Mexico ( i /mksko/; Spanish: Mxico; IPA: [me.xi.

ko] ( listen)), officially the United Mexican States[9][10] (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos (helpinfo)), 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.[11] 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 13th largest independent nation in the world. With an estimated population of over 113 million,[12] it is the eleventh most populous and the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world and the second most populous country in Latin America. Mexico is a federation comprising thirtyone 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 first contact with Europeans. In 1521, Spain conquered and colonized the territory from its base in MxicoTenochtitlan, which was administered as the Viceroyalty of New Spain. This territory would eventually become Mexico following recognition of the colony's independence in 1821. The postindependence 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. Since 2006 the country has been in the midst of a drug war which has caused 60,000 deaths.[13] Mexico has one of the world's largest economies, and is considered both a regional power and middle power.[14][15][16][17] 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.[18] Mexico is considered a newly industrialized country[19][20][21][22] and an emerging power.[23] It has the fourteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest GDP by purchasing power parity. The economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners, especially the United States of America.[24][25] Mexico ranks sixth in the world and first in the Americas by number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites with 31,[26][27][28] and in 2010 was the tenth most visited country in the world with 22.5 million international arrivals per year.[29] According to Goldman Sachs, by 2050 Mexico is expected to become the world's fifth largest economy.[30] PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) estimated in January 2013 that by 2050 Mexico could be the world's seventh largest economy.[31]

Contents
1 Etymology 2 History 2.1 Ancient cultures 2.1.1 Archaic period 2.1.2 Classic periods (1500 BC700 AD) 2.1.3 Post-classic period (7001519 AD) 2.2 Conquest (1519) 2.3 Independence from Spain (1821) 2.3.1 Jurez reforms and territorial losses 2.3.2 Porfiriato (18761910) 2.3.3 Mexican Revolution (19101929) 2.3.4 PRI rule (19292000)

2.3.5 Democratization 3 Administrative divisions 4 Politics 4.1 Foreign relations 4.2 Military 5 Geography 5.1 Climate 5.2 Biodiversity 6 Economy 6.1 Tourism 6.2 Energy 6.3 Transportation 6.4 Communications 6.5 Science and technology 7 Demographics 7.1 Indigenous peoples 7.2 Population genetics 7.3 Languages 7.4 Religion 7.5 Gender equality 7.6 Metropolitan areas 8 Culture 8.1 Literature 8.2 Visual arts 8.3 Cinema and media 8.4 Music 8.5 Cuisine 8.6 Sports 9 Health care 10 Education 11 Law enforcement 11.1 Crime 12 See also 13 References 14 Bibliography 15 External links

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 Mxico-Tenochtitlan. The name comes from the Nahuatl language, but its meaning is unknown. Mxihco 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 Mxihtli, a secret name for the god of war and patron of the Aztecs, Huitzilopochtli, in which case Mxihco means "Place where Huitzilopochtli lives".[32] Another hypothesis[33] suggests that Mxihco derives from a portmanteau of the Nahuatl words for "Moon" (Mtztli) and navel (xctli ). 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 Mctli, the goddess of maguey.[33] The name of the city-state was transliterated to Spanish as Mxico with the phonetic value of the letter <x> in Medieval Spanish, which represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative []. This sound, as well as the voiced postalveolar fricative [], represented by a <j>, evolved into a voiceless velar fricative [x] during the 16th century. This led to the use of the variant Mjico in many publications in Spanish, most notably in Spain, whereas in Mexico and most other Spanishspeaking countries Mxico was the preferred spelling. In recent years the Real Academia Espaola, which regulates the Spanish language, determined that both variants are acceptable in Spanish but that the normative recommended spelling is Mxico.[34] The majority of publications in all Spanish-speaking countries now adhere to the new norm, even though the alternative variant is still occasionally used.[citation needed] 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 (18211823 and 18631867), 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[35]or the variants Estados Unidos mexicanos[36] and Estados-Unidos Mexicanos,[37] all of which have been translated as "United Mexican States". The phrase Repblica Mexicana, "Mexican Republic", was used in the 1836 Constitutional Laws.[38] On 22 November 2012, president Felipe Caldern sent to the Mexican Congress a piece of legislation to change the country's name officially to simply Mexico. To go into effect, the bill would need to be passed by both houses of Congress, as well as a majority of Mexico's 31 State legislatures. As this legislation was proposed just a week before Caldern turned power over to Enrique Pea Nieto, Caldern's critics saw this as a symbolic gesture.[39]

History
Main article: History of Mexico

Chichen Itza.

View of the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan, a large pre-Columbian city, which had as many as 150,000 inhabitants at its height in the 5th century.

An 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 circa 23,000 years ago.[40] Mexico is the site of the domestication of maize and beans which caused a transition from paleo-Indian huntergatherers to sedentary agricultural villages beginning around 7000 BCE. Classic periods (1500 BC700 AD) In the subsequent formative eras, 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.[41] In this period villages began to become socially stratified and develop into chiefdoms, and the development of large ceremonial centers.[42] 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.[43] In the subsequent pre-classical period, the Maya and Zapotec civilizations developed complex centers at Calakmul and Monte Albn respectively. 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.[44] 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 as well as 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.[45] At the collapse of Teotihuacn 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. Post-classic period (7001519 AD) During the early post-classic Central Mexico was dominated by the Toltec culture, Oaxaca by the Mixte