Mexico. Information.
MEXICO (officially the United Mexican States), is a federal constitutional republic in North America. Area - 1 972 550 sq.km. Population - 113 724 226 (2011) Capital - Mexico City Mexico is bordered on the north by the United States of America; 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. Among the earliest complex civilizations in Mexico was the Olmec culture which flourish on the gulf coast from around 1500 BCE. In the subsequent pre-classical period, complex centers began to develop among the Maya with centers at Calakmul and the Zapotec at Monte Alban. 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. 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. At the collapse of Teotihuacan 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 politically and culturally dominant in central Mexico, as they displaced speakers of Oto-Manguean languages. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire began in February 1519 when Hernan Cortes arrived at the port in Veracruz with ca. 500 conquistadores, and later moved on to the Aztec capital. On his search for gold and other riches, Cortes decided to invade and conquer the Aztec empire. The ruler of the Aztec empire upon the arrival of the Spaniards was Moctezuma II, who was later killed; his successor and brother Cuitlahuac took control of the Aztec empire, but was among the first to fall from the smallpox epidemic a short time later. Unintentionally introduced by Spanish conquerors, smallpox ravaged Mesoamerica in the 1520s, killing more than 3 million Aztecs. Other sources, however, mentioned that the death toll of the Aztecs might have reached up to 15 million (out of a population of less than 30 million). Severely weakened, the Aztec empire was easily defeated by Cortes and his forces on his second return. Smallpox was a devastatingly selective disease—it generally only killed the Aztecs, while the Spaniards were immune to the disease. The deaths caused by smallpox are believe to have triggered a rapid growth of Christianity in Mexico and the Americas. At first, the Aztecs believed the epidemic was a punishment from an angry god, but they later accepted their fate and no longer resisted the Spanish rule. Many of the surviving Aztecs blamed the cause of smallpox to the superiority of the Christian god, which resulted in the acceptance of Catholicism and yielding to the Spanish rule throughout Mexico. The territory became part of the Spanish Empire under the name of New Spain. Mexico City was systematically rebuilt by Cortes following the Fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521. Much of the identity, traditions and architecture of Mexico were created during the colonial period. On September 16, 1810, independence from Spain was declared by priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, in the small town of Dolores, Guanajuato. The first insurgent group was formed by Hidalgo, the Spanish viceregal army captain Ignacio Allende, the militia captain Juan Aldama and "La Corregidora" Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez. Hidalgo and some of his soldiers were captured and executed by firing squad in Chihuahua, on July 31, 1811. Following his death, the leadership was assumed by priest Jose Maria Morelos, who occupied key southern cities. In 1813 the Congress of Chilpancingo was convened and, on November 6, signed the "Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of Northern America". Morelos was captured and executed on December 22, 1815. In subsequent years, the insurgency was near collapse, but in 1820 Viceroy Juan Ruiz de Apodaca sent an army under the criollo general Agustin de Iturbide against the troops of Vicente Guerrero. Instead, Iturbide approached Guerrero to join forces, and on August 24, 1821 representatives of the Spanish Crown and Iturbide signed the "Treaty of Cordoba" and the "Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire", which recognized the independence of Mexico under the terms of the "Plan of Iguala". Agustin de Iturbide immediately proclaimed himself emperor of the First Mexican Empire. A revolt against him in 1823 established the United Mexican States. In 1824, a Republican Constitution was drafted and Guadalupe Victoria became the first president of the newly born country. The first decades of the post-independence period were marked by economic instability, which led to the Pastry War in 1836, and a constant strife between liberales, supporters of a federal form of government, and conservadores, proposals of a hierarchical form of government.[citation needed] General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, a centralist and two-time dictator, approved the Siete Leyes in 1836, a radical amendment that institutionalized the centralized form of government. When he suspended the 1824 Constitution, civil war spread across the country, and three new governments declared independence: the Republic of Texas, the Republic of the Rio Grande and the Republic of Yucatan. Dissatisfaction with Santa Anna's return to power led to the liberal "Plan of Ayutla", initiating an era known as La Reforma, after which a new Constitution was drafted in 1857 that established a secular state, federalism as the form of government, and several freedoms. As the conservadores refused to recognize it, the Reform War began in 1858, during which both groups had their own governments. The war ended in 1861 with victory by the Liberals, led by Amerindian President Benito Juarez. In the 1860s Mexico underwent a military occupation by France, which established the Second Mexican Empire under the rule of Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria with support from the Roman Catholic clergy and the conservadores, who later switched sides and joined the liberales. Maximilian surrendered, was tried on June 14 and was executed on June 19, 1867. Porfiriato Porfirio Diaz, a republican general during the French intervention, ruled Mexico from 1876 to 1880 and then from 1884 to 1911 in five consecutive reelections, period known as the Porfiriato, characterized by remarkable economic achievements, investments in the arts and sciences, but also of economic inequality and political repression.[citation needed] A likely electoral fraud that led to Diaz's fifth reelection sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution, initially led by Francisco I. Madero. Diaz resigned in 1911 and Madero was elected president but overthrown and murdered in a coup d'etat two years later directed by conservative general Victoriano Huerta. That event re-ignited the civil war, involving figures such as Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata, who formed their own forces. A third force, the constitutional army led by Venustiano Carranza, managed to bring an end to the war, and radically amended the 1857 Constitution to include many of the social premises and demands of the revolutionaries into what was eventually called the 1917 Constitution. It is estimated that the war killed 900,000 of the 1910 population of 15 million.[60][61] Assassinated in 1920, Carranza was succeeded by another revolutionary hero, Alvaro Obregon, who in turn was succeeded by Plutarco Elias Calles. Obregon was reelected in 1928 but assassinated before he could assume power. Currency : Mexican Peso (MXN).
