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• June 6, 2025

MEX Definition & Meaning

Between 1965 and 2015, more than 16 million Mexicans migrated to the United States alone—by far the top destination for both temporary and permanent migration—representing one of the largest mass migrations in modern history. The largest Mexican communities outside Mexico are in the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth. While people of mixed ancestry form the most prominent ethnic group in contemporary Mexico, the subjective and ever-changing definition of this category means that precise estimates are impossible. Slavery was abolished twice by the insurgent movements of Hidalgo and Morelos in 1810, and again by the independent government of Vicente Guerrero in 1829, an Afro-Mexican. Social stratification and racism in Mexico have remained in the contemporary era. The next four largest metropolitan areas are Greater Monterrey (5.3 million), Greater Guadalajara (5.2 million), Greater Puebla (3.2 million) and Greater Toluca (2.3 million).

Visiting Dzibilchaltún: an ancient city in an ancient land

Many state-owned industrial enterprises were privatized starting in the 1990s with neoliberal reforms, but Pemex, the state-owned petroleum company is only slowly being privatized, with exploration licenses being issued. During the twenty-first century, Mexico has contended with high crime rates, bureaucratic corruption, narcotrafficking, and a stagnant economy. Salinas left Zedillo’s government to deal with the Mexican peso crisis, requiring a $50 billion IMF bailout. In 1994, following the assassination of the PRI’s presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, Salinas was succeeded by victorious PRI candidate Ernesto Zedillo. The armed conflict was short-lived and has continued as a non-violent opposition movement against neoliberalism and globalization.

The Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneous founded by Rufino Tamayo is also considered a preeminent institution and introduced foreign artists to a wider population. Institutions like the Museo Jumex, the largest collection of its kind, founded by collector Eugenio López Alonso and bolstered by art advisor Esthella Provas, changed the notion of contemporary art in Latin America. In the 21st century, Mexico City became home to the highest concentration of art museums in the world. They were commissioned by the Mexican government to paint large-scale historical murals on the walls of public buildings, which helped shape popular perceptions of the Mexican Revolution and Mexican cultural identity. Important painters of the late colonial period were Juan Correa, Cristóbal de Villalpando and Miguel Cabrera.

Treasure of the Sierra Madre: wintering in San Miguel de Allende

In the 20th century artists such as Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco, the so-called “Big Three” of Mexican muralism achieved worldwide recognition. In early post-independence Mexico, nineteenth-century painting had a marked romantic influence; landscapes and portraits were the greatest expressions of this era. Mural painting with Christian religious themes had an important flowering during the 16th century, early colonial era in newly constructed churches and monasteries. Mexican culture reflects a long and complex history of interactions between various peoples through migration, conquest, and trade. Other prominent private universities include Universidad Iberoamericana, Universidad Panamericana, ITAM and Universidad Anáhuac. About 74,000 people practiced religions with “ethnic roots”, religions of mostly African and indigenous origin.

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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. It dropped this designation in 2016 and is in the process of achieving greater political autonomy by becoming a federal entity with its constitution and congress. Of these, 300 are elected by plurality vote in single-member districts (the federal electoral districts) and 200 are elected by proportional representation with closed party lists for which the country is divided into five electoral constituencies. The United Mexican States is a federation whose government is representative, democratic, and republican based on a presidential system according to the 1917 Constitution. His success is attributed to the country’s opposing political forces exhausting their chances as well as AMLO’s adoption of a moderate discourse with a focus on reconciliation. After founding the new political party MORENA, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly known as AMLO) won the 2018 presidential election with over 50% of the vote.

Teotihuacan, with a population of more than 150,000 people, had some of the largest pyramidal structures in the pre-Columbian Americas. The Mesoamerican writing tradition reached its height in the Classic Maya Hieroglyphic script, the earliest written histories date from this era. Mexico is a newly industrialized and developing country, with the world’s 15th-largest economy by nominal GDP and the 13th-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). The federal legislature consists of the bicameral Congress of the Union, comprising the Chamber of Deputies, which represents the population, and the Senate, which provides equal representation for each state. The late 20th century saw a shift towards neoliberalism, marked by the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, amidst unrest in Chiapas.

