Mexico

The United Mexican States (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos ), or simply Mexico (Spanish: México ), is a country located in North America, bounded 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 comprise a constitutional republican federation of thirty-one states and a federal district, Mexico City, one of the most populous cities on Earth.

Covering almost 2 million square kilometers, Mexico is the fifth-largest country in the Americas by total area and 14th largest in the world. With a population of almost 109 million, it is the 11th most populous country and the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world.

As 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. Elections held in July 2000 marked the first time that an opposition party won the presidency to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional: PRI), that held it since 1929, culminating a process of political alternation that had begun at the local level since the 1980s.