Mexico

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Country in the North American continent, bounded north by the USA, east by the Gulf of Mexico, southeast by Belize and Guatemala, and southwest and west by the Pacific Ocean; population (2000 est) 13,083,400 It is the northernmost country in Latin America.

Government
Mexico is a federal republic of 31 states and a federal district, based in Mexico City. The constitution dates from 1917 and is broadly based on the US model. Legislative power rests with a two-chamber national congress of senate, chamber of deputies, and directly-elected president. The senate has a six-year term and the deputies serve for three years. The president, who is head of state and government, is directly elected for a non-renewable six-year term and chooses and presides over a cabinet. The senate has 128 members, each state and the federal district being represented by four senators. Three of these are elected by majority election and the fourth by proportional representation based on each party's national share of the vote. The chamber has 500 members: 300 representing single-member constituencies and 200 elected by proportional representation so as to give due weight to minority parties. Members of congress are elected by universal suffrage. Each state has an elected governor and chamber of deputies, elected for a six-year term.

History
The first humans probably reached Mexico from the north some time after 14,000 years ago. Some of the earliest evidence of human occupation in Mexico has been found at Tlapacoya, and comprises a series of hunting camps with clipped tools and animal bones. At the end of the last ice age (around 8000 BC) hunting became more intensive with an advanced stone-tool inventory based on the Clovis and leaf spear points also found elsewhere in North America. Large game, such as mammoth, mastodon and horse, were hunted to extinction by about 7000 BC.

After around 7000 BC economies became more generalized and there is evidence of intensive plant collecting and incipient cultivation of avocados, squash, chilli peppers, and amaranth. The greatest agricultural achievements were the domestication of corn (maize) and three kinds of bean between 5000 and 3000 BC, forming a diet so complete in proteins that scarcely any meat was consumed. The only domestic animal was the turkey.

The Preclassic period
The Formative or Preclassic period of Mexican civilization (c. 2000 BC–c. AD 250) developed on this sound agricultural basis, and irrigation was widely used. Pottery had appeared in around 2450 BC on the Pacific coast, and small ritualistic figurines featured in certain houses in the villages. By 1500 BC ceremonial architecture was constructed in Oaxaca and on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf coast was the centre of the first great culture, the Olmec (c. 1200–400 BC). This was based on the temple cities of San Lorenzo and La Venta, which comprised platforms, plazas, and huge sculptured heads of basalt. La Venta was planned along the axis of a ceremonial routeway with a pyramid as its focus. Olmec art was based on the mythology of the jungle, and it is suggested that the later gods of Mesoamerica, including such Aztec gods as Quetzalcoatl (the feathered serpent) and Tlaloc (the rain god), had their origins with the Olmec. The Olmec developed hieroglyphic writing and a calendar based on detailed astronomical observation. Trade with the highlands and Central America provided the Olmec with minerals, stones, and other resources.

The Classic period
By the early centuries AD the cultural pivot of Mexico shifted to the highlands, and particularly to the ceremonial cities of Monte Albán – one of the most important centres of the Zapotecs – and Teotihuacán. However, in the Yucatán Peninsula, the great Maya civilization also flourished throughout the Classic period (c. AD 250–900). In this period art, architecture, metalwork, and science reached high levels of sophistication.

Teotihuacán was the supreme religious centre, a vast city laid out on a planned grid in the Valley of Mexico. It had a large complex of pyramids and palaces at its centre, decorated with friezes and frescoes, and suburbs of merchants, craftsmen, and foreigners. The city was a great political and economic force, establishing an empire over much of south Mexico and having trade links and embassies in the great Mayan cities of the Yucatán (see Maya). Trade was in luxury goods – obsidian, jade, feathers, gold – as well as foodstuffs. At its peak in around AD 450–650, Teotihuacán had a population of some 200,000, making it the largest city in the world at that time. Teotihuacán collapsed in AD 750 for reasons that are not entirely understood, although hundreds of years later was revived as a religious centre by the Aztecs. The Classic period ended around AD 900 with the collapse of other great Mesoamerican cities.

The Postclassic period
In the Postclassic period (AD 900–1250) the Mixtec kingdom (capital Cholula) spread across south Mexico, and overran the wealthy Zapotec state in Oaxaca, seizing their capital, Monte Albán. Evidence of conquest there has been excavated to reveal the tomb of a Mixtec lord with rich grave goods, including amber, jade, coral and jet beads, and the bones of many servants. Mixtec art and influence was spread beyond their territory by trade.

