Areas south of the Tropic of Cancer with elevations up to 1,000 m (3,281 ft), the southern parts of both coastal plains as well as the Yucatán Peninsula, have a yearly median temperature between 24 and 28 °C (75.2 and 82.4 °F). For example, many cities in the north like Monterrey, Hermosillo, and Mexicali experience temperatures of 40 °C (104 °F) or more in summer. Many parts of Mexico, particularly the north, have a dry climate with only sporadic rainfall, while parts of the tropical lowlands in the south average more than 2,000 mm (78.7 in) of annual precipitation.
Because of its high biodiversity Mexico has also been a frequent site of bioprospecting by international research https://lunarcapital.world/ bodies. These include 34 biosphere reserves, 67 national parks, 4 natural monuments, 26 areas of protected flora and fauna, 4 areas for natural resource protection and 17 sanctuaries (zones rich in diverse species). Climate change in Mexico is causing widespread impacts including rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, intensified hurricanes, and sea-level rise in coastal regions. Although low-lying areas north of the Tropic of Cancer are hot and humid during the summer, they generally have lower yearly temperature averages (from 20 to 24 °C or 68.0 to 75.2 °F) because of more moderate conditions during the winter. The Pacific coast is subject to natural hazards such as tsunamis and both Mexican coasts with the exception of the south coast of the Bay of Campeche and northern Baja California are vulnerable to serious hurricanes during the summer and fall. Temperatures here remain high throughout the year, with only a 5 °C (9 °F) difference between winter and summer median temperatures.
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The most well-known Mexican composer of the twentieth century is Carlos Chávez (1899–1978), who composed six symphonies with indigenous themes, and rejuvenated Mexican music, founding the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional. Nineteenth-century liberal of Nahua origin Ignacio Manuel Altamirano is an important writer of the era, along with Vicente Riva Palacio, the grandson of Mexican hero of independence Vicente Guerrero, who authored a series of historical novels as well as poetry. Baroque literature flourished in the 17th century; the most notable writers of this period were Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and Juana Inés de la Cruz. In the 19th century, the neoclassical movement arose as the country gained independence and sought to establish itself as a republic.
Mexican Wines
When De la Madrid chose Carlos Salinas de Gortari as the candidate for the PRI, and therefore a foregone presidential victor, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of former President Lázaro Cárdenas, broke with the PRI and challenged Salinas in the 1988 elections. The government poured huge resources into building new facilities, prompting political unrest among university students and others. Despite not holding the presidency, Calles remained the key political figure during the period known as the Maximato (1929–1934), that ended during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, who expelled Calles from the country and implemented many economic and social reforms.
Mexico City hosted the XIX Olympic Games in 1968, making it the first Latin American city to do so. The government spent abundantly on sporting facilities and other infrastructure to make the games a success, but those expenditures helped fuel public discontent with the government’s lack of spending on social programs. The bid to host the 1968 Summer Olympics was to burnish Mexico’s stature internationally. Once the political turmoil of the early republic was replaced by the stability of the Porfiriato did organized sport become public diversions, with structured and ordered play governed by rules and authorities. In 2005, Mexico presented the candidature of its gastronomy for World Heritage Site of UNESCO, the first time a country had presented its gastronomic tradition for this purpose. Similarly, some cooking techniques used today are inherited from pre-Columbian peoples, such as the nixtamalization of corn, the cooking of food in ovens at ground level, grinding in molcajete and metate.
Chipilo, Puebla: an Italian town with the best Italian food in Mexico
- The small lakeside town of Chapala in Jalisco had more buildings designed by notable architects in the first half of the twentieth century than any other location of its size in Mexico, perhaps even in North America.
- In 2022, Mexico’s estimated population was 129,150,971 people, per the National Geography and Statistics Institute.
- The second largest group comes from neighboring Guatemala (54,500), followed by Spain (27,600).
- These city-states were the center of power for the king-priests who administered the obedience, the tribute and the manpower of the people who believed in them.
- However, in recent years some political parties have proposed an amendment of the Constitution to allow the Mexican Army, Air Force or Navy to collaborate with the United Nations in peacekeeping missions, or to provide military help to countries that officially ask for it.
