Mexico City

Mexico City is the capital of Mexico, it has the status of Federal District because it is the residence of the Federal goverment.

History

The current place where Mexico City is located was originaly a lake, many different tribes came and went without establishing a culture as important as other in the southeast of today's Mexico.

It was not until the arrival of the Aztec, a tribe of people comming from the west, when Mexico City aquired a place of importance.

The Aztecs migrate following an ancient legend that prophesized that they will find the site for their new city in a place were they will see a mythical vision fullfiled. The vision was that of an eagle eating a snake while standing in a cactus. The Aztecs came accross this vision on what was then a lake. Not deterred by this, they invented a system to dry the land by setting up small plots in which they produced all the food they required. When enough land was dry they would begin to build there. This way Tenochtitlan (Nahutal? name for the city) was born.

A thriving culture developed, the Aztec empire dominated (with Tenochtitlan as the capital) other tribes all around Mexico and established commerce routes that provided all kind off goods from all the corners of the empire bringing goods from places as far as the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific Ocean and perhaps even the Inca empire.

Their religious beliefs demanded human sacrifices whose victims were provided capturing prisioners in wars against their neighbours. In stark contrast with these beliefs, the Aztec people had poets, music, dance and impressive architecture which will marvel the Spanish conquerors when they arrived to Tenochtitlan.

The city was conquered by the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés in 1521 who commanded a few Spanish troops and whose genius consisted in ally himself with tribes enemies of the Aztecs.

After the fall of Tenochtitlan, Mexico City became the center of politcal, religious, economical and cultural power of the new Spanish colony, then known as [New Spain]?. On top of the ruins of the Aztec empire, and very often using the materials of the destroyed Aztec buildings, the Spanish built a new city from where all of New Spain and later the Phillipines? will be governed.

Economy

Politics Mexico City due to its very special situation as home of the Federal powers, has gone through several transformations of its local goverment. Since Mexico became independent some times the city had a local goverment and for the most part of the XXth century the goverment depended direclty from the President of the Rebuplic, who delegated his authority in one person that used to have a post at ministerial level (Regente, Regent in English).

This kind of political organization brought a lot of resentment amongst the inhabitants of the city because they were deprived for many years of a goverment that properly represented them, the most serious situation arising in 1988 in which people from Mexico City clearly voted for oposition candidates but in spite of that they were ruled for six years by the party that won the federal presidency.

Political reform under this circumstances became inevitable. First a local congress was established and people were able to elect their Mayor for the first time (both had still limited powers dependent onf the Federal congress and the President of the country).

Little by little the organization of the city has changed devolving more power to local authorites.

As a result of clean, fair elections, Mexico City has been governed by politicians of parties that during the PRI? rule didi not have any chance to gain power.

The first democraticaly elected chief of goverment was [Cuahutemoc Cardenas]?, a former Presidential candidate (and according to many, winner of the 1988 presidential election, which favored [Carlos Salinas de Gortari]?, after what was a very disputed and suspect election).

A measure of the democratic development in Mexico is that the current (2001) chief of goverment in Mexico City is Andrés Manuel López Obrador, from a party called PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) which has a left ideology (many of its members come from the Communist Party) while at the same time the Federal goverment has a conservative President.