In the north was the great Toltec kingdom, based in the city of Tula, northeast of Mexico City. Tula was an impressive urban centre covering 5 sq km/2 sq mi, with carved monoliths depicting gods and soldiers erected on top of the main decorated pyramid. Mythology tells of a struggle between two gods: Quetzalcoatl (the feathered serpent), representing the traditional peaceful priesthood, and Tezcatlipoca (smoking mirror), whose followers were warlike. The followers of Quetzalcoatl were expelled and fled ultimately to the Yucatán, where they built the city of Chichén Itzá. Following the collapse of the Toltecs in the 12th century, their territories were taken over by the Aztecs and the Maya.

The Aztecs and the Spanish conquest
The Aztecs moved south into the Valley of Mexico in the 12th century, and in around 1325 started to build their great capital of Tenochtitlán. They came to dominate the surrounding tribes, creating a large empire in central Mexico.

Aztec civilization collapsed within two years of the coming of the Spanish conquistadores under Hernán Cortés in 1519. The last Aztec king, Montezuma II, was killed in 1520, and, with the assistance of the peoples who had been subjugated by the Aztecs, Cortés captured Tenochtitlán in 1521. The indigenous population was reduced from 21 million in 1519 to 1 million by 1607, with many deaths from Old World diseases to which they had no resistance.

Spanish colonial rule and independence
In 1535 Mexico became the viceroyalty of New Spain, and was governed by a viceroy and council for nearly 300 years. Colonial rule became increasingly oppressive, and the struggle for independence began in 1810 when Miguel Hidalgo launched a war for independence. A confused and prolonged war of independence culminated in 1821, when a conservative faction in Mexico declared the country's independence from an innovating liberal government in Spain. One of the conservative military leaders, Agustín de Iturbide, made himself emperor in 1822, establishing the short-lived Mexican Empire of 1822–23.

Civil wars and war with the USA
Iturbide's enforced abdication precipitated 50 years of conflict and civil war between liberals demanding the abolition of military, clerical, and guild privileges and conservatives defending them. Dominating this period was the dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna. Political instability and economic backwardness exposed Mexico to the intervention of the USA, which annexed Texas in 1835. This brought about the Mexican War 1846–48, in the course of which Mexico suffered further losses to the USA, including New Mexico and California, in return for a negligible indemnity. Santa Anna was overthrown in 1855 by Benito Juárez, whose liberal reforms included many anticlerical measures.

Habsburg rule
In 1861, enticed by the offer of 30% of the proceeds, France planned to intervene in the recovery of 79 million francs owed to a Swiss banker by former Mexican president Miguel Miramón, who had been overthrown and exiled by Juárez in 1860. Seeking to regain power, in 1862 Miramón appealed to Empress Eugénie, consort of Napoleon III, saying that steps must be taken against Juárez and his ‘anti-Christian’ policies.

Eugénie proposed Maximilian, the brother of Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria, as monarch of Mexico. Napoleon III agreed, since the plan suited his colonial ambitions, and in 1864 Maximilian accepted the crown offered him by conservative opponents of Juárez. Juárez and his supporters continued to fight against this new branch of the Habsburg empire, and in 1867 the monarchy collapsed and Maximilian was executed.

Díaz's capitalist dictatorship
Juarez returned to the presidency (1867–72), and attempted unsuccessfully to turn the impoverished indigenous peoples into prosperous small farmers, but he was unable to bring stability to Mexico. Only the ruthless opportunism of Porfirio Díaz – who was dictator of Mexico 1877–80 and 1884–1911 – made political stability and economic expansion possible. However, his handling of the economy made him deeply unpopular, and only a small landowning and industrialist class benefited from his programme.

The Mexican Revolution
The gap between rich and poor widened, and the result of festering resentments was the explosion known as the Mexican Revolution. The Revolution, which started in 1910, was precipitated by the liberal movement led by Francisco Madero, which triggered off unrest among the peasants (led by Emiliano Zapata), artisans, and the expanding urban working class. By 1911 Madero had ousted Díaz and reestablished a liberal regime, but was himself assassinated in 1913. The Revolution brought changes in land ownership, labour legislation, and reduction in the powers of the Roman Catholic Church.

Following Madero's death Victoriano Huerta seized power, but was forced to resign in 1914 by the USA, where it was widely believed that he had pro-German sympathies. The same was also suspected of Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa (1877–1923), who established a revolutionary government in the north of Mexico. In 1915 Venustiano Carranza established a regime more acceptable to the USA than that of Huerta, and in 1916 Carranza gave the US army permission to pursue Villa into Mexico after a raid across the US border. US forces withdrew early in 1917, having failed to kill Villa. Relations with the USA remained poor following the interception by British Naval Intelligence of a message in early 1917 from the German foreign minister Alfred Zimmermann to the German ambassador to Mexico, which suggested that Mexico ally itself with Germany and reconquer the territory lost to the USA in the 19th century. Although Mexico denied any involvement in this proposal, it helped to precipitate the USA's entry into World War I. Carranza stayed in power until his murder in 1920, which was followed by three years of civil war.

