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Anthem: “Himno Nacional Mexicano” “Mexican National Anthem”

Capital Mexico City
Official languages Spanish and 62 Indigenous Amerindian languages
Demonym Mexican
Government Federal presidential republic
Independence from Spain – Declared, September 16, 1810 / Recognized, September 27, 1821

Area 1,972,550 km² (15th) / 761,606 sq mi
Population 2007 estimate 108,700,891 (11th)
Currency Mexican peso (MXN)

[show-map id=’13’] Geography
Situated in southern North America Mexico comprises much of Middle America.   Mexico is bordered by the United States to the north and Belize and Guatemala to the south. Mexico is about one-fifth the size of the United States. Baja California in the west is an 800-mile peninsula and forms the Gulf of California. In the east are the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Campeche, which is formed by Mexico’s other peninsula, the Yucatán. The center of Mexico is a great, high plateau, open to the north, with mountain chains on the east and west and with ocean-front lowlands lying outside them.  Mexico is the world’s 14th largest country by total area, and includes approximately 6,000 km² of islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Mexican culture reflects the complexity of the country’s history through the blending of pre-Hispanic civilizations and the culture of Spain, imparted during Spain’s 300-year colonization of Mexico. Exogenous cultural elements mainly from the United States have been incorporated into Mexican culture. As was the case in most Latin American countries, when Mexico became an independent nation, it had to slowly create a national identity, being an ethnically diverse country in which, for the most part, the only connecting element amongst the newly independent inhabitants was Catholicism.  The Porfirian era (el Porfiriato), in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century, was marked by economic progress and peace.   After four decades of civil unrest and war, Mexico saw the development of philosophy and the arts.  Since that time, though accentuated during the Mexican Revolution, cultural identity had its foundation in the mestizaje, of which the indigenous element was the core. In light of the various ethnicities that formed the Mexican people, José Vasconcelos in his publication La Raza Cósmica (The Cosmic Race) (1925) defined Mexico to be the melting pot of all races (thus extending the definition of the mestizo) not only biologically but culturally as well.   This exalting of mestizaje was a revolutionary idea that sharply contrasted with the idea of a superior pure race prevalent in Europe at the time.

*Content gathered from Wikipedia