Portal:Mexico

	Flag Coat of arms
Location	Southern portion of North America

The Temple of Warriors at Chichen Itza, Mexico

¡Bienvenido! Welcome to the Mexico portal

Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico covers 1,972,550 km² (761,610 sq mi), making it the world's 13th-largest country by area; with a population of almost 130 million, it is the 10th-most-populous country and has the most Spanish speakers. Mexico is organized as a federal republic comprising 31 states and Mexico City, its capital.

Human presence in Pre-Columbian Mexico goes back to 8,000 BCE. It became one of the world's six cradles of civilization. The Mesoamerican region was home to many intertwined civilizations, including the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Teotihuacan, and Purepecha. The Aztecs dominated the region in the century before European contact. In 1521, the Spanish Empire and its indigenous allies conquered the Aztec Empire from its capital Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), establishing the colony of New Spain. Over the next three centuries, Spain and the Catholic Church expanded the territory, enforced Christianity and spread the Spanish language. With the discovery of rich deposits of silver in Zacatecas and Guanajuato, New Spain became one of the most important mining centers worldwide. The colonial order came to an end in the early nineteenth century with the Mexican War of Independence. (Full article...)

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San Lorenzo Colossal Head 4, now at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa

The Olmec colossal heads are stone representations of human heads sculpted from large basalt boulders. They range in height from 1.17 to 3.4 metres (3.8 to 11.2 ft). The heads date from at least 900 BC and are a distinctive feature of the Olmec civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. All portray mature individuals with fleshy cheeks, flat noses, and slightly-crossed eyes; their physical characteristics correspond to a type that is still common among the inhabitants of Tabasco and Veracruz. The backs of the monuments often are flat. The boulders were brought from the Sierra de Los Tuxtlas mountains of Veracruz. Given that the extremely large slabs of stone used in their production were transported over large distances (over 150 kilometres (93 mi)), requiring a great deal of human effort and resources, it is thought that the monuments represent portraits of powerful individual Olmec rulers. Each of the known examples has a distinctive headdress. The heads were variously arranged in lines or groups at major Olmec centres, but the method and logistics used to transport the stone to these sites remain unclear. They all display distinctive headgear and one theory is that these were worn as protective helmets, maybe worn for war or to take part in a ceremonial Mesoamerican ballgame. The discovery of the first colossal head at Tres Zapotes in 1862 by José María Melgar y Serrano was not well documented nor reported outside of Mexico.

The excavation of the same colossal head by Matthew Stirling in 1938 spurred the first archaeological investigations of Olmec culture. Seventeen confirmed examples are known from four sites within the Olmec heartland on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Most colossal heads were sculpted from spherical boulders but two from San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán were re-carved from massive stone thrones. An additional monument, at Takalik Abaj in Guatemala, is a throne that may have been carved from a colossal head. This is the only known example from outside the Olmec heartland. (Full article...)

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Clockwise from top: Winfield Scott entering Plaza de la Constitución after the Fall of Mexico City, U.S. soldiers engaging the retreating Mexican force during the Battle of Resaca de la Palma, U.S. victory at Churubusco outside of Mexico City, Marines storming Chapultepec castle under a large U.S. flag, Battle of Cerro Gordo

The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War, was an invasion of Mexico by the United States Army from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1845 American annexation of Texas, which Mexico still considered its territory because Mexico refused to recognize the Treaties of Velasco. This treaty was signed by President Antonio López de Santa Anna while he was captured by the Texian Army during the 1836 Texas Revolution. The Republic of Texas was de facto an independent country, but most of its Anglo-American citizens who had moved from the United States to Texas after 1822 wanted to be annexed by the United States.