“The margarita is just the perfect cocktail for most people’s palates. The ties between Tex-Mex and tequila go back more than a century. “Tex-Mex is kind of in our blood,” says Michael Sambrooks, the owner of Houston’s Candente, who was born and raised in the city. The rocky, cumbersome path from the village of La Trinidad up to the mine took about 20 minutes to conquer and put my gimbal camera … Once a vast city of 40,000 spread across 8 square miles or so of jungle and meadows, Dzibilchaltún was a long-lived Mayan city, LunarCapital forex broker a major player in the salt trade, and the ultimate survivor. From wars and human sacrifice in pre-Columbian days, …

In the 2020 census, 36,764 Mexicans belonged to a spiritualist religion, a category which includes a tiny Buddhist population. The modern Jewish Community began to be formed in the late 19th and early 20th century when Jews from Europe and the Ottoman Empire immigrated to Mexico due to instability and antisemitism. The presence of Jews in Mexico dates back to the 16th century when Spaniards arrived in the Americas. The 97,864,218 Catholics of Mexico constitute in absolute terms the second largest Catholic community in the world, after Brazil’s. However, in 2015, a high level of English proficiency was limited to 5% of the population. It is estimated that nearly 24 million, or around a fifth of the population, study English through public schools, private institutions, or self-access channels.

Luis Barragán combined the shape of the space with forms of rural vernacular architecture of Mexico and Mediterranean countries (Spain-Morocco), integrating color that handles light and shade in different tones and opens a look at the international minimalism. Designed by the most prestigious architects of the era, including Mario Pani, Eugenio Peschard, and Enrique del Moral, the buildings feature murals by artists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Chávez Morado. The cities of the Maya stand out to modern architects as examples of integration between large urban centers (with elaborate stone construction) and a thick jungle, generally with a complex network of roads.

Tzeltal and Tzotzil, two other Mayan languages, are spoken by around half a million people each, primarily in the southern state of Chiapas. Nahuatl is spoken by more than 1.7 million, followed by Yucatec Maya, used daily by nearly 850,000 people. The second largest group comes from neighboring Guatemala (54,500), followed by Spain (27,600). As a result of these major migration flows in recent decades, an estimated 37.2 million U.S. residents, or 11.2% of the US population, identified as being of full or partial Mexican ancestry.

Chipilo, Puebla: an Italian town with the best Italian food in Mexico

Carranza had gained the support of the peasantry during the Revolution, but once in power, he did little to institute land reform, which had motivated many to fight in the Revolution. Consolidating power, President Carranza had peasant leader Emiliano Zapata assassinated in 1919. In 1916, the winners of the Mexican revolution met at a constitutional convention to draft the Constitution of 1917, which was ratified in February 1917. Carranza’s best general Alvaro Obregón defeated Villa, his former comrade-in-arms, in the Battle of Celaya in 1915, and Villa’s northern forces melted away. Constitutionalist general Pancho Villa, commander of the Division of the North, broke with Carranza and allied with Zapata.

• A coalition of anti-Huerta forces in the North, the Constitutional Army led by Governor of Coahuila Venustiano Carranza, and a peasant army in the South under Emiliano Zapata defeated the Federal Army in 1914, leaving only revolutionary forces.
• Former Royal Army General Agustín de Iturbide became regent, as newly independent Mexico sought a constitutional monarch from Europe.
• 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.
• The President is responsible for executing and enforcing the law and has the power to veto bills.
• The architecture of Mesoamerican civilizations evolved in style from simple to complex.
• The late colonial-era novel by José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, The Mangy Parrot (“El Periquillo Sarniento”), is said to be the first Latin American novel.

The most populous metropolitan area in Mexico is the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico, or Greater Mexico City, which in 2020 had a population of 21.8 million, or https://lunarcapital.vip/ around 18% of the nation’s population. In 2020, there were 48 metropolitan areas in Mexico, in which close to 53% of Mexico’s population lives. Mexico’s population grew from 70 million in 1982 to 123.5 million inhabitants in 2017. The Mexican Revolution (c. 1910–1920) greatly impacted population growth, with the 1921 census reporting a loss of about 1 million inhabitants. Since at least the 1970s, Mexico has been the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world.