The Revolution institutionalized
After the civil war Mexico experienced gradual agricultural, political, and social reforms. In 1929 military leaders responded to economic dislocation and political instability by forming a single political party, the Mexican Revolutionary Party, which was renamed the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI; Institutional Revolutionary Party) in 1946. The broadly based PRI has dominated Mexican politics ever since, pursuing moderate, left-of-centre policies, and carefully exploiting the revolutionary myth.

The Revolution had clearly lost its impetus until 1934, when the new president, Lázaro Cárdenas, confronted by a wave of discontent among the peasants and urban workers, announced a drastic reform programme, including measures for oil nationalization, land redistribution, and industrial expansion. In 1938 all foreign-owned oil wells were nationalized, but compensation was not agreed until 1941. During the Spanish Civil War Mexico exported considerable amounts of arms and ammunition to the Spanish Republican government.

Mexico in World War II
The government of Manuel Avila Camacho (president 1940–46) realized the danger to Mexico implicit in the aggressive designs of the Axis powers, and readily responded to the various proposals made by the USA in 1941 for closer cooperation and the settlement of outstanding differences. The murder in Mexico in 1940 of Leon Trotsky, who had been granted asylum some years previously, involved the government in difficulties with the communists, who were assumed to be involved in the assassination. In June 1942 Mexico formally declared war on the Axis powers as a response to Axis sinking of Mexican ships, and a squadron of the Mexican air force fought in the Pacific theatre in 1945.

Mexico in the post-war decades
None of the successors of Cardenas maintained the speed of social change that he instigated in the 1930s, although economic expansion from 1945 to the 1970s was dramatic. However, prosperity was confined to a small upper class and an expanding urban middle class, while conditions amongst the underprivileged groups generally failed to improve. Resentments exploded in a wave of peasant, trade-union, and student unrest in the 1960s, which was ruthlessly repressed, and large sections of the population remained alienated.

President Luis Echeverria, on assuming office in 1970, emphasized the uniqueness of the Mexican Revolution and promised a nationalistic capitalism, a tolerance of limited opposition, and a degree of sympathy towards the reforms instituted by the democratically elected Marxist president of Chile, Salvador Allende. In practice, however, the only opposition party to be permitted to flourish was the extreme right-wing National Action Party (PAN). Mexico nevertheless continued to present a democratic face to the world, and in 1974 broke off diplomatic relations with the Spanish government of Gen Franco because of the undemocratic manner in which Basque rebels were treated.

Economic problems
From the 1970s the popularity of the PRI was damaged by the country's poor economic performance and soaring international debts. However, despite criticisms from vested-interest groups such as the trade unions and the church, the PRI scored a clear win in the 1985 elections. The government's problems increased later that year when an earthquake in Mexico City caused thousands of deaths and made hundreds of thousands homeless, and in 1986 the government was forced to sign an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The PRI under challenge
The PRI faced its strongest challenge in the 1988 elections. However, despite claims of fraud, the PRI candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was declared president by the electoral college. During his term, around 250 political opposition activists were killed.

Salinas led campaigns against corrupt trade unions and drug traffickers, and worked closely with the US administration of President George H W Bush to negotiate debt reductions. In April 1992 public outrage followed a gas sewer-line explosion in Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara, in which 194 died and 1,400 were injured. In the July 1992 state-governor elections, the PRI suffered its second defeat in 63 years in Chihuahua state, losing to a PAN candidate. In November 1993 the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the USA and Canada was ratified by the Mexican senate.

The Zapatista rebellion and political violence
An uprising in the southeastern state of Chiapas by a newly formed rebel group, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista Liberación National; EZLN), in January 1994 was harshly put down by government troops. The EZLN opposed the recent NAFTA agreement, which they claimed would benefit only the better-off members of society, and demanded political reform and redistribution of land. The government offered a unilateral cease-fire and awarded the rebels political recognition as the Zapatista National Liberation Front (Frente Zapatista Liberación National; FZLN), and a peace accord was signed in March 1994.

In March 1994 Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, the PRI presidential candidate, was assassinated. He was replaced by Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, who went on to win the August 1994 presidential elections. The following month the PRI secretary general, José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, was assassinated. Subsequent investigations into his killing suggested a conspiracy involving senior members of the PRI and a Mexican drug cartel, and in March 1995 the former president, Carlos Salinas, went into exile after his brother Raul was charged in connection with the murder. Meanwhile, allegations of electoral fraud in state-governor elections in Chiapas had led the EZLN to swear in a rival candidate to the official PRI winner.