The telecommunications industry is mostly dominated by Telmex (Teléfonos de México), previously a government monopoly privatized in 1990. The daily minimum wage was set at $248.93 Mexican pesos (US$13.24) in 2024 ($375 in the country’s northern border), making it comparable to the minimum wages of countries like Uruguay, Chile, and Ecuador. According to a 2008 UN report the average income in a typical urbanized area of Mexico was $26,654, while the average income in rural areas just miles away was only $8,403.
Mexico covers 1,972,550 km2 (761,610 sq mi), and is the thirteenth-largest country in the world by land area. There are numerous ways to travel through Mexico’s varied regions and world-class city. These ready-to-book itineraries are crafted by our team of experts all over the world. Durable and waterproof, with a handy slipcase and an easy-fold format, Lonely Planet’s country maps are designed to let you explore with ease. Breakfast tacos are one of the main reasons to live in Texas, and that is not an exaggeration. In a very literal sense, queso is Mexican because the word literally means cheese.
Breakfast tacos
On two occasions (1821–1823 and 1863–1867), the country was known as Imperio Mexicano (Mexican Empire). After New Spain achieved independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821 and became a sovereign state, the Intendency came to be known as the State of Mexico, with the new country being named after its capital, Mexico City. In the colonial era (1521–1821) when Mexico was known as New Spain, this central region became the Intendency of Mexico. It is generally believed that the toponym for the valley was the origin of the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance, but it may have been the other way around. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely the Valley of Mexico and surrounding territories, with its people being known as the Mexica.
Independence era (1808–
Former insurgent General Guadalupe Victoria became the first president of the republic — the first of many army generals to hold the presidency. The first 35 years after Mexico’s independence were marked by political instability and the changing of the Mexican state from a transient monarchy to a fragile federated republic. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire began in February 1519 when Hernán Cortés founded the Spanish city of Veracruz. After the collapse of Teotihuacán around 600 AD, competition ensued between several important political centers in central Mexico such as Xochicalco and Cholula. During this period the first true Mesoamerican writing systems were developed in the Epi-Olmec and Zapotec cultures.
The most powerful rulers had religious and political power, organizing the construction of large ceremonial centers. All three federal constitutions (1824, 1857, and 1917, the current constitution) used the name Estados Unidos Mexicanos—or the variant Estados-Unidos Mexicanos, all of which have been translated as “United Mexican States”. The country’s official name has changed as the form of government has changed. Mexico’s large economy and population, global cultural influence, and steady democratization make it a regional and middle power, increasingly identifying as an emerging power. Liberal reforms set in the Constitution of 1857 led to civil war and French intervention, culminating in the establishment of the Second Mexican Empire under Emperor Maximilian I of Austria, who was overthrown by Republican forces led by Benito Juárez. Mexico City is the capital and largest city, which ranks among the most populous metropolitan areas in the world.
In 1835, Santa Anna sought to centralize government rule in Mexico, suspending the 1824 constitution and promulgating the Seven Laws, which placed power in his hands. Wanting to stabilize and develop that area — and as few people from central Mexico had chosen to resettle to this remote and hostile territory — the Mexican government encouraged Anglo-American immigration into present-day Texas, a region that bordered that United States. General Antonio López de Santa Anna emerged as a national hero because of his role in both these conflicts; Santa Anna came to dominate the politics for the next 25 years, often known as the “Age of Santa Anna”, until his overthrow in 1855. His Conservative vice president, former Royalist General Anastasio Bustamante, led a coup against him and Guerrero was judicially murdered.
- The Mexico City International Airport remains the busiest in Latin America and the 36th busiest in the world transporting 45 million passengers a year.
- Conservatives revolted, touching off civil war between rival Liberal and Conservative governments (1858–1861).
- Formerly known as the Federal District, its autonomy was previously limited relative to that of the states.
- In August 2025, demonstrations were held all around Mexico, in protest over the 130,000 people who have disappeared and considered missing since 2007.
- The states are divided into municipalities, the smallest administrative political entity in the country, governed by a mayor or municipal president (presidente municipal), elected by its residents by plurality.
