Did you mean: Mexico (country, North America), Mexico City (city, Mexico), Mexico (state, Mexico), Gulf of Mexico (body of water, the Atlantic Ocean), Mexico (city, Missouri) More...

Results for Mexico
On this page:
 
Dictionary:

Mexico

  (mĕk'sĭ-kō') pronunciation
Mexico
(Click to enlarge)
Mexico
(Mapping Specialists, Ltd.)

A country of south-central North America. Southern Mexico was the site of various advanced civilizations beginning with the Olmec and including the Maya, Zapotec, Toltec, Mixtec, and Aztec cultures. Mexico was conquered by Cortés in 1521 and held by the Spanish until 1821. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican War (1846–1848) awarded all lands north of the Rio Grande to the United States. Mexico City is the capital and the largest city. Population: 109,000,000.

 

 
 

In the currency market, this is the abbreviation for the Mexican peso.

Investopedia Says:
The currency market, also known as the foreign exchange market, or forex, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US$1 trillion.

Related Links:
Whether you're puzzled by pips or curious about carry trades, your queries are answered here. Common Questions About Currency Trading
Moving from equities to currencies requires you to adjust how you interpret quotes, margin, spreads and rollovers. A Primer On The Forex Market
Before entering this market, you should define what you need from your broker and from your strategy. Getting Started In Forex


 

Country, southern North America. The Rio Grande forms part of its northeastern border with the U.S. Area: 758,449 sq mi (1,964,375 sq km). Population (2005 est.): 107,029,000. Capital: Mexico City. More than three-fifths of Mexico's people are mestizos, about one-fifth are American Indians, and the bulk of the rest are of European ancestry. Languages: Spanish (official); more than 50 Indian languages are spoken. Religion: Christianity (predominantly Roman Catholic; also Protestant). Currency: Mexican peso. Mexico has two major peninsulas, the Yucatán in the southeast and Baja California in the northwest. The high Mexican Plateau forms the core of the country and is enclosed by mountain ranges: the Sierra Madre Occidental, the Sierra Madre Oriental, and the Cordillera Neo-Volcánica. The last has the country's highest peak, the volcano Citlaltépetl, which reaches 18,406 ft (5,610 m). Mexico has a mixed economy based on agriculture, manufacturing, and the extraction of petroleum and natural gas. About one-eighth of the land is arable; major crops include corn, wheat, rice, beans, coffee, cotton, fruits, and vegetables. Mexico is the world's largest producer of silver, bismuth, and celestite. It has significant reserves of oil and natural gas. Manufactures include processed foods, chemicals, transport vehicles, and electrical machinery. It is a republic with two legislative houses; its head of state and government is the president. Humans may have inhabited Mexico for more than 20,000 years, and the area produced a string of great early civilizations, including the Olmec, Toltec, and Maya. The Aztec empire, another important civilization located in Mexico, was conquered in 1521 by Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés, who established Mexico City on the site of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán. Francisco de Montejo conquered the remnants of Maya civilization in 1526, and Mexico became part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In 1821 rebels negotiated independence from Spain, and in 1823 a new congress declared Mexico a republic. In 1845 the U.S. voted to annex Texas, initiating the Mexican War. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico ceded a vast territory in what is now the western and southwestern U.S. The Mexican government endured several rebellions and civil wars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see Mexican Revolution). During World War II (1939 – 45) it declared war on the Axis Powers, and in the postwar era it was a founding member of the United Nations (1945) and the Organization of American States (1948). In 1993 it ratified the North American Free Trade Agreement. The election of Vicente Fox to the presidency (2000) ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

For more information on Mexico, visit Britannica.com.

 

For the first 50 years or so, photography in Mexico was mostly in the hands of foreigners. Appropriately, perhaps, it was a Frenchman, François Aubert (1829-1906), who recorded the aftermath of the French-installed Emperor Maximilian's execution in 1867. Later, German portraitists and ‘ethnographers’ such as Hugo Brehme (1882-1954) and Wilhelm Kahlo (father of Frida Kahlo) set up studios and documented social types. Eventually, however, some of the porters and assistants employed by Europeans found themselves the inheritors not only of materials (including fully equipped studios) after the adventurers had moved on or returned home, but of a whole tradition that they then made their own. A famous early portraitist, and the first Mexican photographer to achieve an international reputation, was Romualdo Garcia (1852-1930), who from 1887 to 1914 ran a studio in the wealthy silver-mining town of Guanajuato, where he recorded a rich procession of local and itinerant types, from aristocratic landowners to priests, businessmen, peasants, and feathered indigenous people demonstrating their acts in a circus. (Unfortunately, much of Garcia's archive was destroyed by floods in 1905.)The revolution of 1910-20 was recorded in spectacular fashion by the father of Mexican photojournalism, Agustín Casasola and his sons. They bravely set up their weighty cameras to record refugees being expelled from their homes by federal forces, or prisoners of war being shot; or at city gates, almost under the horses' hooves, as rebel Zapatista soldiers rode in. Casasola even mounted a camera on the roof of a railway wagon to show troops being transported sardine-like from one end of the vast country to the other, and soldaderas (female camp followers) using their stoves on makeshift platforms between the carriages. Emiliano Zapata, the southern Zapotec Indian dressed in rug and sombrero, was caught breakfasting at the counter of Sandborn's in Mexico City, and the assassinated Pancho Villa sprawled amid shattered glass and bloodstains on the running board of his car.

As well as galvanizing news photography, the revolution also had a longer-term impact. Sergei Eisenstein shot parts of his revolutionary film Que viva Mexico! in 1930-1, and was assisted by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, then a camera operator. It was his photograph of a young Mexican striker killed by soldiers at a demonstration (1934) that made him the maestro of Mexican photography. Longevity and inventiveness enabled him to mine the rich seams of his homeland for over 50 years, creating a vast oeuvre of landscapes and skyscapes, street scenes and interiors, portraits and nudes, and intimate studies of plants and artesanias (popular artefacts). But already in the 1930s he had an international reputation, being hailed by Cartier-Bresson and André Breton as an exponent of Mexico's ‘natural’ surrealism.

Two of Álvarez Bravo's collaborators helped to put women photographers on the Mexican map. Tina Modotti, Italian in origin and Mexican by adoption, drew her inspiration, like Álvarez Bravo, initially from film. Her vision was essentially political. To her, all life was politics: the massed straw hats of the workers assembling in a town square; their tools, with the hammer and sickle predominant; even a row of telegraph poles, spelling industry and communications. Graciela Iturbide, 40 years younger than Álvarez Bravo, worked as his assistant in the 1960s, acquiring enough of his insistence on his own culture to meld it with her own anthropological background into a vision of her own. Her documentation of the Seri (the ‘people of the sand dunes’, nomads of the northern deserts) and of The Women of Juchitan (1989), a matriarchal society in south-western Oaxaca, are irreplaceable portraits of communities and their relationship with the land.

