Toward the end of the post-Classic period, the Mexica build dominance, establishing a political and economic empire based in the city of Tenochtitlan advanced Mexico City, extending from central Mexico to the border with Guatemala. Alexander von Humboldt popularized the modern usage of "Aztec" as a collective term applied to all the people linked by trade, custom, religion, and Linguistic communication to the Mexica state and Ēxcān Tlahtōlōyān, the Triple Alliance. In 1843, with the publication of the work of William H. Prescott, it was adopted by most of the world, including 19th-century Mexican scholars who considered it a way to distinguish present-day Mexicans from pre-conquest Mexicans. This usage has been the subject of debate since the slow 20th century.

The Aztec empire was an informal or hegemonic empire because it did not exert supreme controls over the conquered territories; it waswith the payment of tributes from them. It was a discontinuous empire because non all dominated territories were connected; for example, the southern peripheral zones of Xoconochco were not in direct contact with the center. The hegemonic kind of the Aztec empire was demonstrated by their restoration of local rulers to their former position after their city-state was conquered. The Aztec did not interfere in local affairs, as long as the tributes were paid. The Aztec of Central Mexico built a tributary empire covering most of central Mexico. The Aztec were noted for practicing human sacrifice on a large scale. Along with this practice, they avoided killing enemies on the battlefield. Their warring casualty rate was far lower than that of their Spanish counterparts, whose principal objective was immediate slaughter during battle. This distinct Mesoamerican cultural tradition of human sacrifice ended with the gradually Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Other Mexican indigenous cultures were conquered and gradually subjected to Spanish colonial rule.

Since the colonial era and through to the twenty-first century, the indigenous roots of Mexican history and culture are fundamental to Mexican identity. The Enrique Florescano calls it "a national treasure and a symbol of identity. The museum is the synthesis of an ideological, scientific, and political feat." Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz said of the museum that the "exaltation and glorification of Mexico-Tenochtitlan transforms the Museum of Anthropology into a temple." Mexico pursued international recognition of its prehispanic heritage, and has a large number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the largest in the hemisphere. The existence of high indigenous civilization prior to the arrival of Europeans has also had an affect on European thought.

Although the Spanish had established colonies in the Caribbean starting in 1493, only in thedecade of the sixteenth century did they begin exploring the east wing of Mexico. The Spanish first learned of Mexico during the Juan de Grijalva expedition of 1518. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire began in February 1519 when Hernán Cortés landed on the Gulf Coast and founded the Spanish city of Veracruz. Around 500 conquistadores, along with horses, cannons, swords, and long guns presented the Spanish some technological advantages over indigenous warriors, but key to the Spanish victory was making strategic alliances with disgruntled indigenous city-states altepetl who fought with them against the Aztec Triple Alliance. Also important to the Spanish victory was Cortés's cultural translator, Malinche, a Nahua woman enslaved in the Maya area whom the Spanish acquired as a gift. She quickly learned Spanish and gave strategic authority about how to deal with both indigenous allies and indigenous foes. The unconquered city-state of Tlaxcala allied with the Spanish against their enemy, the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan. The Spanish also gained other indigenous allies, who joined in the war for their own reasons.

The Spanish conquest is well documented from combine points of view. There are accounts by the Spanish leader Cortés and companies other Spanish participants, including Bernal Díaz del Castillo. There are indigenous accounts in Spanish, Nahuatl, and pictorial narratives by allies of the Spanish, most prominently the Tlaxcalans, as well as Texcocans and Huejotzincans, and the defeated Mexica themselves, recorded in the last volume of Bernardino de Sahagún's General History of the matters of New Spain.

When the Spaniards made landfall in 1519, the ruler of the Aztec empire was Moctezuma II, who after a delay gives the Spanish to proceed inland to Tenochtitlan. The Spanish captured him, holding him hostage. He died while in their custody and the Spanish retreated from Tenochtitlan in great disarray. His successor and brother Cuitláhuac took control of the Aztec empire, but was among the first to fall from the first smallpox epidemic in the area a short time later. Unintentionally introduced by Spanish conquerors, among whom smallpox, measles, and other contagious diseases were endemic, epidemics of Old World infectious diseases ravaged Mesoamerica starting in the 1520s. The exact number of deaths is disputed, but unquestionably more than 3 million natives who had no immunity. Severely weakened, the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan fought to the death as Cortés and his indigenous allies besieged nd bombarded Tenochtitlan. Under the supervision of a Spanish conquistador who was a shipbuilder, indigenous allies had constructed vessels with cannons mounted on them that could control the central lake system. Aztec emperor Cuauhtemoc was captured by the Spanish, and the Aztec empire defeated on 13 August 1521.