Sectional politics over slavery in the United States were preventing annexation because Texas, formerly a slavery-free territory under Mexican rule, would have been admitted as a slave state, upsetting the balance of power between Northern free states and Southern slave states. In the 1844 United States presidential election, Democrat James K. Polk was elected on a platform of expanding U.S. territory to Oregon, California (also a Mexican territory), and Texas by any means, with the 1845 annexation of Texas furthering that goal. However, the boundary between Texas and Mexico was disputed, with the Republic of Texas and the U.S. asserting it to be the Rio Grande and Mexico claiming it to be the more-northern Nueces River. Polk sent a diplomatic mission to Mexico in an attempt to buy the disputed territory, together with California and everything in-between for $25 million (equal to equivalent to $750,636,132 in 2022), an offer the Mexican government refused. Polk then sent a group of 80 soldiers across the disputed territory to the Rio Grande, ignoring Mexican demands to withdraw. Mexican forces interpreted this as an attack and repelled the U.S. forces on April 25, 1846, a move which Polk used to convince the Congress of the United States to declare war. (Full article...)

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Selected picture

Left: The Heart of Jesus (1759)

Right: The Heart of Mary (circa 1759)

By Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz, at the Museo Nacional de Arte

image credit: public domain

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Page 6 of the Maya Codex of Mexico, depicting a death god with captive

The Maya Codex of Mexico (MCM) is a Maya screenfold codex manuscript of a pre-Columbian type. Long known as the Grolier Codex or Sáenz Codex, in 2018 it was officially renamed the Códice Maya de México (CMM) by the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico. It is one of only four known extant Maya codices, and the only one that still resides in the Americas.

The MCM first appeared in a private collection in the 1960s and was shown at "The Maya Scribe and His World", an exhibition held at the Grolier Club in New York City in 1971, hence its former name. An almanac that charts the movements of the planet Venus, it originally consisted of twenty pages; the first eight and the last two are now missing. Folio 8 has the tallest fragment, measuring 19 centimeters (7.5 in), and its pages are typically 12.5 centimeters (4.9 in) wide. The red frame lines at the bottom of pages four through eight indicates that the dimensions were once substantially taller, and that the scribe prepared a space for text under the figure on each page. Accordingly, the manuscript would once have measured 250 centimeters (98.4 in), roughly the size of the Dresden Codex. (Full article...)

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Official portrait, 2000

Vicente Fox Quesada (Latin American Spanish: [biˈsente ˈfoks keˈsaða]; born 2 July 1942) is a Mexican businessman and politician who served as the 62nd president of Mexico from 1 December 2000 to 30 November 2006. After campaigning as a right-wing populist, Fox was elected president on the National Action Party (PAN) ticket in the 2000 election. He became the first president not from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) since 1929, and the first elected from an opposition party since Francisco I. Madero in 1911. Fox won the election with 43 percent of the vote.

As president, he continued the neoliberal economic policies his predecessors from the PRI had adopted since the 1980s. The first half of his administration saw a further shift of the federal government to the right, strong relations with the United States and George W. Bush, unsuccessful attempts to introduce a value-added tax to medicines and build an airport in Texcoco, and a diplomatic conflict with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The murder of human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa in 2001 called into question the Fox administration's commitment to breaking with the authoritarian past of the PRI era. (Full article...)

List of selected biographies
Frida Kahlo Porfirio Díaz Juan Diego Emiliano Zapata Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla Cantinflas Pancho Villa Antonio López de Santa Anna Chespirito Agustín de Iturbide Maximilian I of Mexico Benito Juárez Carlos Slim Diego Rivera Francisco I. Madero Juana Inés de la Cruz Carlos Salinas de Gortari Miguel de la Madrid

In the news

29 December 2023 – Mexican drug war: Six people are killed and 26 others are injured in a mass shooting at a party in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico. The shooting's target, a cartel member, is among those killed. (AP)
28 December 2023 – Mexican drug war: La Familia Michoacana drug cartel kidnap 14 people from Texcaltitlán, state of Mexico, in retaliation for a previous incident in which 10 cartel members were killed by residents of the town. (AP)
22 December 2023 –: Former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas requests asylum in Mexico. (Reuters)
17 December 2023 – Mexican drug war: In Mexico, twelve people are killed during a mass shooting at a Christmas season party in Salvatierra, Guanajuato. Three others are killed and four injured at a bar in Tulum, Quintana Roo, while four people are killed in Salamanca, Guanajuato. (AP)
15 December 2023 –: President Andrés Manuel López Obrador inaugurates the first part of the tourist Maya Train, that runs in a rough loop around the Yucatán Peninsula. The $20 billion, 950-mile line will connect beach resorts and archaeological sites. (AP)
12 December 2023 – Illegal immigration to Mexico: Mexico’s immigration agency detains two buses carrying 102 migrants in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The majority of the migrants came from the West African nations of Senegal and Guinea, as well as six from Djibouti, two from Congo and one from Mauritania. (AP)