Literature has also played a role in the development of Mexican photography. Juan Rulfo (1918-86) published only two books, but was posthumously discovered to have been a major photographer. His novel Pedro Páramo (1955) is set in the aftermath of the cristero (anti-secular) rebellions, during which the eponymous protagonist dies. The photographs he took from the 1940s to the 1960s, while attempting to support his family as a tyre salesman, evoke the same atmosphere of a demi-world half lost to reality, filled with dreams and death. He used an old square-format camera and, like the great majority of Mexican photographers, shot only in black-and-white. (As Álvarez Bravo famously observed: ‘Mexico has far too much colour for me to need to add any of my own.’)

The next generation coincided with the literary boom of the 1970s and 1980s, and the fashion for so-called Latin American ‘magic realism’. But authors such as Elena Poniatowska, Raquel Tibol, Juan Villoro, Carlos Monsivais, Cuauhtemoc Medina, and Carlos Fuentes all produced critical writings on Mexican photography. This coincided with a boom within the medium itself: photographers such as Gerardo Suter (b. 1957), Francisco Matas, Lourdes Grobet, Maya Goded, Flor Garduño (b. 1957), Rafael Doniz, Yolanda Andrade, Enrique Metinides, and Mariana Yampolsky (b. 1925), have all exhibited in the USA and elsewhere, and continue to build on Mexican traditions in reportage and art photography.

Finally, the rise of digital imaging has played its part in breaking down cultural and national barriers. The photographer at the forefront of many of these experiments is the California-based Pedro Meyer (b. 1935). Future ‘Mexican’ developments will undoubtedly involve not only the latest technological innovations from north of the border, but also the Mexican-American culture emerging there.

— Amanda Hopkinson

Bibliography

  • Imagen histórica de la fotografia en México (1978).
  • Canales, C., Romualdo Garcia, un fotógrafo, una ciudad, una época (1980).
  • Levine, R. M., Images of History: Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century
  • Latin American Photographs as Documents (1989).
  • Billeter, E., Fotografie Lateinamerika 1860-1993 (1994).
  • Mraz, J. (ed.), ‘Mexican Photography’, History of Photography, 20 (1996)

Bibliography

  • Mexico: The Revolution and Beyond. Photographs by Agustin-Victor Casasola 1900-1940, introd. P. Hamill (2003)
 
(mĕk'sĭkō) , Span. México or Méjico (both: mā'hēkō), officially United Mexican States, republic (2005 est. pop. 106,203,000), 753,665 sq mi (1,952,500 sq km), S North America. It borders on the United States in the north, on the Gulf of Mexico (including its arm, the Bay of Campeche) and the Caribbean Sea in the east, on Belize and Guatemala in the southeast, and on the Pacific Ocean in the south and west. Mexico is divided into 31 states and the Federal District, which includes most of the country's capital and largest city, Mexico City.

Land and People

Most of Mexico is highland or mountainous and less than 15% of the land is arable; about 25% of the country is forested. Most of the Yucatán peninsula and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the southeast is lowland, and there are low-lying strips of land along the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf of California (which separates the Baja, or Lower, California peninsula from the rest of the country).

The heart of Mexico is made up of the Mexican Plateau (c.700 mi/1,130 km long and c.4,000–8,000 ft/1,220–2,440 m high), which is broken by mountain ranges and segmented by deep rifts. The plateau is fringed by two mountain ranges, the Sierra Madre Oriental (in the east) and the Sierra Madre Occidental (in the west), which converge just south of the plateau. Within the plateau are drainage basins, which have no outlet to the sea and which contain some of the country's major cities. The Laguna District, one of the drainage basins, was (1936) the scene of a major experiment in land reapportionment. In the north the plateau is arid except for irrigated areas and is used principally for raising livestock.

In the south the deserts yield to the broad, shallow lakes of a region, comprising the Valley of Mexico, known as the Anáhuac and famous for its rich cultural heritage. South of the Anáhuac, which includes Mexico City, is a chain of extinct volcanoes, including Citlaltépetl, or Orizaba (18,700 ft/5,700 m, the highest point in Mexico), Popocatépetl, and Iztaccihuatl. To the south are jumbled masses of mountains and the Sierra Madre del Sur.

Among Mexico's few large rivers are the Rio Bravo del Norte, which forms the boundary with Texas, and its tributaries the Río Conchos and the Río Sabinas; the Río Yaqui, Río Fuerte, Río Mezquital, Río Grande de Santiago, and Río Balsas, which flow into the Pacific; and the Río Grijalva and Río Usumacinta, which flow into the Bay of Campeche. The climate of the country varies with the altitude, so that there are hot, temperate, and cool regions—tierra caliente (up to c.3,000 ft/1,220 m), tierra templada (c.3,000–c.6,000 ft/1,220–1,830 m), and tierra friá (above c.6,000 ft/1,830 m).

Mexico's 31 states are Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Campeche, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Mexico, Michoacán, Morelos, Nayarit, Nuevo León, Oaxaca, Puebla, Querétaro de Arteaga, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, Yucatán, and Zacatecas.

About 60% of the population are of mixed Spanish and indigenous descent, while about 30% are of purely indigenous ancestry, and 10% are of European descent. Spanish is the official language and various Mayan dialects, Nahuatl, and other indigenous languages are also spoken. Since 1920 the population of Mexico has had a very high rate of growth, almost entirely the result of natural increase; from 1940 to 2005 the population grew from less than 20 million to more than 100 million. However, declining fertility rates (from 7 children per woman in 1965 to slightly under 3 in 1998) are slowing population growth. Nearly 90% of the people are nominally Roman Catholic and 6% are Protestant. The country has numerous universities, notably in Mexico City, Saltillo, Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Puebla. Since precolonial times Mexican architects, painters, writers, and musicians have produced a rich cultural heritage (see Spanish colonial art and architecture, Mexican art and architecture, and Spanish American literature).

Economy

From the mid-1940s through the 1970s, Mexico generally enjoyed considerable economic growth, especially in industry. However, in the 1980s the economy, heavily dependent on sales of petroleum, incurred large international debts as petroleum prices fell. In the early 1990s, debt relief, diversification and privatization of the economy, and foreign investment showed positive effects, and the growth rate returned to historic levels. A new crisis arose with the collapse of the peso in the mid-1990s, forcing the adoption of austerity measures. A strong export sector helped the country to recover in the late 1990s, but the economy again went into recession in 2001, in large part because of the economic downturn in the United States. The Mexican government plays a major role in planning the economy and owns and operates some basic industries (including petroleum), but the number of state-owned enterprises has fallen substantially since the 1980s.

About 20% of the country's workers (including those largely outside the money economy) are engaged in farming, which is slowly becoming modernized. Because rainfall is inadequate outside the coastal regions, agriculture depends largely on extensive irrigation. Mexico produces a wide variety of agricultural products, including corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, beans, cotton, coffee, fruit, sugar, and tomatoes. Agave species (see amaryllis) are widely grown, and are processed into the alcoholic beverages pulque, mescal, and tequila. Livestock raising, dairy farming, and fishing are also significant economic activities.

Mexico is among the world's leading producers of many minerals, including silver, copper, gold, lead, zinc, and natural gas, and its petroleum reserves are one of its most valuable assets. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, petroleum constituted about three quarters of Mexico's exports. That figure fell drastically in the mid-1980s. While the petroleum industry has recovered substantially, diversification of industry is helping to keep Mexico's trade economy from becoming dependent once more on a single export.

