Modern Mexico is an extremely urbanized country with huge and no less large-scale problems within settlements. There are only ten cities with a population of more than a million people in the country. Ten more - with a population of 700 to 950 thousand. However, it should be borne in mind that this is only official statistics, which, with an imperfect system of government, may not be entirely accurate. Let's look at the major cities of Mexico.
Capital
Mexico City is the capital and at the same time the largest city in the country. Most of the population in this metropolis speaks Spanish. Strictly speaking, when calculating the population of Mexico City , the term agglomeration is used, the number of which is about twenty million people.
The Mexican capital occupies the most important place in the state economic system and attracts people from all over the country. However, the city can hardly be called comfortable for life - a large number of citizens live in conditions unsuitable for life, do not have access to the education system, health care and are under constant threat of attack in unsafe areas.
Other major cities of the country are significantly inferior in population to the capital, but are burdened with the same problems: security, lack of access to clean water, environmental and transport problems.
Major Cities of Mexico: List
If we include only those with a population of more than a million people among the largest cities in the country, the list will consist of ten names:
- Mexico City
- Ecotepec de Morelos (or just Ecotepec);
- Tijuana
- Puebla;
- Guadalajara;
- Ciudad Juarez;
- Leon;
- Trapped;
- Monterrey
- Nesaualcoyotl.
The smallest of the cities with a million inhabitants is Nesaualcoiotl, which barely crosses the line of a million people. This city is located east of the Mexican capital. Its name translates as "hungry coyote", and the emblem of the city is the head of this animal painted in gold with a gold necklace on its neck.
Another major city, Monterrey, is the center of the country's third largest metropolitan area, second only to Mexico City and Guadalajara. However, the population of the city does not exceed one million one hundred thousand people. The village is located in the north of the country in relative proximity to the American border and is the largest in the northern regions of Mexico.
Guadalajara - a new city in an old place
Before being built in its current place, the city was transferred five times from one place to another. It was first laid in 1532 in the form of a small fortification to protect against the aggressive local population, which at that time still had the strength to resist the conquerors.
However, today the city has reached incredible heights and entered the top ten largest cities in Latin America. Like other major cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico, Guadalajara attracts migrants from all over the continent, and this creates an additional burden on social infrastructure. At the same time, the city is considered to be the “Mexican Silicon Valley," because the enterprises producing electronics and software are concentrated here.
Globalization and neoliberal reforms have led to substantial economic growth in the city. The weakening of state control stimulated the growth of private investment in construction, the emergence of retail chains and attracted large international business. However, the rapid growth of the economy went hand in hand with the growth of social inequality, which was aggravated during the nineties of the twentieth century.
Ethnic composition
Most of Mexico’s major cities are mestizos, descendants of the local population and European Spanish-speaking conquerors. However, the local population did not completely dissolve in the waves of new settlers and partially retained their identity. Among the descendants of the Indians, the largest group is the Nahua nation, which includes the Aztec tribe, well-known to Europeans . Most of the Indian population lives in the metropolitan federal district. The total number of Indians around Mexico City is approximately 360 thousand people.
Problems of large cities
One of the main problems of large cities in Mexico is crime. The geographical position of the country, which serves as a kind of buffer between the poor or developing countries of South America and the United States, makes it extremely vulnerable to international organized crime, which is represented on the territory of the state by drug cartels, human traffickers and organizers of illegal migration to the United States.
The areas along the long Mexican-American border are among the most criminal in the country. They represent a kind of transit points on the way of illegal migrants and adventurers of all sorts. The situation is further aggravated by the fact that the Mexican police are not only incapable of effectively combating international crime, but often an integral part of it, and facilitating the illicit trade in arms, drugs, and the transfer of people to the United States.