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| Official name: Estados Unidos Mexicanos (United Mexican States)
Head of State: President Vicente Fox (PAN) (since Dec 2000) Head of government: President Vicente Fox Ruling party: Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) (National Action Party) (since Dec 2000, despite being in a minority in the Chamber of Deputies) Area: 1,958,201 square km Population: 102.80 million (2004) Capital: Mexico City (DF) Official language: Spanish Currency: Mexican peso (Mex$) = 100 centavos Exchange rate: Mex$11.39 per US$ (Nov 2004) GDP per capita: US$6,006 (2003) GDP real growth: 1.50% (2003) Labour force: 39.80 million (2003) Unemployment: 3.00% (2003) Inflation: 4.50% (2003) Oil production: 3.79 million bpd (2003) Balance of trade: -US$5.39 billion (2003) Foreign debt: US$151.00 billion (2003) |
Historical profile
The Olmecs inhabited the country around 3,500 years ago, their civilisation
reaching its peak about 1200 BC. By AD 500–600, the Mayas had risen to
prominence and Teotihuacan (where Mexico City now stands) was thriving, with
200,000 inhabitants.
1519 The Spanish, and Hernan Cortés, arrived. The Aztecs were the dominant culture.
1810–21 The Spanish colony became independent. Conflicts with the US and France ensued.
1876–1910 The Porfirio Díaz dictatorship, known as the Porfiriato, led to a series of revolutions and coups.
1911 Díaz resigned and was replaced by Francisco Madero, one of the revolutionary leaders.
1911–17 A period of civil war, with revolutionary peasant leaders Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata refusing to back the government.
1914 General Venustiano Carranza seized power, preventing the re-emergence of the Porfiriato.
1917 The institution of Mexico's modern liberal constitution which enshrined land reform and labour rights.
1920 Carranza was assassinated. Civil war broke out.
1929 President Plutarco Elías Calles created the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) (National Revolutionary Party), a multi-class party that developed institutionalised mechanisms which enabled and controlled popular participation in government.
1934 General Lázaro Cárdenas became president and restructured the PNR, renaming it the Partido de la Revolución Mexicana (PRM) (Party of the Mexican Revolution). He also created official unions for workers and peasants, which were controlled by the official party.
1939 Disenchanted middle-class conservatives launched the Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN) (National Action Party).
1940 Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico.
1946 Miguel Alemán became president and renamed the ruling party the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) (Institutional Revolutionary Party), signifying the final transition from the ideals of the revolution to liberal capitalism and a corporatist state.
1968 Growing disenchantment with authoritarian politics and rising urban poverty led to a series of mass demonstrations, culminating in a massacre of several hundred peaceful demonstrators, most of them young students.
1970 Luis Echeverría Alvarez became president, seeking to calm political turbulence through increased state spending and bolstering the power of trade unions.
1976 José López Portillo was appointed president. Oil revenues were used to borrow additional capital to initiate a rapid transition towards industrial development.
1982 An economic recession in the US, high international interest rates and falling oil prices sparked a debt crisis in which Mexico was unable to obtain enough loans to service existing debts and ran out of money. A programme of economic stabilisation and structural adjustment was initiated under the administration of President Miguel de la Madrid, creating divisions within the PRI.
1988 The PRI split. The left-wing corriente democrática joined a coalition of minor parties to back the candidacy of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of former president, Lázaro Cárdenas, in the presidential elections. Despite massive electoral fraud, Cárdenas still managed to come second behind the PRI's Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
1992 As part of Mexico's commitments in the run-up to the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), Salinas effectively repealed Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution which had guaranteed land reform.
1994 The Zapatistas led an uprising in Chiapas in response to the treatment of indigenous peasants and neo-liberal economic policy. The Zapatistas attracted worldwide sympathy and attention was fixed on the effects of economic policy and Nafta on the growing number of Mexico's poor. The PRI's presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was murdered; many believed the killing was carried out by members of his own party.
1994 Ernesto Zedillo of the PRI won the presidential election amid accusations of dirty tricks and vote-buying.
1997 Mid-term congressional elections left the PRI as the biggest single party in the lower house of Congress, but denied it an absolute majority. A deal was struck between the left-wing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) (Party of the Democratic Revolution) and the traditionally conservative Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), as well as two smaller parties, giving the opposition its first taste of real power.
2000 PAN won the elections, and the PRI lost the presidency and its majority in the Senate, as well as its status as the party with the largest number of seats in the lower house. The break with PRI rule was historic as the party, including its previous incarnations, had enjoyed continuous office since 1929.
2001 The Senate unanimously approved a constitutional bill granting autonomy to indigenous people, opening the way for peace talks with the Zapatista rebels, although this fell short of the demands of the Zapatistas.
2002 Roberto Madrazo won the elections for the leadership of PRI.
2003 An earthquake in January, estimated at 7.6 magnitude, was the strongest to hit Mexico in seven years.
2004 In July, some 250,000 peple demonstrated in the capital, Mexico City, against the ineffectiveness of the city and national governments in the face of violent crime and kidnappings.
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