Next to oil, the most important source of exports are the industrial assembly plants known as maquiladoras. Since the early 1980s there has been considerable foreign investment in the maquiladoras, which take advantage of a large, low-cost labor force to produce finished goods for export to the United States. These plants have increased Mexico's export production considerably. The economic importance of the maquiladoras, however, is exceeded by tourism. Favorite tourist centers include Acapulco, Cancún, Cozumel, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán, Cabo San Lucas, and Tijuana, as well as Mexico City itself and such highland centers as Guadalajara and Puebla. Remittances from Mexicans working, both legally and illegally, in the United States are also extremely important to the economy.

The principal industrial centers in Mexico are Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Juárez, Tijuana, Veracruz, Durango, León, Querétaro, Tampico, Mérida, and Puebla. Leading products include food and beverages, tobacco, chemicals, iron and steel, refined petroleum and petrochemicals, textiles and clothing, motor vehicles, and consumer goods. The country is also known for its handicrafts, especially pottery, woven goods, and silverwork. Mexico's chief ports are Veracruz, Tampico, Coatzacoalcos, Mazatlán, and Ensenada.

The leading imports are machinery, steel mill products, electrical and electronic equipment, motor vehicle parts for assembly and repair, aircraft, and manufactured consumer goods. The main exports are manufactured goods, crude oil, petroleum products, silver, fruits, vegetables, coffee, and cotton. Until recently, the annual value of Mexico's imports was considerably higher than the value of its exports. The United States is by far the largest trade partner, followed by China, Japan, Canada, and the European Union nations.

Government

Under the constitution of 1917 as amended, Mexico is a federal republic whose head of state and government is the president, directly elected to a nonrenewable six-year term and assisted by a cabinet. The bicameral National Congress is made up of the Senate, with 128 members serving six-year terms, and the Chamber of Deputies, with 500 members serving three-year terms. Ninety-six of the senators and 300 of the deputies are directly elected, while 32 of the senators and 200 of the deputies are chosen by a system of proportional representation.

History

To the Early Nineteenth Century

A number of great civilizations flourished in Mexico long before the arrival of Spanish conquistadores in the early 16th cent. The Olmec civilization was the earliest of these, reaching its high point between 800 and 400 B.C. The Maya civilization flourished between about A.D. 300 and 900, followed by the Toltec (900–1200) and the Aztec (1200–1519). Other notable civilizations of pre-Columbian Mexico are the Mixtec and the Zapotec.

The first Europeans to visit Mexico were Francisco Fernández de Córdoba in 1517 and Juan de Grijalva in 1518. The conquest was begun from Cuba in 1519 by Hernán Cortés, who with lieutenants such as Pedro de Alvarado managed to conquer the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán; to capture Montezuma, the Aztec ruler, and to bring down his empire; and to ward off Spanish rivals like Pánfilo de Narváez. In 1528 the first audiencia (royal court) was set up under Nuño de Guzmán, who later carried the conquest north to Nueva Galicia. The territory was constituted the viceroyalty of New Spain under Antonio de Mendoza in 1535.

Despite efforts by such men as Juan de Zumárraga to induce the indigenous population to accept European religious and social practices, the Spanish had difficulty establishing control, as is evidenced by such events as the Mixtón War (1541). Nonetheless, the small minority of Spanish succeeded in holding power over the rest of the population, and the society slowly developed three different status groupings—Spanish, native peoples, and mestizos (mixed Spanish and indigenous).

Although certain viceroys, including Luis de Velasco (both father and son), attempted to improve the material conditions of the indigenous peoples, there remained an unbridgeable gap in status between the wealthy, almost exclusively Spanish landowning class and the depressed laboring class on the land, in the mines, and in the small factories (chiefly the textile mills, called obrajes). The growth of an underprivileged mestizo class and the antagonism between those Spanish born in Spain (gachupines) and those born in America (criollos, or creoles) added to the stress.

The mercantilist system, under which manufacturing was largely forbidden in New Spain, drained the wealth of the country to Spain. Lesser officials often were corrupt and ignored the country's problems. At the same time, the Spanish succeeded in conquering new territory. Most of present-day Mexico and the former Spanish holdings in the present-day United States were occupied early. In the 16th cent. California was explored, but it was not until the middle and late 18th cent. that NE Mexico and Texas were occupied by Europeans in any large degree. Many of the administrative evils were ended by the reforms (especially that of 1786) of José de Gálvez, but discontentment with Spanish rule continued to grow among the creoles.

Independence

The establishment of the United States and the ideas of the French Revolution had considerable influence on Mexicans. The occupation (1808) of Spain by Napoleon I, who placed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne, opened the way for a revolt in Mexico. The priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla began the rebellion by issuing (Sept. 16, 1810) the Grito de Dolores [cry of Dolores], a revolutionary tract calling for racial equality and the redistribution of land. Armies, made up mostly of mestizos and natives and shunned by the creoles, sprang up under the command of Ignacio Allende, José María Morelos y Pavón, Vicente Guerrero, and Mariano Matamoros.

Hidalgo was at first successful, but lost (1811) the decisive battle of Calderón Bridge. By 1815, Morelos and Matamoros had been defeated, and Guerrero had been driven into the wilds. When the liberals came to power in Spain in 1820, the more conservative elements in Mexico (primarily the higher clergy and the creoles) sought independence as a means of maintaining the status quo. The royalist general Augustín de Iturbide negotiated with Guerrero, and they arrived (Feb., 1821) at the Plan of Iguala (see under Iguala), which called for an independent monarchy, equality for gachupines and creoles, and the maintenance of the privileged position of the church. Spain accepted Mexican independence in Sept., 1821, and a short-lived empire with Iturbide at its head was established (1822).

In 1823, the republican leaders Santa Anna and Guadalupe Victoria drove out Iturbide and a republic was set up with Guadalupe Victoria as its first president. Politics were dominated by groups formed around individuals (mostly army officers), each seeking his personal ends. There was a frequent turnover of governments, and the national budget usually ran a deficit. Guerrero, with the support of Santa Anna, became president in 1829, but was ousted in 1830 by Anastasio Bustamante. In 1832, the ambitious Santa Anna, who had a great influence over Mexican politics until 1855, toppled Bustamante and became president. Santa Anna fell from power after being captured during the Texas revolution (1836), but he served again as president from 1841 to 1844. Waste, corruption, and inefficiency were widespread at the time, as inequities in the social order went unchallenged.

The war with Texas led to an all-out war with the United States, the Mexican War (1846–48), which was ended by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which Mexico lost a large block of territory. After the war, Santa Anna returned to power as “perpetual dictator,” but he was overthrown (1855) by a revolution started (1854) at Ayutla. A group of reform-minded men came to the fore—Juan Álvarez, Ignacio Comonfort, Miguel and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, and, especially, Benito Juárez—and drafted the liberal constitution of 1857, which secularized church property and reduced the privileges of the army.