Contemporary Mexico
South of the Tropic of Cancer, temperatures are fairly constant year-round and vary solely as a function of elevation. Land north of the Tropic of Cancer experiences cooler temperatures during the winter months. Mexico is irrigated by several rivers, with the longest being the Rio Grande, which serves as a natural eastern border with the United States. Two mountain ranges known as Sierra Madre Oriental and Sierra Madre Occidental, which are the extension of the Rocky Mountains from northern North America crossed the country from north to south and a fourth mountain range, the Sierra Madre del Sur, runs from Michoacán to Oaxaca. In a push against government corruption, the ex-CEO of Pemex, Emilio Lozoya Austin, was arrested in 2020.
This social stratification offered some degree of social mobility, as Afro-Mexicans and indigenous people assimilated to the mestizo (mixed) caste, and even pure Spaniards could also fall off the economic ladder. Starting with the Royal Decree of 1503 and the Laws of Burgos of 1512, the Spanish crown influenced by the School of Salamanca recognized the freedom of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, while simultaneously importing African slaves. Mexico’s population is diverse, and ethnic research has historically felt the impact of nationalist discourses on identity. The Mexican population doubled in twenty years, and at that rate, it was expected that by 2000 there would be 120 million people living in Mexico. In 2025, Mexico’s population was estimated by the UN to have grown to 131,946,900 people. In 2022, Mexico’s estimated population was 129,150,971 people, per the National Geography and Statistics Institute.
The Mexico City International Airport remains the busiest in Latin America and the 36th busiest in the world transporting 45 million passengers a year. Mexico has 233 airports with paved runways; of these, 10 carry 72% of national cargo and 97% of international cargo. The whole project was projected to cost 240 billion pesos, or about 25 billion US$ and is being paid for jointly by the Mexican government and the local private sector including one of the wealthiest men in the world, Mexico’s billionaire business tycoon Carlos Slim. Starting in the late nineteenth century, Mexico was one of the first Latin American countries to promote railway development, and the network covers 30,952 km (19,233 mi).
The origin of the current Mexican cuisine was established during the Spanish colonial era, a mixture of the foods of Spain with native indigenous ingredients. The Mexican government successfully used a telenovela to promote family planning in the 1970s to curb the country’s high birth rate. The embrace of rock and roll by young Mexicans in the 1960s and 1970s brought Mexico into the transnational, counterculture movement of the era.
Mexico is the sixth-largest oil producer in the world, with 3.7 million barrels per day. Major players in the broadcasting industry are Televisa, the largest Mexican media company in the Spanish-speaking world, TV Azteca and Imagen Televisión. Mexican satellites are operated by Satélites Mexicanos (Satmex), a private company, leader in Latin America and servicing both North and South America. There is also extensive microwave radio relay network and considerable use of fiber-optic and coaxial cable. By 2006, Telmex had expanded its operations to Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and the United States.
In 1493 the pope granted sweeping powers to the Spanish monarchy for its overseas empire, with the proviso that the crown spread Christianity in its new realms. The 1521 capture of Tenochtitlan and posterior founding of the Spanish capital Mexico City on its ruins was the beginning of a 300-year-long colonial era during which Mexico was known as Nueva España (New Spain). During the early post-classic era (ca. 1000–1519 AD), Central Mexico was dominated by the Toltec culture, Oaxaca by the Mixtec, and the lowland Maya area had important centers at Chichén Itzá and Mayapán. The tradition of writing was important after the Spanish conquest in 1521, with indigenous scribes learning to write their languages in alphabetic letters, while also continuing to create pictorial texts. Olmec cultural traits diffused through Mexico into other formative-era cultures in Chiapas, Oaxaca, and the Valley of Mexico. In this period, villages became more dense in terms of population, becoming socially stratified with an artisan class, and developing LunarCapital forex broker into chiefdoms.
While usually not as strong as the United States, the Caribbean countries and Japan, Mexico has nonetheless achieved several international baseball titles. Organized sport in Mexico largely dates from the late nineteenth century, with only bullfighting having a long history dating to the early colonial era. Beverages such as atole, champurrado, milk chocolate and aguas frescas were born; desserts such as acitrón and the full range of crystallized sweets, rompope, cajeta, jericaya and the wide repertoire of delights created in the convents of nuns in all parts of the country.