The currency crisis of 1994–95
Share prices plunged in December 1994, when, contrary to earlier assurances, the government devalued Mexico's currency, the peso, allowing it to float freely on international markets. By January 1995 the peso had lost a third of its value, forcing President Zedillo to announce an austerity programme, to which the USA and the international community responded by authorizing loans worth nearly $50 billion. Zedillo also signed an electoral-reform pact, which included an agreement to rerun elections in Chiapas and one other state. At the end of 1994, Mexico's trade deficit was $28 billion.

Accord with the Zapatistas
In November 1995, government and EZLN representatives reached an agreement providing for greater autonomy for the indigenous Mayan people of Chiapas. EZLN and government representatives signed the first of six peace accords in February 1996 recognizing the right of American Indians to adopt traditional forms of government within their communities and to have adequate representation in the national parliament. However, violent attacks against the government by the new leftist Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) increased.

The 1997 elections
In July 1997 the PRI suffered dramatic setbacks in city, state, and parliamentary elections at the hands of both the left-wing and conservative opposition. The party lost Mexico City for the first time to the social democrats, and two of the six state governorships at stake to the conservative National Action Party. The PRI retained control of the upper house but won only 36% of the nationwide vote for the 500-seat lower house.

Ethnic unrest
Paramilitary gunmen killed 45 American Indians and wounded 11 others in an attack on a village in the Chiapas state of Mexico in late December 1997. Many of the victims were women and children. Thousands of Tzotzil American Indians fled their villages for the northern Chiapas highlands or were evacuated to Polho, a village populated mainly by Zapatista sympathizers. International outrage over the massacre put pressure on president Zedillo to investigate the paramilitary groups believed to be behind the massacre. As the result, the governor of Chiapas resigned in January 1998. In March 1998 the government announced that the lapsed peace accord with the Zapatista rebels would be reactivated and that a bill would be introduced to ensure indigenous rights. However, talks between the government and the rebels broke down in December 1998.

Trade agreement
In June 2000, Mexico signed a free-trade agreement with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, to eliminate duties on 80% of their exports and 65% of Mexico's.

2000 elections
After 71 years, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost power in Mexico despite a recovering economy, which grew by 7% in 1999. In July 2000 Vicente Fox, the candidate of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), won the country's presidential election by an unexpectedly wide margin. He promised national unity, job creation, and to attack government corruption. In concurrent legislative elections, the PRI lost control of both houses of congress and the mayoralty of Mexico City.

Fox's cabinet included business people, left-wing academics, but few politicians. In December 2000, in his first actions as president, Fox sent a bill on indigenous rights to Congress, to allow the 10 million-strong Indian communities to govern themselves by traditional customs and to have some control over their natural resources, as a step towards trying to settle the Zapatist rebellion in the southeastern state of Chiapas and withdrew soldiers from the region. The leader of the Zapatista guerrillas, Subcomandante Marcos, agreed to restart peace talks on condition that the president order the evacuation of seven army bases, free all Zapatista prisoners held in federal jails since the 1994 uprising, and sign an Indian Bill of Rights to safeguard the area's marginalized Mayan tribes from exploitation. In January 2001, the government closed four bases in the Chiapas region. In May 2001, Congress approved the bill, but the Zapatistas pledged to continue their rebellion.

In December 2001, Congress approved tax rises worth about 1.2% of GDP, but rejected long-standing proposals from President Fox to levy value-added tax (VAT) on food and medicine.

Drugs cartel leader arrested
In March 2002, army special forces arrested Benjamin Arellano Félix, the head of the Tijuana cocaine cartel. The most powerful drug gang in Mexico, it accounted for an estimated 40% of all cocaine shipments to the USA.

North American security agreement
In March 2005, in response to the threat of global terrorism, Mexico signed, with the USA and Canda, a Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. It was intended to complement NAFTA and to promote cooperation and information sharing among the three countries.

Narrow electoral victory for PAN
The PRI polled badly in the 2006 elections to the Chamber of Deputies, finishing in third place behind PAN and the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The presidential elections resulted in a narrow victory for Felipe Calderón, from PAN, with 36.4% of the vote against 35.3% received by Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the PRD. López Obrador disputed the result and tried, initially, to set up an ‘alternative government’.

The emblem reflects the Vatican's importance as the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church. The colours of the flag are based on the gold and silver of the papal keys. Effective date: 8 June 1929. >>