Conservative opposition was bitter, and civil war ensued; Juárez led the liberals to victory in the War of Reform (1858–61). The conservatives then sought foreign aid and received it from Napoleon III of France, who had colonial ambitions. French intervention followed and led to a brief and ill-starred interlude of empire (1864–67) under Maximilian, a Hapsburg prince. With the end of French aid the empire collapsed and Juárez again ruled Mexico, but political disturbances prevented the accomplishment of his reform program. Porfirio Díaz led a successful armed revolt in 1876 and, except for the period from 1880 to 1884, firmly held the reins of power as president until 1911. It was a period of considerable economic growth, but social inequality was increased by the favoritism shown the great landowners and foreign investors; the indigenous population sank deeper into peonage. The democratic institutions remained only as a veneer for oligarchic rule.

The Revolution

In Nov., 1910, an idealistic liberal leader, Francisco I. Madero, began an armed revolt against Díaz, who had gone back on his word not to seek reelection in 1910. Madero was quickly successful, and in May, 1911, Díaz resigned and went into exile. Madero was elected president in Nov., 1911. Well-meaning but ineffectual, he was attacked by conservatives and revolutionaries alike and was harassed by U.S. ambassador Henry Lane Wilson. In Feb., 1913, Madero was overthrown by his general, Victoriano Huerta, and was murdered. President Huerta's regime was dictatorial and repressive, and revolts soon broke out under the leadership of Venustiano Carranza, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, and Emiliano Zapata.

In 1914, Huerta resigned, partly because of U.S. military intervention ordered by President Woodrow Wilson, and Carranza became president. Civil war broke out again in late 1914, but by the end of 1915 Carranza had established control over the country, although Villa and Zapata maintained opposition bands for a number of years. In 1916, Villa led a raid into the United States, which resulted in an unsuccessful U.S. expedition into Mexico. Carranza sponsored the constitution of 1917, which was similar to the 1857 constitution, but which in addition provided for the nationalization of mineral resources, for the restoration of communal lands to native peoples, for the separation of church and state, and for educational, agrarian, and labor reforms. However, most provisions of the constitution were not implemented, and in 1920 Carranza was deposed by General Álvaro Obregón, his former military chief, who was subsequently elected president.

Under the Obregón regime (1920–24) some land was redistributed and, under the leadership of José Vasconcelos, numerous schools were built. Obregón was succeeded by Plutarco Elías Calles, who continued the agrarian and educational programs, but who became embroiled in serious controversies with the United States over rights to petroleum and with the church over the separation of church and state. In some regions militant Catholic peasants, called Cristeros because of their rallying cry—Viva Cristo Rey! [long live Christ the King]—were in open revolt, and in the country as a whole from 1926 to 1929 church schools were closed and no church services were held. Both controversies subsided, partly because of the intervention of the U.S. ambassador, Dwight Morrow. Reelected in 1928, Obregón was assassinated before taking office.

Calles remained the most powerful person in Mexico during the administrations of Portes Gil (1928–30), Ortiz Rubio (1930–32), and Abelardo Rodríguez (1932–34). In 1929 he organized the National Revolutionary party (in 1938 renamed the Mexican Revolutionary party and in 1946 the Institutional Revolutionary party), the chief political party of 20th-century Mexico. Calles's hegemony ended, however, with the inauguration (1934) of Lázaro Cárdenas. Vigorous and idealistic, Cárdenas instituted reforms to improve the lot of the underprivileged. He redistributed much land under the ejido system and supported the Mexican labor movement, which had suffered a setback under Calles (see Lombardo Toledano, Vicente for more detail).

Railroads were nationalized, and foreign holdings, particularly in petroleum fields, were expropriated with compensation. Educational opportunities were increased and illiteracy reduced, medical facilities were extended, transport and communications were improved, and plans were drawn up for land reclamation and for hydroelectric and industrial projects. A settlement with the church was reached. The pace of reform slowed under Manuel Ávila Camacho, who became president in 1940. Relations with the United States improved. In World War II, Mexico declared war (1942) on the Axis powers; it made substantial contributions to the Allied cause and also received considerable U.S. economic aid.

Developments since 1945

Since World War II, Mexico has enjoyed considerable economic development, but most of the benefits have accrued to the middle and upper classes; the relative welfare of poorer persons (small farmers and laborers) has remained the same or deteriorated. Under President Miguel Alemán (1946–52) vast irrigation projects and hydroelectric plants were constructed, and industrialization advanced rapidly. The improvements made in Mexico's rail network during World War II and the opening of the Inter-American Highway after the war encouraged more U.S. tourists to visit Mexico and thus increased the commercial value of one of the country's greatest assets, the beauty of its land.

Under the moderate presidents Adolfo Ruiz Cortines (1952–58), Adolfo López Mateos (1958–64), and Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964–70), the government continued to play a dominant role in national affairs, and attempts were made to improve the conditions of the lower classes. The tax structure was reformed somewhat, some large estates were confiscated and the land redistributed, and educational opportunities in rural areas were increased. In foreign affairs, Mexico maintained friendly relations with the United States, ratifying treaties settling long-standing border disputes in the El Paso, Tex., region (1964, 1967) and calling (1965) for the United States to maintain the freshwater content of the Colorado River, whose waters are used for irrigation in Mexico. Unlike most other American nations, Mexico maintained continuous diplomatic relations with Communist Cuba, but it supported the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962).

In 1970, Luis Echeverría Álvarez became president. He took steps toward reforming the government, but the first years of his term were marked by clashes between the left and right and attacks by guerrilas. He was succeeded by José López Portillo in 1976. In the 1970s, Mexico continued to expand its economy, borrowing significantly on the strength of its petroleum reserves. When oil prices fell sharply in the early 1980s, the country's ability to meet its international debt obligations was severely strained. Unemployment and inflation soared, private and foreign investment dropped sharply, and the population began migrating from rural areas into the cities and to the United States. The government of Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, who was elected president in 1982, responded with economic austerity policies, a renegotiation of Mexico's international debt, and a loosening of direct foreign investment regulations.

The economic crisis, the austerity measures imposed in response, and the added economic blow of a major earthquake in Mexico City in 1985 all contributed to popular discontent with the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI). Although the party's candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari won the presidency in 1988, his margin of victory was extremely narrow and was marred by charges of fraud, which much later (2004) were acknowledged by de la Madrid Hurtado to be true. Salinas continued the economic reform begun in the early 1980s, encouraging foreign investment, privatizing many national industries, investigating corruption in public offices, and working toward increased trade with the United States. The illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across the border, however, remained a problem in Mexico's relations with the United States.

In 1992, Mexico, the United States, and Canada negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which erased many trade barriers and created a trading bloc of 370 million people. However, in 1994 a Mayan-based uprising in the southern state of Chiapas provided a reminder of the poverty in which many Mexicans still lived. After protracted negotiations, accords providing limited autonomy for the Indians of the region were agreed to in early 1996, but the accords were not acted on by the government until 2001, when a version that contained watered-down clauses on Indian autonomy and control of natural resources were enacted as constitutional reforms. Also in 1994, Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, the PRI's presidential candidate, was assassinated for reasons that still remain unclear.

