Mexico City

V

Recreation

Many of Mexico City’s recreational facilities revolve around family activities. Families use Chapultepec Park intensively, especially on Sundays, when they picnic under the trees, stroll through the eucalyptus glades, or visit the park's zoo, amusement park, and museums. Within the park also is a small lake, where families rent rowboats and dine at waterside restaurants.

Southeast of the city are the floating gardens of Xochimilco. The gardens are the last remnants of Lake Texcoco, which once surrounded the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. The floating gardens received their name from the ancient Aztec practice of anchoring baskets of earth in the lake to create new land. Xochimilco’s network of canals and small islands serves both as a recreational area and as a reminder that water once covered much of the valley floor.

Popular sports in Mexico City include soccer, jai alai (a ball game of Basque origin), and bullfighting. Azteca stadium seats 100,000 people and hosts regular soccer matches. It was the site of the 1970 and 1986 World Cup international soccer championships. The city is home to the world's largest bullfighting arena, the 50,000-seat Plaza Mexico, sometimes called the Monumental Plaza Mexico.

VI

Economy

Mexico City dominates the nation’s economy. The Federal District produces a significant portion of Mexico's gross domestic product, or GDP (the total value of goods and services produced in the country). The federal district area accounted for 12 percent of GDP in 1998.

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Mexico City is the center of a manufacturing belt that stretches from Guadalajara in the west to Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico in the east. Manufactures include textiles, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, electrical and electronic items, steel, and transportation equipment. In addition, a variety of foodstuffs and light consumer goods are produced.

The city plays a dominant role in Mexico's banking and finance industries. It is home to Banco de México (federal reserve bank), the Bolsa (stock exchange), and every major banking chain in the country. All major financial services, including insurance companies, are centered in Mexico City.

Agriculture, mining, and trade dominated Mexico City’s economy for most of its history. An industrial economy began to take root in the early 1900s. However, industry did not become the leading economic activity until government investment programs encouraged large-scale growth of manufacturing and other industrial production in the city in the 1940s and 1950s.

During the 1980s, however, the government began to encourage industrial and manufacturing development in other areas of the country in an attempt to reduce pollution and overcrowding in the city. These attempts led to the decline of industrial production and employment in the city. From 1980 to 1988, Mexico City lost almost 100,000 (about 25 percent) of its industrial jobs. Although the city has lost industrial and manufacturing jobs, other sectors of its economy, notably services and commerce, have grown.

The concentration of economic activity in the city attracted people from rural areas in search of employment. People moved to the city faster than new jobs were created. Many of these new residents of Mexico City were unskilled workers. They were unable to find employment in the city, contributing to problems of unemployment and underemployment.

Mexico City is the hub of Mexico's transportation system. Major highways and railroads radiate from the city to all parts of the country. Benito Juárez International Airport, the capital's only airport, is located just east of the center of the city. It offers direct flights to many world capitals. Bus terminals in the city serve the needs of cross-country travelers and have largely replaced passenger service by rail.

Mexico City's motor vehicles produce serious traffic and pollution problems. Commuters within Mexico City are served by a fleet of local buses and a subway system, the Metro, which opened in 1969 with some 40 km (25 mi) of track. During the 1970s, the number of riders increased dramatically, and the Metro expanded its lines. In spite of the expanded system, the Metro is fully used and crowded most hours of the day.

VII

Government

The political structure of Mexico City and the Federal District was formalized by the 1917 constitution. Under the constitution, the Federal District included Mexico City and several suburban cities, and it was governed by the head of the Department of the Federal District. The department was responsible for all activities normally associated with city government, including police, public works, and transportation. The head of the Department of the Federal District exercised the combined powers of mayor of Mexico City and governor of the district. Until the 1990s, the president of Mexico appointed the head of the department.

The department became more important as the population of the city grew dramatically, as Mexico City became the center of the country's industrial growth, and as intellectual and professional resources concentrated within its boundaries. The department became one of the largest, most influential federal bureaucracies. Residents of the Federal District became increasingly dissatisfied with a political situation that denied them the right to vote for what, in effect, would be their governor or mayor.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the national government enacted reform legislation that transferred control of the Federal District’s government from officials appointed by the nation’s president to politicians elected directly by the voters of the Federal District. In 1988 residents began electing representatives to an Assembly of the Federal District, a newly created legislative body. However, the assembly exercised little influence on policy decisions affecting the district.

The district eventually approved legislation that established an elected position for Mexico City and the Federal District, creating a powerful new political office directly accountable to the residents of the district. The new position was the head of the Federal District (often referred to as the mayor of Mexico City). The first election was held in 1997. Voters elected Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), one of Mexico’s major opposition parties.

VIII

Contemporary Issues

Among the issues that the government faces, none is more important to Mexicans than the rapid increase in street crime. Although statistics are unreliable, observers agree that robbery, assault, and murder have increased dramatically since 1994. Mexico City has gone from one of the safest metropolitan areas in the world to one of the most dangerous.

Health care is also a pressing issue in Mexico City. Nationally, 36 percent of Mexicans had access to health-care coverage in 1995, while 22 percent used such services. In the Federal District, 46 percent of the people had access to health services the same year, but only 18 percent used them. Although the residents in the Federal District have higher than average access to health care, infant mortality rates are among the highest in the nation—21 deaths among 1,000 infants under the age of one. These rates are so high because access to health care is distorted, largely confined to middle and upper classes. Large concentrations of low-income families do not have adequate health care. In addition, Mexico City’s extraordinarily high levels of air pollution are particularly detrimental to the health of infants. Homeless children are increasingly an issue, too. Mexico was estimated to have 13,373 children living on the streets in 1995.

Adequate housing has long been a problem in the capital, although the Federal District ranks well above the average for the entire country. For example, the average occupant per room was 1.1 in the Federal District in 1995, but 1.5 nationally. More than 75 percent of private homes in the Federal District had 3 or more rooms in 1995, compared to 66 percent nationally. Housing in the Federal District ranks higher than other parts of the country in terms of qualitative services, such as water and sewage.

Mexico City, like so many metropolitan areas worldwide, faces problems because workers do not live near where they work. Mexico City has excellent subway and bus systems, but they are inadequate given the number of daily commuters. In addition, the freeway system has not kept pace with the increased use of automobiles.

Automobile pollution, which accounts for two-thirds of all air pollution in the city, reduced visibility from more than 16 km (10 mi) in the 1930s to less than 4 km (2.5 mi) in the 1960s. It also has created serious smog problems. Since mountains surround the city, the smog often remains trapped in the valley basin.

The government has attempted to alleviate traffic congestion by constructing a controlled-access beltway, the Periférico, along the city's western and southern edges. It has also created a grid of high-volume roads crossing the city at regular intervals. In the late 1980s, the government resorted to a system whereby cars with certain license plates could travel within the city only on selected days. None of these approaches has solved the city's air pollution problems. Air pollution in the city reaches harmful levels more than half the days of the year.

IX

History

Founded in 1325, the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán was built on an island in Lake Texcoco, the site of present-day Mexico City. The city was the military and administrative center of the Aztec Empire, which included large parts of Mexico and Central America. Tenochtitlán is estimated to have had a population of about 200,000 people, making it one of the world's largest settlements when Europeans first arrived in the Americas in the early 16th century.

Tenochtitlán was built around a series of temples and pyramids. It was organized into a series of calpulli (Aztec for “clans”), each forming a loose neighborhood of the city. The calpulli fulfilled different economic roles, and each acted as an army battalion. The Aztec emperor was selected from the calpulli leadership.

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