GEOGRAPHY: Mexico is at the
southern extremity of North America and is bounded to the north by the USA,
northwest by the Gulf of California, west by the Pacific, south by Guatemala
and Belize, and east by the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Mexico’s
geographical features range from swamp to desert, and from tropical lowland
jungle to high alpine vegetation. Over half the country has an altitude above
1000m (3300ft). The central land mass is a plateau flanked by ranges of
mountains to the east and west that lie roughly parallel to the coast. The
northern area of this plateau is arid and thinly populated, and occupies 40
per cent of the total area of Mexico. The southern area is crossed by a range
of volcanic mountains running from Cape Corrientes in the west through the
Valley of Mexico to Veracruz in the east, and includes the magnificent
volcanoes of Cofre de Perote, Ixtaccíhuatl, Matlalcueyetl, Nevado de Toluca,
Orizaba and Popocatépetl. This is the heart of Mexico and where almost half of
the population lives. To the south, the land falls away to the sparsely
populated Isthmus of Tehuantepec whose slopes and flatlands support both
commercial and subsistence agriculture. In the east, the Gulf Coast and the
Yucatán peninsula are flat and receive over 75 per cent of Mexico’s rain. The
most productive agricultural region in Mexico is the northwest, while the Gulf
Coast produces most of Mexico’s oil and sulphur. Along the northwest coast,
opposite the peninsula of Baja California, and to the southeast along the
coast of Bahía de Campeche and the Yucatán peninsula, the lowlands are swampy
with coastal lagoons.
Government: Republic since 1917. Gained
independence from Spain in 1821. Head of State and Government: President
Vicente Fox Quesada since 2000.
Language: Spanish is the official language.
English is widely spoken.
Religion: Ninety per cent Roman Catholic.
Time: Mexico spans three different time zones:
South, Central and Eastern Mexico: GMT - 6 (Central Standard Time). (GMT - 5
from first Sunday in April to Saturday before last Sunday in October.)
Nayarit, Sonora, Sinaloa and Baja California Sur: GMT - 7 (Mountain Time).
(GMT - 6 from first Sunday in April to Saturday before last Sunday in October.)
Baja California Norte (Pacific Time): GMT - 8 (GMT - 7 from first Sunday in
April to Saturday before last Sunday in October).
Electricity: 110 volts AC, 60Hz. US two-pin (flat)
plugs are usual.
Communications:
Telephone: IDD is available. Country code:
52. Outgoing international code: 00. Long-distance calls are very expensive.
Mobile telephone: AMPS network is operated by
IUSACELL. GSM 1900 network has recently been introduced. The main network
provider is Telcel (website: www.telcel.com). Handsets can be hired.
Fax: Major hotels have facilities.
Internet: ISPs include DSICom Internet (website: www.dsi.com.mx) and
Internet Mexico (website: www.internet.com.mx). Internet cafes exist in all regions, particularly
the main tourist areas.
Telegram: Services are operated by Telegrafos
Nacionales and international telegrams should be handed in to their offices.
Post: Airmail to Europe takes about six days.
Surface mail is slow. Within the capital, there is an immediate delivery
(Entrega Inmediata) service, which usually takes two or three days.
welcome to Mexico
Press: The major daily newspapers published
in Spanish are El Heraldo de México, El Universal, Esto, Excélsior, La Prensa
and Reforma. The English-language papers available are Mexico City Times, New
York Times, The News and USA Today.
History and Government
History: Mexico’s earliest
known civilisation was the Olmec in the second century BC, which reached its
height about 1200 BC. The Olmec (meaning ‘people from the rubber country’)
were an advanced Mayan culture in religion, architecture and mathematical
systems. By AD 500, two great cities had emerged, Teotihuacan (with a
population of approximately 200,000) and Cholula, a religious centre near
Puebla that survived until the Spanish Conquest in 1521. The height of Mayan
civilisation was reached between AD 600-900.
The Toltecs, whose capital
was Tula, were the predominant civilisation of this time. Known for their fine
architecture, elegant speech and intellectual pursuits, they were the
ancestors of the famous Aztecs who were thriving at the time Columbus arrived
in the New World in 1492. In 1519, a Spaniard named Hernan Cortés arrived from
Cuba with a crew of 550 sailors and explorers and settled just north of today’s
city of Veracruz. By this time, the Aztec Empire controlled vast territories
from the Yucatán peninsula to the Pacific, with over 370 individual nations
under their authority. Ruling from their capital city, Tenochtitlan, the
Aztecs demanded heavy tribute from their subjects, which may have caused some
to side with Cortés in his attack on the Aztecs.
The other factor on Cortés’
side was the lucky coincidence that 1519 was the exact year when legend had it
that the Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl, had promised his followers he would return
from the east and so Cortés was mistaken for a god. After two years of
fighting and great loss of life on both sides, the Aztecs were defeated under
their final ruler, Cuauhtemoc. Under Spanish rule, local culture was
suppressed and native traditions were discouraged.