In Aug., 1994, in an election that was closely watched by international monitors to prevent fraud, the PRI's new candidate, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, won the presidency by a narrow but mainly unquestioned margin. Shortly after his inauguration in December, the government allowed the peso to float against the dollar; the peso plunged rapidly, investors backed out of Mexican markets, and the country was propelled into an economic crisis. In Feb., 1995, Mexico reached agreement with the United States on a $12.5 billion rescue plan, which provided U.S. funds to shore up Mexican banks while requiring Mexico to adopt stringent austerity measures and giving the United States a significant say in Mexican economic policies. Mexico was subsequently able to refinance the debt privately at a lower rate, and much of the loan was paid back in 1996, more than three years ahead of schedule. Ex-president Salinas was blamed for contributing to Mexico's economic crisis and was alleged to have been involved in misdeeds ranging from corruption to political assassinations.

In 1996 the PRI and the three main opposition parties signed an agreement designed to democratize the electoral process and further reduce the influence of the PRI. Although the PRI won the largest number of seats in the July, 1997, congressional elections, it did not have a majority and a four-party opposition coalition took control of the Chamber of Deputies. The two leading coalition partners were the conservative National Action party (PAN) and the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Early in 1998, Mexico and Norway joined with members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to set production limits on petroleum and thus bolster sagging world oil prices, which were having a devastating impact on Mexico's economy.

In the 2000 national elections, the PRI candidate, Francisco Labastida Ochoa, lost to the PAN candidate, Vicente Fox Quesada, a historic opposition victory that ended more than 70 years of PRI rule. The PRI and PAN each won two fifths of the seats in the lower house of the congress, but the PRI won nearly half the seats in the senate. Fox moved quickly to demilitarize the ongoing conflict in Chiapas and made concessions in order to win resumption of the negotiations, but he was unable to win passage of constitutional reforms in the form agreed to. Fox has had difficult relations with the congress, which has become more of an independent power within the government, and has been unable to rely on the support of members from his own party. The 2003 elections for the lower house, in which PAN lost more than 50 seats, did not improve this situation, and PAN suffered further losses in state elections in 2004 and 2005.

President Fox's hopes for close relations with the Bush administration (he had been friendly with Bush when the latter was governor of Texas) went unfulfilled after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, when the U.S. government refocused its attention on Al Qaeda and other foreign threats. As a result, Fox's desire to reach an agreement that would establish a less restrictive immigration policy that would benefit the many Mexicans working illegally in the United States seemed likely to be unrealized. Mexico also was adversely affected by the economic slowdown in the United States in 2001–2; some 240,000 jobs in the maquiladoras were lost as result.

In Apr., 2004, Mexico City's mayor, Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador, was arrested on charges of disobeying court orders in a land dispute, a move that was seen by many as a political attempt to bar the popular mayor from running in the 2006 presidential election. The arrest led to a protest march in the capital by perhaps as many as a million people. President Fox subsequently fired the federal attorney general, whose office had prosecuted Lopéz Obrador, and the charges were dropped in May, but the incident further damaged Fox's standing.

Illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States became a source of tension in Mexican-American relations in 2005. In the American Southwest governors publicly complained of the problem, and private American anti-immigration groups organized their own patrols along the border. U.S. President Bush failed to win passage of his proposed immigration overhaul bill, but in December the U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure calling for building a new border fence with security cameras and for criminalizing illegal immigration. The House's move especially angered many Mexicans, and it was vigorously denounced by President Fox, but legislation calling for 700 mi (1,100 km) of additional fencing along the border was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Bush in Oct., 2006.

In the July, 2006, elections, the PAN candidate, Felipe Calderón, narrowly edged Lopéz Obrador, the Democratic Revolutionary party (PRD) candidate, winning by less than 0.6% of the vote; the PRI candidate placed third. Lopéz Obrador accused Calderón of winning by fraud, and sought to have the election court order a ballot-by-ballot recount. There was no clear evidence of fraud, however, and European Union monitors certified the election as free of irregularities. PAN also won the largest number of legislative seats, with the PRD placing second. A partial recount was ultimately ordered, but the resulting changes in the vote had no effect on the outcome. Lopéz Obrador's supporters mounted significant demonstrations beginning in July, but after the vote was finalized in September the protests petered out, despite the candidate's refusal to recognize Calderón's victory. Calderón, who took office in December, moved forcefully in his first months in office against organized crime and drug cartels, using federal forces in operations involving seven states in an effort to combat crime and drug-related violence. In Sept., 2007, the president won a significant legislative victory when the Mexican congress passed a tax reform bill; an electoral reform package was passed in conjunction with the bill.

Bibliography

A number of historical sources have been translated into English, notably the letters of Cortés and the account of the conquest by Bernal Díaz del Castillo. See also W. H. Prescott, The Conquest of Mexico (3 vol., 1843; many subsequent ed.); O. Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude (tr. 1962) and The Other Mexico (tr. 1972); J. W. Wilkie, The Mexican Revolution (2d ed. 1970); A. J. Hanna and K. A. Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico (1971); N. Cheetham, A History of Mexico (1972); P. Calvert, Mexico (1973); N. Hamilton and T. Harding, Modern Mexico (1986); G. Philip, ed., The Mexican Economy (1988); R. E. Ruiz, Triumphs and Tragedy (1992); H. Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico (1994); A. Oppenheimer, Bordering on Chaos (1996); E. Krauze, Mexico: Biography of Power (1997).


 

During the XX International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) Congress in Paris in 1957, the Asociación psicoanalítica mexicana (APM; Mexican Psychoanalytic Association) became the first official Mexican affiliate of the IPA. Since that time, the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association has played a substantial role in the IPA: three IPA vice presidents have been from the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association, as have several members serving on nominating committees and on sponsoring committees within the IPA. The Mexican association has also had three members serve as president of the Federación psicoanalítica de América latina (FePAL; Psychoanalytic Federation of Latin America).

In the past, inadequate local training conditions in Mexico had sent many psychiatrists to Argentina, and also to the United States and France, countries that benefited when analysts fleeing from the Nazis enriched existing psychoanalytic training programs. The return of these now-trained analysts to Mexico produced transitory tensions with psychiatrists who had remained in Mexico. Their circumstantial encounter with Erich Fromm, who had come to Mexico only for his wife's health, diminished tension, as he helped to fulfill their needs for training, founding the Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis.

The founding group of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association included Santiago Ramirez, Ramón Parres, José Remus, Avelino González, José Luis González, and Rafael Barajas all of whom were training analysts. Victor Aíza, Fernando Cesarman, Luis Féder, Estela Galván Remus, and Francisco González Pineda were initially included as candidates, were later incorporated into the founding group of members. Carlos Corona and Alfredo Namnun eventually joined the Association. Santiago Ramirez and Parres pioneered psychoanalytical training in México City; Rafael Barajas in Monterrey. Successive generations and study groups included other important researchers in theoretical and applied fields.

Initially all doors and roads seemed closed. Though the Hospital General was blocked as a project for psychiatric training, eventually the Hospital Central Militar, Hospital Infantil, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Psychology faculty, and the Instituto Nacional de Pediatria, among others, opened their institutions to psychoanalytic training. After one year, the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association's influence spread to other medical and psychological spheres and to all disciplines, covering most socioeconomic and cultural levels within Mexico. The flow of patients with careers in the arts and sciences was remarkable. Mexican authors produced close to 3,000 articles in the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association's Cuadernos de Psicoanalisis (begun in 1965), in books, and in other national and international psychoanalytical journals.

