Live in Mexico, Geography and Climate

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Despite its Latin American ties, Mexico is located in North America. Mexico is south of the U.S., north of Belize and Guatemala and surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. The fifth largest country in the Americas and the fourteenth largest in the world, Mexico’s 760,000 square miles land mass is about one-fifth the size of the U.S.

Mexico spreads south from the U.S. border along its great central highland plateau, which occupies most of the width of the country from the U.S. border to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The central plateau is about 4,000 feet in elevation in the north and rises to around 8,000 feet in the center of the country. The Sierra Madre Oriental and the Sierra Madre Occidental flank the central plateau on the east and the west. Volcanic peaks rise to over 17,000 feet in several areas of the country. The high country descends to the coastal lowlands along Mexico’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts. Across the Sea of Cortez, the Sierra de Baja California and the Peninsular Ranges run down the center of the Baja California peninsula, with desert lowlands or fertile valleys extending to both Baja’s east and west coasts.

The Rio Grande, known as the Rio Bravo del Norte in Mexico, is Mexico’s most important river, extending 1,300 miles from the U.S. border.

Keeping time in Mexico is very easy since the country observes three of the time zones used in the U.S. Most of the country uses Central Standard Time. The Mexico states of Chihuahua, Nayarit, Sonora, Sinaloa and Baja California Sur use Mountain Standard Time and Baja California Norte uses Pacific Standard Time. Daylight Saving Time is used everywhere except the northern border state of Sonora, which remains on Mountain Standard Time throughout the year.

Mexico has a varied climate depending primarily on latitude and elevation. The Tropic of Cancer divides Mexico into temperate and tropical zones. North of it, cooler temperatures prevail during the winter months. To the south, temperatures generally are constant, but vary, depending upon elevation.

Areas south of the Tropic of Cancer with low elevations, which include the southern coastal plains and the Yucatan Peninsula, have an annual median temperature between 75 F and 82 F. Temperatures remain high throughout the year with less than a 10 F difference in median temperature between winter and summer.

As elevation rises toward the central plateau, yearly average temperatures range from about 61 F to 68 F. If you are living at this altitude, expect relatively constant temperatures throughout the year. North of the Tropic of Cancer, though, temperature swings are much larger.

Most of the country experiences a rainy season from June to mid-October and significantly less rain during the remainder of the year. February and July generally are the driest and wettest months, respectively.

Hurricanes affect regions of both coasts from June through November. West coast hurricanes are often less violent than those affecting Mexico’s eastern coastline. Earthquakes are also very common. The country’s Pacific coast is part of the earthquake-prone “Ring of Fire” that frequently generates very large earthquakes. Volcanic eruptions also occur in the central-southern part of Mexico.

People and Culture

Officially called the United Mexican States (Estados Unidos Mexicanos), Mexico’s over 123 million population makes it the eleventh most populous country in the world. Mexicans live in thirty-two states, including the Federal District of Mexico.

Mexico is the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world. Nearly 93 percent of the population speaks Spanish. Mayan, Nahuatil and other indigenous languages also are spoken in Mexico.

Around 60 percent of Mexicans are of Indian-Spanish (mestizo) descent, another 30 percent are Indian and 9 percent are Caucasian. Just over 80 percent of the Mexican people belong to the Catholic Church, down from over 90 percent in the 1990s. That number still makes Mexico the second largest Catholic country in the world, behind Brazil.

Mexico’s capital city, Mexico City, is a sprawling urban area of over 21 million people, making it the largest metropolitan area in the Western Hemisphere and the fifth largest metropolitan area in the world. Located in Mexico DF (Federal District), the city sits in the Valley of Mexico at an altitude of 7,350 feet. It was originally built on an island in Lake Texcoco by the Aztecs in 1325 and was known as Tenochtitlan. Guadalajara is Mexico’s second largest city with a metropolitan population of nearly 4.5 million. Located in the central highlands, Guadalajara is a major commercial center. Farther north, Monterrey, Mexico’s third largest city with about 4 million people, is the industrial capital of the country.

Before the Spanish colonization in 1519, Mexico was the site of advanced Amerindian civilizations, which had elaborate urban centers for religious, political and commercial use. The Olmec civilization flourished from about 1600 B.C. to 400 B.C. in the south-central lowlands of Mexico. A later civilization in Teotihuacan reached its peak around 600 AD, and greatly influenced the cultural and theological systems of the Toltec and Aztec civilizations that followed. The Maya civilization, which existed for several thousand years, reached its peak between 250 and 900 A.D. throughout southeast Mexico and northern Central America.

From the time of Hernando Cortez’s conquest, Mexico was a colony of Spain. Along with other Spanish colonies in the New World, Mexico fought and gained its independence. On Sept. 16, 1810, in the town of Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico won its independence from the Spaniards. That date is now celebrated as Mexico’s Independence Day. In 1910, Francisco Madero led a revolution against the autocratic leader Porfirio Diaz that lasted a decade and led to a new Mexican Constitution in 1917.

In late 1994, a devaluation of the peso threw Mexico into economic turmoil, triggering the worst recession in over half a century. The elections held in 2000 marked the first time since the 1910 Mexican Revolution that an opposition candidate – Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) – defeated the party in government, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

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