Mexico

The seat of two great civilisations and of the viceroyalty that replaced them, with a revolution that defined the twentieth century for the region. Teotihuacan, the Maya cities, the Toltecs and finally the Mexica Triple Alliance ruled the valley and the south before Cortes arrived in 1519 and won by recruiting the tributaries who had reason to help him. New Spain then governed from Mexico City for three centuries, shipping silver east to Europe and west to Manila. Independence began in 1810 with the priest Hidalgo's call at Dolores and was completed in 1821 by the conservatives who had opposed it. The nineteenth century cost the country half its territory to the United States in 1848, an imposed French emperor executed in 1867, and thirty-five years of Porfirio Diaz. The revolution from 1910 under Madero, Villa, Zapata and Carranza killed perhaps a million people and produced the 1917 constitution, land redistribution, oil nationalisation in 1938 and one party that governed for seventy-one years until 2000. NAFTA came into force in 1994, the same day the Zapatistas rose in Chiapas. Mexico has the largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. Cartel violence since 2006 has killed enormous numbers. The country has about 130 million people and is the third largest in the Americas. Mexico City sits on the drained bed of Lake Texcoco and is sinking measurably. Thirty-five of its sites are World Heritage listed, more than any country outside Europe and China. Sixty-eight indigenous languages hold official recognition. Maize, tomatoes, chillies, cacao and vanilla were all domesticated here.

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