The unexpectedly high demand for treatment oversaturated the available capacity, spawning large populations of self-appointed psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. From 37 groups studied that called themselves psychoanalytic, few had earned the name, a consequence of the continuing lack of international, regional or even national regulation of psychoanalysis as a career and title.

An anti-establishment psychoanalytic left "Plataforma" emerged during the turbulent mid-1960s. The Viennese-Argentine Marie Langer led a fight from Mexico, which spread throughout Latin America, against "ultra-rightist" Institutes. But the Plataforma soon disappeared. Some present Lacanian psychoanalysts are former plataforma members.

"L'Asociacion Regiomontana de Psicoanalisis", (ARPAC), is another psychoanalytic society, equivalent to the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association. It was founded in 1979 to serve the northern part of the country by a group of Monterrey Mexican Psychoanalytic Association members, including Diego Rodriguez, Roger Garcia, Alfonso Moreno Robles, Ruben Hinojosa and Ruben Tames. The founding members were later joined by Ricardo Diaz Conti, Cesar Garza and Hernan Solis. In 1993, the IPA recognized ARPAC as an independent affiliate.

As of 2005, the Association had 130 members and 22 candidates. Mexico City also suffers a consumer's crisis; patients who once averaged 3 to 4 visits a week only average 2 sessions as of the early 2000s. Peripheral groups are developing including Jungians, local and foreign Lacanians. The Mexican Psychoanalytic Association began to provide distance education and new projects for fellowships for each state were being considered. Josefina Mendoza was president of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association in 2005. The Institute of the Asociación Psicoanalitica Mexicana has had over 20 graduating classes. Its post-graduate programs include training analysis and child psychoanalysis. Its post-graduate center also trains psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapists. The Mexican Psychoanalytic Association has a full extension program and participates in applied psychoanalytic activities along with study groups, research, publishing, and two yearly congresses (one open, one closed).

The Association inspired and developed groups all over the country. Some of the groups in Mexico City include AMPAG—Analytic Group Therapy Association (founded by L. Feder, J. L. Gonzalez, G. Quevedo, F. Zmudt. Graduates: first generation, A. Palacios, H. Prado); IMPPA (Armando Barriguete); and Asociacion Mexicana de Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, founded by Santiago Ramirez, Dolores Sandoval, and others. In Guadalajara, there are two groups: GGPP (Varela and Gramajo) and APJ (Torres and Manuel Fernandez V.). There are nearly 10 other groups in other parts of Mexico. There are individuals practicing in Yucatan, Chiapas, Guadalajara, Cuernavaca, Aguascalientes, and Vera Cruz. Specialized psychoanalytic institutions and hospital services include IFAC (Family Therapy Institute), which provides family therapy, merging psychoanalytical and Frommian orientations; CPPO, bringing distinguished lecturers; and IMANTI, which provides special education.

Some of the contributions to psychoanalytical thought include the following: psychology of the Mexican (Santiago Ramirez); aggression and destructivity of the Mexican (González Pineda); studies on transference-countertransference (José Remus, Luis Féder); mammoth group psychotherapy (José Luis González); separation anxiety (Avelino González); child analysis (Victor Aiza, M. I. López; M. Salles, child psychiatry); ecocide and non-human objects relations (Fernando Cesarman); and the "unwanted child" developed into preconceptology theory and psychogenoma project (L. Féder team of J. Islas, R. Balderas, S. Weinstein). Significant training contributions have been made by Eduardo Dallal, M. A. Dupont, Jaime Ayala and José Camacho. Recent awards suggest that Mexico's creative and pioneering fervor continues into the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Féder, Luis and Marco A. Dupont. (1987). Aspectos de la siembra y cosecha psicoanalítica mexicana, Correio da Fe.P.A.L., 97.

Parres Ramón and Santiago Ramírez. (1966). Historia del movimiento psicoanalítico en México. In Fr. Alexander, S. Eisenstein, and M. Grotjahn (Eds.), Psychoanalytic Pioneers. New York and London: Basic Books.

—LUIS FÉDER

 

The Mexicans form a mestizo nation, born of the intermarriage of Spaniards and Native Americans, and their foods reflect this mixed heritage. Before the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish, the indigenous people created a sophisticated cuisine based on the staple grain maize (corn), which they cooked in a multitude of fashions, from everyday tortillas (griddle cakes) to festive tamales (dumplings). The conquistadors, hoping to establish a New Spain in the Americas, transplanted their familiar foods, particularly wheat bread, which was the foundation of the Mediterranean diet and the only grain accepted by the Catholic Church for the Holy Eucharist. Royal officials attempted to segregate Hispanic and native societies throughout the colonial period (1521–1821), but widespread race mixing occurred nevertheless. Ethnicity became a function more of culture than color, and eating corn or wheat, like speaking Spanish or Nahuatl, denoted a person's status. While the staple grains remained largely separate, culinary blending took place among the condiments, as indigenous cooks incorporated European meats into their moles (chili pepper stews) while Hispanics adopted native chilies and beans. The rejection of European doctrines of racial superiority came only after the revolution of 1910, when Mexicans accepted mestizaje as the national identity, and the combination of wheat bread and corn tortillas as the national cuisine.

In addition to class and ethnic divisions, Mexican cuisine contains tremendous regional variation. Perhaps the simplest classification consists of three complementary pairs: the mestizo foods of the central plateau and the indigenous center of Oaxaca in the south; foods of the frontiers of the Maya in the southeast and of Spanish settlement in the north; and the distinctive foods of the Gulf and Pacific coasts. Although Spanish influence tended to prevail in the north while the Indians better retained their culture farther south, no simple formula can capture the disparate topographies, climates, and settlement patterns that combined to produce these rich regional cuisines.

This diversity notwithstanding, a number of characteristics, common throughout Mexico, compose an identifiable national cuisine. As the original site of the chili pepper's domestication, Mexico has both the greatest botanical wealth of chilies, with some ninety different varieties, and the highest per capita consumption, since virtually no Mexican considers a meal complete without some kind of peppers. The structure of the meal, with a succession of individual courses, unifies the Mexican dinner table and distinguishes it from the combination plates found in restaurants north of the Rio Grande, which jumble together the rice—properly eaten before the main course—with the beans that should follow. A common calendar also exists, combining religious feasts such as Christmas and Easter, secular holidays like Independence Day, and community and family celebrations of saints' days and weddings, each with their own traditional foods. The Mexican diet has been changing recently as a result of globalization and the spread of both junk food and haute cuisine, but these influences represent merely the latest in a long series of culinary encounters.