Selected fare or cuisine -

Nachos with tortilla chips, melted or not melted cheese, olives, jalapeño peppers, sour cream, and salsa

Nachos are a Tex-Mex culinary dish consisting of tortilla chips or totopos covered with cheese or cheese sauce, as well as a variety of other toppings and garnishes, often including meats (such as ground beef or grilled chicken), vegetables (such as chili peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, and olives), and condiments such as salsa, guacamole, or sour cream. At its most basic form, nachos may consist of merely chips covered with cheese (usually Cheddar or American Cheese), and served as an appetizer or snack, while other versions are substantial enough as a main course. The dish was created by, and named after, Mexican restaurateur Ignacio Anaya, who created it in 1941 for American customers at the Victory Club restaurant in Piedras Negras, Coahuila. (Full article...)

List of fare/cuisine articles
Mexican cuisine Cuisine of Chiapas Cuisine of Veracruz Crema (dairy product) Aztec cuisine Oaxacan cuisine Mole sauce Guacamole Enchilada Mexican breads Burrito Mexican street food Pozole Cheeses of Mexico Taco Pan dulce Mexican wine Sopa de fideo Tostilocos Beer in Mexico Calavera Champurrado Mexican Coke Menudo (soup)

General images

The following are images from various Mexico-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Pear, Quince and Psidium cajeta. In 2010 declared the Bicentennial Dessert of Mexico. (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 2Lázaro Cárdenas mural (from History of Mexico)
Image 3President Carranza in La Cañada, Querétaro, January 22, 1916. (from History of Mexico)
Image 4President Felipe Calderón with President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. (from History of Mexico)
Image 5A statue of a Chichimeca Warrior in the city of Querétaro (from History of Mexico)
Image 6Three world leaders: (background, left to right) Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, U.S. President George H. W. Bush, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, observe the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement. (from History of Mexico)
Image 7The Castillo, Chichen Itza, Mexico, ca. 800–900 CE (from History of Mexico)
Image 8Panel 3 from Cancuen, Guatemala, representing king T'ah 'ak' Cha'an (from History of Mexico)
Image 9A map of Mexico 1845 after Texas annexation by the U.S. (from History of Mexico)
Image 10Subcomandante Marcos (from History of Mexico)
Image 11Agustín de Iturbide the first Emperor of Mexico (from History of Mexico)
Image 12Olmec colossal (from History of Mexico)
Image 131985 Mexico City earthquake (from History of Mexico)
Image 14President Vicente Fox with Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh (from History of Mexico)
Image 15Chacmool, Maya, from the Platform of the Eagles, Chichen Itza, Mexico, ca. 800–90 CE (from History of Mexico)
Image 16La huida a Egipto (The Flight into Egypt). Miguel Cabrera, around 1700. (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 17Mexican Army troops in the Zócalo in the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. (from History of Mexico)
Image 18Liberación (Liberation). Jorge González Camarena. 1908. (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 19Viceroy José de Iturrigaray (from History of Mexico)
Image 20Ignacio Comonfort (from History of Mexico)
Image 21Chihuahua Cathedral and a monument to the city's founder, Antonio Deza y Ulloa (from History of Mexico)
Image 22Mexico City street market (from History of Mexico)
Image 23Distribution of linguistic groups around 1500. (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 24Logo of Nacional Financiera (NAFIN), the state development bank. (from History of Mexico)
Image 25Alegoría de la Constitución de 1857, Petronilo Monroy, 1869. (from History of Mexico)
Image 26Mexican Central Railway train at station, Mexico (from History of Mexico)
Image 27A unit of Cristeros preparing for battle. (from History of Mexico)
Image 28Gilberto Bosques Saldívar took initiative to rescue tens of thousands of Jews and Spanish Republican exiles from being deported to Nazi Germany or Spain. (from History of Mexico)
Image 29Equestrian statue of Charles IV in Mexico City (from History of Mexico)
Image 30Comanchería, territory controlled by the Comaches, prior to 1850 (from History of Mexico)
