The United Mexican States (Mexico), population
103,088,021 2005 est. is the northernmost and westernmost country in Latin
America. Also the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world. It is
bordered by the United States to the north, and Belize and Guatemala to the
southeast. Baja California in the west is a 1,250-km peninsula and forms the
Gulf of California. In the east are the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Campeche,
which is formed by its other peninsula, the Yucatán. The center is a great,
high plateau, open to the north, with mountain chains on the east and west and
with ocean-front lowlands lying outside of them. The terrain and climate vary
from rocky deserts in the north to tropical rain forest in the south.
Hunter-Gatherer peoples are thought to have discovered and habitated its
territory more than 28,000 years ago. For more than 3,000 years, Mexico was
the site of several Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Aztec, the Olmec,
Teotihuacan, the Toltec, Mixtec, Zapotec and the
Mayan. These
indigenous civilizations are credited with many inventions: pyramid-temples,
mathematics, astronomy, medicine, writing, highly-accurate calendars, fine
arts, intensive agriculture, engineering, an abacus, a complex theology, and
the wheel.
The arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century and their defeat of the
Mexica in 1521 marked the beginning of the 300 year-long colonial period of
Mexico as New Spain. Spanish settlers brought with them smallpox, typhus, and
other diseases. There were three separate epidemics that decimated the
population. Of the estimated 15 to 20 million of the original prehispanic
population, less than two million survived. At the end of the 16th century,
New Spain was an underpopulated country with abandoned cities, which would be
the main cause of collapse of the Mesoamerican cultures.
On September 16, 1810, independence from Spain was declared by Miguel Hidalgo
y Costilla, causing a long war that eventually led to the official recognition
of independence from Spain in 1821 -
more... |