Cosmic Cuisine

José Vasconcelos helped define the Mexican national identity in La raza cósmica (The Cosmic Race, published in 1927), which rejected Social Darwinist views about the problems of race mixture and instead proclaimed mestizos to be the highest form of human evolution. This new nationalist ideology, called indigenismo, brought about the revalorization of Mexico's native heritage, including the indigenous cuisine based on corn. But embracing the pre-Hispanic past did not imply a rejection of Spanish contributions to Mexico's development, especially wheat bread and European livestock. Many other ethnic groups also contributed to Mexico's "fusion" cuisine, from African slaves and clandestine Jews in the colonial period, to European and Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth century and Lebanese and North Americans in the twentieth century.

One of the most fundamental cultural clashes between Native Americans and Spaniards in the colonial period revolved around the staple grains, corn and wheat. Maize not only provided the nutritional basis of pre-Hispanic civilizations, accounting for as much as 80 percent of the caloric intake of common people, it also served as the basis for religion and identity. Spanish missionaries therefore sought to substitute the European wheat as part of their work of extirpating the idolatry associated with indigenous corn gods, but their evangelical mission was undermined by economics as well as taste. Corn made an ideal subsistence crop, growing well in all manner of ecological niches from the tropical forests of Yucatán to the mountains of the central plateau. Wheat, by contrast, was here a fragile plant, susceptible to disease, requiring lavish irrigation, and offering comparatively low yields even under the most favorable circumstances. As a result, corn remained the staple crop of the rural masses in both native and mestizo communities, while wheat was grown as a market crop for wealthy Hispanic city dwellers. The price differential between wheat bread and corn tortillas persists to the present day, as do many of the stereotypes formed during the colonial period. Affluent Mexicans invariably keep wheat bread on the table, even when serving dishes such as mole, which is more properly eaten with corn tortillas.

The greatest European influence on Mexican cuisine came from the introduction of livestock. Before the Spanish arrived, the native inhabitants consumed a basically vegetarian diet incorporating only two domesticated animals, turkeys and dogs. The deaths of millions of Native Americans due to Old World diseases such as smallpox and measles, against which they had no natural immunities, opened up large amounts of formerly cultivated land for grazing. With no competitors, the cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs, and chickens brought by the Spanish reproduced at a fantastic rate, although their numbers soon declined through overgrazing. During the colonial period, the elite retained the Spanish preference for mutton, and only the poor consumed beef. Over the course of the nineteenth century, with the adoption of French fashions, the consumption of beef surpassed that of mutton. Mexicans also developed an elaborate art of tocinería (sausage and other pork products), and pork fat became the invariable cooking medium, despite European preferences for olive oil and butter. Culinary blending occurred through the incorporation of chili peppers into Spanish dishes such as chorizos (sausages) and adobos (marinades). Although Native Americans initially rejected the taste of lard, they eventually learned to add it to tamales and beans, improving their taste and texture.

The complexity of culinary blending can best be seen in the debate over the origins of the national dish, mole poblano, an elaborate festival food of turkey served in a deep brown sauce of chili peppers, diverse spices, and a small amount of chocolate. Anthropologist Margaret Park Redfield, who studied the foods of a native community near Mexico City in the 1920s, at the height of the indigenista movement, described mole as an essentially pre-Hispanic legacy of chili cookery. Fifty years later, disillusioned by the Mexican government's refusal to respect indigenous rights, anthropologist Judith Friedlander examined a neighboring village and reached the opposite conclusion: that mole, with its numerous Asian spices, had been imposed by Spanish missionaries. A third interpretation, based on popular legend rather than scholarly analysis, attributed the complexity of mole poblano to the Baroque artistry of the city of Puebla, where colonial nuns supposedly combined Old World spices with New World chilies to symbolize the mestizo "cosmic race." The lack of pre-Hispanic and colonial culinary literature makes it impossible to resolve the question definitively, but all three versions probably contain an element of truth.

Successive waves of immigrants, despite their relatively small numbers, have added significantly to the culinary blending of Spanish and Native American. Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition came to the colonies, particularly the northern province (now state) of Nuevo León, where their distinctive dish, cabrito (roasted kid), remains a regional specialty. African slaves meanwhile diffused their skills with rice agriculture throughout the Caribbean basin, including coastal Mexico. In the eighteenth century Italians began arriving from Naples, then part of the Spanish Bourbon empire. They had already established noodle factories in Mexico City by the 1790s, not long after the industry was founded in southern Italy. After independence in 1821, British miners brought with them a taste for meat pies, called pastes, around Pachuca (Hidalgo), site of the Real del Monte silver mine. German immigrants opened up breweries, and by the twentieth century their beers had supplanted the native beverage pulque, the fermented juice of the maguey (century [agave]) plant. French foods were the most fashionable among the nineteenth-century Mexican elite; nevertheless, all of these immigrant foods underwent a process of nationalization, so that Parisians today would scarcely recognize many of the dishes served under French names in Mexico City.

More recent immigrants have also left their mark on Mexican cooking, although none more so than the fast-food invasion from the United States. Large numbers of Chinese settled in northwestern Mexico in the late nineteenth century after the United States passed exclusion laws forbidding them entry. Then in the 1920s Lebanese immigrants began arriving, particularly in Puebla and Yucatán, and the gyro became the inspiration for tacos al pastor (shepherd's tacos). By the 1940s industrial processed foods from the United States had acquired enormous popularity among the rising middle class. Aunt Jemima pancakes became a favorite breakfast food, while Coke and Pepsi battled for the soft drink market. Moreover, these imports had to compete with domestic products such as Pan Bimbo, a Mexican clone of Wonder Bread. The spread of junk foods to even the most remote indigenous communities by the 1970s further complicated Mexico's diverse gastronomic geography.

Many Mexicos

Of the many culinary regions in Mexico, none exhibit the mestizo blending to a greater extent than the central highlands. The city of Puebla, legendary home of mole poblano, illustrates Iberian cooking techniques used on native ingredients through the production of camotes (can-died sweet potatoes). Toluca is known for superb chorizo sausages combining pork with chili peppers. In the state of Hidalgo, shepherds pit-barbecue lamb wrapped in the leaves of the maguey to make a local specialty called mixiotes. Nahua Indians in the states of Mexico and Morelos cook nopales (cactus paddles), squash blossoms, and cuitlacoche (corn fungus) in quesadillas (corn pastries fried in pork fat). All of these different foods, and indeed the culinary traditions of the entire country, can be found in cosmopolitan Mexico City, with its countless markets, restaurants, and street vendors.

Oaxacan cuisine. In contrast to this cultural blending, indigenous communities such as the Zapotecs and Mixtecs in the southern state of Oaxaca have preserved their traditional foods. Unlike the complex blend of spices in mole poblano, the Oaxacan mole verde (green mole) derives its pristine taste from a few simple chilies and herbs, most notably the anise-flavored hoja santa. Oaxacan cooks wrap tamales in banana leaves instead of the corn husks common farther north, and they have raised tortilla making to a high art with the large, soft blanditas and tlayudas as well as the crisp totopos. The tiny grasshoppers known as chapulines, another local specialty, are flavored with smoky chipotle chilies and eaten in tacos with guacamole.

