Modern Mexico is an extremely urbanized country with huge and no less massive problems within the 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 these are only official statistics, which, with an imperfect system of public administration, may not be entirely accurate. Let's take a look at the major cities in Mexico.
Capital
Mexico City is the capital and at the same time the largest city of the country. The majority of the population of 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 unsuitable conditions for life, do not have access to the education system, he alth care and are under constant threat of attack in unsafe areas.
Otherlarge cities of the country are significantly inferior in terms of population to the capital, but are burdened with the same problems: security, lack of access to clean water, environmental and transport problems.
Mexico's major cities: list
If the largest cities in the country include only those with a population of more than a million people, then the list will consist of ten names:
- Mexico City;
- Ecotepec de Morelos (or simply Ecotepec);
- Tijuana;
- Puebla;
- Guadalajara;
- Ciudad Juarez;
- Leon;
- Zapopan;
- Monterrey;
- Nezahualcoyotl.
Nezahualcoyotl is considered the smallest of the cities with a million inhabitants, barely crossing the line of a million people. This city is located east of the Mexican capital. Its name translates as "hungry coyote", and the coat of arms of the city is the head of this animal painted in gold with a gold necklace around its neck.
Another major city, Monterrey, is the center of the country's third largest agglomeration, second only to Mexico City and Guadalajara. However, the population of the city does not exceed one million one hundred thousand people. The settlement 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 location, the city was moved five times from one place to another. For the first time he wasfounded 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 prosperity and entered the top ten largest metropolitan areas in Latin America. Like other major cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico, Guadalajara attracts migrants from all over the continent, and this puts additional pressure on the social infrastructure. At the same time, the city is considered the "Mexican Silicon Valley", because electronics manufacturing and software development enterprises are concentrated here.
Globalization and neo-liberal reforms have led to significant 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 exacerbated throughout the nineties of the twentieth century.
Ethnic composition
Most of the inhabitants of large cities in Mexico are mestizos, descendants of the local population and European Hispanic 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 people, to which the Aztec tribe, well-known to Europeans, belongs. Most of the Indian population lives in the metropolitanfederal 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 organ 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 are a kind of staging posts on the way of illegal migrants and adventurers of all kinds. The situation is further aggravated by the fact that the Mexican police are not only unable to effectively combat international crime, but are often an integral part of it, contributing to the illegal trade in weapons, drugs and the transfer of people to the United States.