Mexico achieved independence after the wars of 1810-21. In 1824, a
constitution was adopted and Mexico’s first President, Guadalupe Victoria, was
inaugurated and both Britain and the USA officially recognised the Republic of
Mexico. But stability was short lived. In 1847, Mexico was forced to cede half
of its territory to the USA. In 1861, Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Indian from the
state of Oaxaca, was elected President. Faced with overwhelming debts (mainly
owed to France, Spain and the UK), Juárez announced a two-year moratorium on
payment of foreign debts. The French Emperor Napoleon III sent an army to
Veracruz to enforce his claim to payment.
A series of civil wars and
conflicts with European governments and the USA punctuated the next 30 years.
However, Juárez was elected to a third term and is now considered among Mexico’s
most popular leaders, having come from a humble background and instituting
such welcome changes as a total reform of the education system (making primary
school attendance free and obligatory) and completing a railroad from Mexico
City to Veracruz. Afterwards, the dictatorship of Porfirio D’az (between 1876
and 1910) brought an autocratic stability to the Republic. Several revolutions
and coups followed before the egalitarian 1917 Constitution was introduced
which led to the accession of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional
Revolutionary Party, PRI).
The PRI created an effective one-party state within the framework of an
elective democracy and ruled virtually unchallenged until the mid-1970s, by
which time opposition parties had managed to build up strong bases of support.
Occasionally they would mount one-off electoral challenges, but the reins of
power remained firmly in the hands of the PRI. Radical opposition was dealt
with far more harshly: like their counterparts in Argentina, Brazil and Chile,
the Mexican security forces engaged in wholesale kidnapping, torture and
murder (some of the perpetrators are now being brought to account).
From the 1960s onwards,
Mexico developed a largely oil-based economy. Under the government of Lopez
Portillo, who was elected President in 1976, the country was brought to the
verge of bankruptcy by the negotiation of enormous foreign loans, totalling
US$80 billion, borrowed against future oil revenues to finance a massive
programme of economic and social development. Corruption and mismanagement,
coupled with a collapse in the oil price during that period, precipitated a
major political crisis in 1982. This was handled by Lopez Portillo’s successor,
Miguel de la Madrid, with limited success in the face of entrenched vested
interests.
It was Madrid’s successor,
Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who really transformed Mexico during his term of
office (which began in 1988). The new government embarked on a major economic
reform programme comprising a package of devaluation, tax reform,
privatisation and deregulation. The programme, dubbed ‘Cactus Thatcherism’,
met with widespread opposition. The programme also included an application to
join GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, forerunner of the World
Trade Organisation) and the instigation by Salinas of a free-trade treaty with
the USA and Canada. This eventually led to the creation of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which was ratified by the three countries during
1993.
The Salinas government also
improved its standing in Washington by cracking down on drug trafficking.
Popular as all this was overseas, Mexicans saw little benefit as living
standards for most people fell sharply. The traditional political opposition
was all but emasculated by PRI’s stranglehold over the country, but at the
beginning of 1994, in the impoverished southern state of Chiapas, an armed
insurrection started with land reform at the heart of its aims. The guerrillas
described themselves as ‘Zapatistas’ (after Mexican revolutionary hero
Emiliano Zapata). The Mexican government initially waged a classic counter-insurgency
war, using a mixture of force and incentives on the largely pro-guerrilla
peasant population.
This was a problem that
Salinas was happy to leave to his successor, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon,
who won the next round of presidential elections held in August 1994. After
six years of struggle and bouts of negotiation, the Zapatistas and the
Government reached a deal – the San Andreas accord – conceding autonomy to the
region. However, nothing was done to implement the deal and the Zapatistas,
disillusioned by its duplicity, cut off contact with the Government. By this
time, the Zedillo administration had other matters on its mind. Although the
economy was performing reasonably well under Zedillo after a major currency
crisis early in his term, political discontent with PRI continued to grow
throughout the country. Indeed, the popular candidate of the centre-right
Partido Acción Nacional (PAN, National Action Party), Vincente Fox Quesada,
won the July 2000 presidential poll by a seven-point margin. As PAN also won
the simultaneous legislative elections, the rule of the PRI, which had
overtaken the Soviet Communist Party longevity record for a ruling political
party, was finally at an end after 71 years. After taking office in November,
Fox sought a new initiative on the Zapatista conflict and an overhaul of the
sclerotic political system inherited from the PRI. While Fox has taken a more
conciliatory line towards the Zapatistas (a group of its commanders addressed
the Mexican parliament in March 2001) and made initial efforts to put the San
Andreas deal into effect, he has been thwarted by PRI and conservative
elements in the national assembly.
Government: Mexico is a
federal republic with 31 states and one federal district. The bicameral
National Congress is elected by universal adult suffrage. The 64 members of
the Senate (two per state plus two for the federal district) serve for a term
of six years. The 500-seat Chamber of Deputies consists of members elected for
three years, 300 from single-member constituencies with the remaining 200
allocated to minority parties on the basis of proportional representation. The
President, who appoints a cabinet, has executive power and serves a term
congruent with that of the Senate. Each state has its own governor and elected
Chamber of Deputies.
Mexico Information 