The Gulf Coast. Cooks along the Gulf Coast prepare seafood in both Mediterranean and pre-Hispanic styles. The snapper Veracruz (huachinango a la veracruzana) served in the eponymous port city contains olives, olive oil, tomato, capers, and only the mildest green peppers. Farther up the coast, at Tampico, one can sample the fiery hot crab soup called chilpachole. In the northeastern tropical forest of the Huasteca, ethnic groups such as the Totonacs make more than forty different types of tamales, including the legendary meter-long zacahuil, which can feed an entire village. Other seafood special-ties of the region include baked pompano, robalo al mojo de ajo (snook cooked in garlic), and various seafood soups, cocktails, and escabeches (pickled seafood).

The Pacific Coast. The most typical food of Pacific Coast states is not from the sea at all, but rather pozole, a hominy stew made with pork. This dish comes in a number of different varieties, red in Guadalajara, green and white to the south in Guerrero, and with tripe in the northern state of Sonora. A common street food, eaten late at night, pozole is served with chili powder, oregano, chopped onion, sliced radishes, shredded lettuce, and limes for squeezing. In port cities such as Acapulco, the citric acid of lime juice is used to "cook" fresh seafood into ceviche. The Purépecha Indians of Michoacán prepare a variety of distinctive tamales, most notably the triangular corundas and fresh-corn uchepos.

Yucatán. Mexico's southeastern frontier, the Yucatán peninsula, is home to the ancient Maya civilization, whose pre-Hispanic traditions can still be found in dishes such as papadzules, the "food of the lords." These enchiladas, made entirely of native ingredients, require the freshest possible tortillas, to avoid the need for frying with pork fat. They are stuffed with chopped hard-boiled eggs in place of cheese, then covered in two sauces: a green pipían made of pumpkin seeds and a tomato sauce lightly flavored with habanero chilies. Yet the Maya have also adapted to the latest trends of globalization with the queso relleno, a large Dutch cheese, imported duty-free at the port of Chetumal, and stuffed with picadillo (chopped meat filling).

Northern cuisine. The Mexican foods best known in the United States, wheat flour tortillas and beef fajitas, exemplify the cuisine of northern Mexico. Wheat tortillas represent a mestizo adaptation of Native American cooking techniques to the European grain in areas where expensive milling and baking facilities were unavailable. The finest wheat tortillas are from the Sonoran desert, where settlers learned to roll them into paper-thin, eighteen-inch rounds. Fajitas illustrate how working-class Mexican Americans took an inexpensive yet flavorful cut of meat, the flank steak or diaphragm muscle, then tenderized and cooked it in thin strips. Restaurateurs devised the sizzling iron plate as a fancy way of presenting an ordinary taco—bits of meat rolled up in a soft tortilla—although Mexicans generally eat corn rather than wheat tortillas. Another Tex-Mex food, chili con carne, was the simplest of moles: just beef, chili powder, oregano, and cumin. The addition of beans to chili probably began with Anglos, because it violates Mexican ideas about the proper sequence of a meal.

Daily Bread and Tortillas

The foods eaten daily by rich and poor Mexicans differ significantly, but there is nevertheless a common structure to their meals. Work in the fields governs the eating habits of campesinos (rural laborers), who generally take two meals, a small breakfast before men set off in the morning, and a more substantial dinner when they return in the evening. To have fresh tortillas ready for breakfast, women traditionally had to awaken several hours earlier to grind corn on a basalt metate (concave grindstone) and pat it out by hand into thin disks. Because tortillas grew hard and stale after a few hours, they had to be cooked on a comal (earthenware griddle) before each meal; the nixtamal (dough) likewise kept poorly, so the laborious grinding had to be repeated each day. One of the most significant social changes in Mexican history came in the first half of the twentieth century with the spread of mechanical mills capable of grinding the moist nixtamal. Freed from this onerous daily burden, women had the time to engage in commerce and craft production and thus begin to challenge the male domination of society.

In contrast to the austerity of the working class, wealthy Mexicans traditionally ate large amounts of food. The day began with desayuno, a simple breakfast consisting of a bread roll and coffee or hot chocolate, followed in midmorning by a substantial brunch, almuerzo, consisting of perhaps mole poblano or an omelette. The main meal, comida, began about two o'clock in the afternoon and progressed through an invariable sequence of four courses: a wet soup such as chicken broth, a dry soup of either rice or spaghetti, a main plate of roasted or stewed meat, and then beans. The elite accompanied their meals with imported wine, while members of the middle class drank the native pulque in the nineteenth century, and more recently beer. After awakening from an afternoon siesta, Mexicans took a merienda or snack of sweets, then returned to work for several hours. The cena or supper was taken quite late at night, often in cafés, with street foods such as enchiladas or tacos.

Class and ethnic distinctions were manifested less in the foods themselves than in their place within the daily routine. Native Americans in Oaxaca and elsewhere introduced European foods at the periphery, for example, by eating wheat bread for breakfast, while retaining the indigenous staples corn, beans, and chilies for their main daily meal. By the same token, the Hispanic elite consumed European foods for the central comida, and sampled lower-class foods of indigenous origin during the evening cena. Indeed, "slumming" at an all-night taco stand is still a favorite diversion of stylish Mexico City youth. The recent spread of an American-style workday, without the lengthy afternoon comida and siesta, has caused considerable loss of business for many upscale restaurants. Nevertheless, the traditional eating habits are preserved in numerous festivals throughout the year.

Celebrating Saints and Feeding the Dead

The festival foods of Mexico are as extravagant as the campesino diet is meager. Pre-Hispanic calendars contained numerous feasts dedicated to indigenous deities, which were replaced by Catholic holy days after the Spanish arrived. Each native community adopted a patron saint, and the inhabitants dedicated their meager savings to celebrating the saint's day with lavish abandon. Women worked for days with little rest to feed the entire community with dishes such as mole, tamales, and chocolate. These same elaborate foods were also prepared for family ceremonies including weddings, christenings, and funerals. The wealthy Hispanic society also feasted on such occasions, although their foods tended to feature more imported goods from Europe. In recent years, traditional festival foods have even replaced French cuisine in the most fashionable restaurants.

The primary feasts of the Christian calendar—Christmas, Easter, and All Saints' Day—are celebrated throughout Mexico. The traditional Hispanic Christmas Eve feast includes an elaborate salad of lettuce, fruit, nuts, and beets, followed by bacalao a la vizcaína (Biscay-style cod), made with tomato, olive oil, olives, and capers, and served with wheat bread and wine. Indigenous and mestizo families celebrate the Nativity with tamales and mole instead of imported luxuries. Good Friday features fish, lentils, romeritos (dried shrimp fritters with greens) and capirotada (bread pudding). All Saints' Day is stretched out over three evenings, from 31 October to 2 November, known as the Days of the Dead. Families decorate the tombs of deceased relatives and construct altars incorporating salt, water, candy skulls, and pan de muerto (bread of the dead), decorated with strips of dough resembling human bones.

The most important civic holiday, Independence Day, celebrated on the eve of 16 September has no definite culinary traditions. There are many tricolor dishes, most notably chiles en nogada, stuffed green chilies with white walnut sauce and red pomegranate seeds. Nevertheless, the essence of the holiday is the grito or cry of independence repeated by public officials in plazas throughout the country, which lends itself not to elaborate cookery but to simple street foods: tacos, fritters, beer, and