Image 31Portrait and book by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Baroque poet and writer. (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 32El Chapo in US custody after his extradition from Mexico. (from History of Mexico)
Image 33Cabinet Officers of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (left) and of Enrique Peña Nieto (right). (from History of Mexico)
Image 34"The Fall of the Alamo" by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk (from History of Mexico)
Image 35Plutarco Elías Calles (from History of Mexico)
Image 36Colossal atlantids, pyramid B, Toltec, Tula, Mexico, ca. 900–1180 AD (from History of Mexico)
Image 37President Obregón. Note that he lost his right arm in the Battle of Celaya (1915), earning him the nickname of Manco de Celaya ("the one-armed man of Celaya"). (from History of Mexico)
Image 38Making cigarettes in the El Buen Tono factory, Mexico City (from History of Mexico)
Image 39Goddess, mural painting from the Tetitla apartment complex at Teotihuacan, Mexico, 650–750 CE (from History of Mexico)
Image 40Cerro del Cubilete ("Dice Cup Hill"). At the top of the hill is the Cristo Rey (Christ the King) statue. (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 41The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, 19 June 1867. Gen. Tomás Mejía, left, Maximiian, center, Gen. Miguel Miramón, right. Painting by Édouard Manet 1868. (from History of Mexico)
Image 42Dining table, painted between 1857 y 1859, oleo sobre tela (oil on canvas) by Agustín Arrieta (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 43Spanish and Portuguese empires in 1790 (from History of Mexico)
Image 44Porfirio Díaz (from History of Mexico)
Image 45General Santa Anna. (from History of Mexico)
Image 46Singer and actor Pedro Infante, one of the leading figures of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 47Logo of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario, with the colors of the Mexican flag (from History of Mexico)
Image 48Buffalo Soldiers of the American 10th Cavalry Regiment taken prisoner during the Battle of Carrizal, Mexico in 1916. (from History of Mexico)
Image 49Surrender of Santa Anna by William Henry Huddle shows the Mexican president and general surrendering to a wounded Sam Houston in 1836. (from History of Mexico)
Image 50Battle of Centla, first time a horse was used in battle in a war in the Americas. Mural in the Palacio Municipal of Paraíso, Tabasco (from History of Mexico)
Image 51Variegated maize ears (from History of Mexico)
Image 52General Pancho Villa at the entrance of Ojinaga (from History of Mexico)
Image 53Exconvento (Ex-convent), by José María Velasco. 1860. (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 54Entry into Mexico City by the Mexican army (from History of Mexico)
Image 55"The Torture of Cuauhtémoc", a 19th-century painting by Leandro Izaguirre (from History of Mexico)
Image 56Teotihuacan view of the Avenue of the Dead and the Pyramid of the Sun, from the Pyramid of the Moon (from History of Mexico)
Image 57U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President-Elect Enrique Peña Nieto during their meet at the White House following Peña Nieto's election victory. (from History of Mexico)
Image 58Shield Jaguar and Lady Xoc, Maya, lintel 24 of temple 23, Yaxchilan, Mexico, ca. 725 ce. (from History of Mexico)
Image 59Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (from History of Mexico)
Image 60Murals of Bonampak (between 580 and 800 AD) (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 61Toltec carving representing the Aztec Eagle, found in Veracruz, 10th–13th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art. (from History of Mexico)
Image 62Modern group monument of Cortés, Doña Marina, and their mestizo son Martín (from History of Mexico)
Image 63La leyenda de los volcanes (The legend of the volcanoes). Saturnino Herrán. 1910-1912. (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 64Battle of Miahuatlán (from History of Mexico)
Image 65Club América vs Cruz Azul at the Estadio Azteca. (from Culture of Mexico)
Image 66Victoriano Huerta, ruler of Mexico from 1913 to 1914 (from History of Mexico)
Image 67The first Braceros arrive in Los Angeles by train in 1942. Photograph by Dorothea Lange. (from History of Mexico)
Image 68Battle of Tampico (1829) (from History of Mexico)

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