Mexico

Mexico narrows like a funnel from its long northern border with the United States to the forests of the south. Mountain ranges run down both flanks and enclose a high central plateau, and a belt of volcanoes crosses the middle of the country, among them Popocatépetl and Pico de Orizaba, Mexico’s highest peak. The north is Sonoran and Chihuahuan desert. In the flat limestone of the Yucatán there are almost no surface rivers; the water lies underground, reached through cenotes, sinkholes the Maya held sacred.

Maize was domesticated here about nine thousand years ago, and Mexico gave the world chocolate, chillies, tomatoes and vanilla. Olmec, Maya, Zapotec and Aztec societies built cities, calendars and writing systems. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec city on a lake island where Mexico City stands, fell to Hernán Cortés and his Indigenous allies in 1521. Three centuries as New Spain ended with independence in 1821. Mexico lost about half its territory to the United States in 1846–48, and the revolution of 1910–20 produced the constitution of 1917.

Nahuatl, Maya languages and dozens of others are spoken, and the Day of the Dead joins pre-Hispanic and Catholic customs in honouring ancestors. Diego Rivera’s murals, Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits, mariachi from Jalisco and tequila from the blue agave all travel far. The economy is closely tied to the United States: factories along the border and in the Bajío assemble cars and electronics for export, while oil, silver, avocados and beach resorts such as Cancún bring in the rest.