Mexico
Area: 1,972,550 km² (World Rank 13)
Inhabitants: 109.95 Mio. (World Rank 11)
Mexico City is the capital of Mexico
The United Mexican States (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos (help·info)), or commonly Mexico (IPA: /ˈmɛksɪkoʊ/) (Spanish: México Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmexiko]), is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the North Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico. The United Mexican States is a federation comprising thirty-one states and a federal district, the capital Mexico City, whose metropolitan area is one of the world's most populous.
Covering almost 2 million square kilometers, Mexico is the fifth-largest country in the Americas by total area and the 14th largest in the world. With an estimated population of 109 million, it is the 11th most populous country and the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world.
As a regional power and the only Latin American member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since 1994, Mexico is firmly established as an upper middle-income country.
Mexico is the 12th largest economy in the world by GDP by purchasing power parity. The economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners. Despite being considered an emerging world power, the country's social and security problems keep it from being effective.
Elections held in July 2000 marked the first time that an opposition party won the presidency from the Institutional Revolutionary Party ("Partido Revolucionario Institucional" : PRI) which had held it since 1929, culminating the political alternation at the federal level, which had begun at the local level during the 1980s.