• The executive is the President of the United Mexican States, who is the head of state and government, as well as the commander-in-chief of the Mexican military forces.
• The rocky, cumbersome path from the village of La Trinidad up to the mine took about 20 minutes to conquer and put my gimbal camera …
• In a push against government corruption, the ex-CEO of Pemex, Emilio Lozoya Austin, was arrested in 2020.
• In the religious sphere, the Diocese of Mexico was created in 1530 and elevated to the Archdiocese of Mexico in 1546, with the archbishop as the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

Underwater Santa Claus brings season’s greetings and a message of conservation to Mexican zoo

Historically, Mexico has remained neutral in international conflicts, with the exception of World War II. Since the 1990s, when the military escalated its role in the war on drugs, increasing importance has been placed on acquiring airborne surveillance platforms, aircraft, helicopters, digital war-fighting technologies, urban warfare equipment and rapid troop transport. The National Guard, which was formed in 2019 from the disbanded Federal Police and military police of the Army and Navy, functions as a gendarmerie; while responsible for law enforcement, it is placed under military command. Mexico is considered a regional power hence its presence in major economic groups such as the G8+5 and the G-20. In addition, it was the only Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development since it joined in 1994 until Chile gained full membership in 2010. Formerly known as the Federal District, its autonomy was previously limited relative to that of the states.

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María Candelaria (1943) by Emilio Fernández, was one of the first films awarded a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946, the first time the event was held after World War II. In the modern era, the novel of the Mexican Revolution by Mariano Azuela (Los de abajo, translated to English as The Underdogs) is noteworthy. The late colonial-era novel by José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, The Mangy Parrot (“El Periquillo Sarniento”), is said to be the first Latin American novel. Spanish-born poet Bernardo de Balbuena extolled the virtues of Mexico in Grandeza mexicana (Mexican Grandeur) (1604). While Tenochtitlan was the political capital, Texcoco was the cultural center; the Texcocan language was considered the most melodious and refined.

The piñata tradition in Mexico

The federal legislature is the bicameral Congress of the Union, composed of the Senate of the Republic and the Chamber of Deputies. Mexico is also considered the second country in the world in ecosystems and fourth in overall species. Climate change is impacting Mexicans’ health, exacerbating human migration, and increasing extinction risk for Mexico’s biodiversity, as protected areas are expected to face warming temperatures and decreased precipitation.

Former Royal Army General Agustín de Iturbide became regent, as newly independent Mexico sought a constitutional monarch from Europe. There were military coups d’état, foreign invasions, ideological conflict between Conservatives and Liberals, and economic stagnation. On 16 September 1810, secular priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla declared against “bad government” in the small town of Dolores, Guanajuato. The riot over the price of maize escalated to a full-scale attack on the seats of power, with the viceregal palace and the archbishop’s residence attacked by the mob. Among the best-known pirate attacks are the 1663 Sack of Campeche and the 1683 Attack on Veracruz.

Shrimp in damiana and tequila sauce: Camarones al damiana y tequila

In fact, most evolved from pagan winter solstice rituals of the Celts, Druids, Scandinavians and indigenous groups, and the much older Jewish Festival of Lights. Despite efforts by animal rights activists to outlaw bullfighting, it remains a popular sport in the country, and almost all large cities have bullrings. Lucha Libre (freestyle professional wrestling) is also major crowd draw with national promotions such as AAA, CMLL and others. With its past hosting of the 1970 and 1986 tournaments, Mexico will become the first country to host or co-host the men’s World Cup three times.

Calles could not become president again, so he sought to set up a structure to manage presidential succession, founding the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which went on to dominate Mexico for the rest of the 20th century. He imposed his fellow former Sonoran revolutionary general, Calles, as his successor, prompting an unsuccessful military revolt. Obregón and two other Sonoran revolutionary generals drew up the Plan of Agua Prieta, overthrowing Carranza, who died fleeing Mexico City in 1920. Since Carranza could not run for re-election, he chose a civilian to succeed him, intending to remain the power behind the presidency. The Constitution empowered the government to expropriate resources including land, gave rights to labor, and strengthened anticlerical provisions of the 1857 Constitution.

Health care costs in private institutions and prescription drugs in Mexico are on average lower than that of its North American economic partners. Private health services are also very important and account for 13% of all medical units in the country. Since the early 1990s, Mexico entered a transitional stage in the health of its population and some indicators such as mortality patterns are identical to those found in highly developed countries like Germany or Japan. According to most rankings, the publicly funded National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) is the best university in the country. In 2020, the literacy rate in Mexico was 95.25%, a slight increase from 94.86% in 2018, and significantly higher than 82.99% in 1980.