Transcript Mexico:A Social Demographic Profile

Mexico:A Social Demographic Profile
• Population: 104,959,594 (July
2004 est.)
• Growth Rate: 1.18% (2004 est.)
• Birth Rate: 21.44 births/1,000
population (2004 est.)
• Death Rate: 4.73 deaths/1,000
population (2004 est.)
• Sex Ratio:
– total population: 0.96
male(s)/female (2004 est.)
• Life Expectancy:
– male: 72.18 years
female: 77.83 years (2004
est.)
• Total Fertility Rate: 2.49
children born/woman (2004 est.)
Profile Continued…
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Natural Resources:
– petroleum, silver, copper, gold,
lead, zinc, natural gas, timber
Natural Hazards:
– tsunamis along the Pacific
coast, volcanoes and
destructive earthquakes in the
center and south, and
hurricanes on the Pacific, Gulf
of Mexico, and Caribbean
coasts
Ethnic Groups:
– mestizo (Amerindian-Spanish)
60%, Amerindian or
predominantly Amerindian
30%, white 9%, other 1%
Profile Continued…
• Languages:
– Spanish, various Mayan, Nahuatl, and other regional
indigenous languages
• Capital City: Mexico City
• Government Type: federal republic
• Religion: nominally Roman Catholic 89%, Protestant 6%,
other 5%
History of Mexico
• In 1519, the Mexican population totaled around 10 – 25 million people
• People lived in Hamlets and Villages called “calpulli”
• Houses were one or more windowless, four-sided rooms, constructed
of abode or stone with a smoke hole in the centre of a thatched roof.
Doorways opened onto a rectangular courtyard or patio; arranged
around this patio were other houses occupied by relatives.
• Villages usually included a maize grainary, a sweathouse, and a small
alter for religious offerings
• No form of alphabetical writing. They expressed themselves through
various medias
History Continued…
• Early women worked as marketers, doctors, artisans, priests and
occasionally rulers, and were therefore had high social status. But they
were rarely seen like this because men dominated the society and were
thought of as merely housewives most often.
• Mexican women’s status declined from the Pre-Hispanic Period until
the beginning of thee 18th century
• Mexico was conquered and ruled by the Spanish explorers during the
course of the 16th to the 19th centuries.
• Spanish arrived finding primitive groups inhabiting the southern
margin of the country and nomadic tribes living in the north
• Franciscans arrived in 1523 with campaigns of evangelization
• Christian marriages began soon after the missionaries arrived
– Monogamous marriages
• Plague swept Toluca Valley in the late 1750’s and early 1760’s
History Continued…
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Lake Texcoco became the largest
agglomeration of the American
world at the time with a population
of about 200,000 people.
In 1620, central Mexico’s
population reached a stunning
730,000 people
Languages and traditions were
changed as the Spanish tried
effortlessly to change the Native
people to God-fearing Roman
Catholics.
Temples were torn down and
traditional celebrations and
ceremonies were outlawed. Many
people practiced their own faith on
their own or with a small group in
hiding.
History Continued…
• War of Independence began on September 16, 1810
– Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla rings church bells and calls for
parishners to march against the tyranny
– Captured and executed 9 months later (now known as the “father
of his country”)
– Independence was gained on October 27, 1821
– Following independence, Mexico was beset by a new lot of trials;
economic decline, internal dissent, and civil war plagued the early
years of the nation.
Migration
• “migrants develop an
ever-growing dependency
on foreign labour, not in
order to promote
productive family
enterprises but to engage
in consumption that
increases their status in the
community”
–
Richard C. Jones
Migration Continued…
• U.S. migration established itself in the 1890’s and accelerated with the
Mexican Revolution, the Bracero epoch and the economic collapses of
the 1970’s and 1980’s
• During the 1990’s:
– Large portion of the population was employed in agriculture and
small portion in manufacturing
– Small part of the population in urban areas
– Population growth is low because of the out migration of men in
their reproductive years
– Internal migration is prevalent
Migration Continued…
• Today…
– Government projections show that, by the next two generations, more than
25 percent of the U.S. population will be of Latin American origin
– Emigrants are migrating to the U.S. for work
• Mexican minimum wage is 47cents/hour
• U.S. minimum wage is $5.75/ hour
– About 2 million Mexicans (some illegal immigrants) cross the U.S. –
Mexico border a year and remain there permanently
– Net Migration: -4.87 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2004 est.)
• More people are emigrating than immigrating from the U.S. border
mainly
Economy
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Economic improvement is the main reason for most migration
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free-market economy with a mixture of modern and outmoded industry and
agriculture, increasingly dominated by the private sector
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Trade with the US and Canada has tripled since the implementation of NAFTA
in 1994
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Free trade agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and the
European Free Trade Area in 2001
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More than 90% of trade under free trade agreements
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GDP: $941.2 billion
GDP per capita: $9,000
GDP growth rate: 1.3%
Economy Continued…
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Employment by sector:
– agriculture 18%
– industry 24%
– services 58%
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40% of the population is living below
the poverty line
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Agricultural Products:
– corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, beans,
cotton, coffee, fruit, tomatoes; beef,
poultry, dairy products; wood products
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Industrial Products:
– food and beverages, tobacco,
chemicals, iron and steel, petroleum,
mining, textiles, clothing, motor
vehicles, consumer durables, tourism
Economy Continued…
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Export Partners: US 87.6%, Canada 1.8%, Germany 1.2%
Import Partners: US 61.8%, China 5.5%, Japan 4.5%
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Since NAFTA agreement in 1991, Canadian trade with Mexico has increased a
great deal.
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Mexico is now seen as a region of growth and potential rather than economic
and political crises.
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With economy growing, urban population is also growing quite rapidly
– Problems
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Water supply
Sewage treatment
Traffic congestion
Unemployment
poverty
Wealthiest region of country is along the southern border because of
Maquiladora industry
Environment
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Before the Spanish conquest,
about two-thirds of the country
was forested. Today, only onefifth of the country remains
verdant, mainly in the south and
east.
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Maquiladora’s have a huge
effect on Mexico’s environment
– creating an overload on the
region's urban infrastructure
and its fragile ecology
– undisciplined and illegal
disposal of their waste material
Environment Continued…
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The CIA World Fact Book considers the following to be the biggest threats to
Mexico ’s environment:
– scarcity of hazardous waste disposal facilities;
– rural to urban migration;
– natural fresh water resources scarce and polluted in north inaccessible and
poor quality in center and extreme southeast;
– raw sewage and industrial effluents polluting rivers in urban areas;
– deforestation;
– widespread erosion;
– desertification;
– deteriorating agricultural lands;
– serious air and water pollution in the national capital and urban centers
along US-Mexico border;
– land subsidence in Valley of Mexico caused by groundwater depletion.
Environment Continued…
• North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) mandates that
Mexico raise its environmental protection standards to those in the
United States
• pollution control measures that went into effect in the mid-1990s have
succeeded in visibly improving air quality in Mexico City
• Mexico City has the worst air pollution in the country and ranks
among the most polluted cities in the world
• Overcrowding has also become a major problem in Mexico City, and
traffic concentrations, combined with the surrounding valley's
atmospheric conditions and Popocatépetl's sulfur dioxide emissions,
have resulted in heavy air pollution
• Koyoto Agreement (September 2000) - Because of its status as a
developing nation, Mexico is exempted from the need to reduce carbon
emissions.
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Mexico City
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Northern Mexico