HISTORY

Human presence in Mexico has been shown to date back 40,000 years. For thousands of years, Mexico was a land of hunter-gatherers. Around 9,000 years ago, ancient Mexicans domesticated corn and initiated an agricultural revolution, leading to the formation of many complex civilizations.

For almost three thousand years, Aridoamerica (northern Mexico) and Mesoamerica (central and southern Mexico) were the site of several advanced Amerindian civilizations, among them the Olmecs, the Mayas and the Aztecs.

Mexico came under Spanish rule for three centuries before achieving independence early in the 19th century. In 1836, Texas declared independence from Mexico. The annexation of Texas by the United States created a border dispute that would cause the Mexican-American War which resulted in the resolute defeat of Mexico and as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), Mexico lost one third of its surface area to the United States. The country faced several upheavals in the 20th and 21st centuries.

A devaluation of the peso in late 1994 threw Mexico into economic turmoil, triggering the worst recession in over half a century. The nation continues to make an impressive recovery. 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). He was succeeded in 2006 by another PAN candidate Felipe Calderon.