Mexico
POPULATION 103,400,165
ROMAN CATHOLIC 88.0 percent
PROTESTANT 5.8 percent
NONRELIGIOUS 4.3 percent
OTHER 1.9 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
The United States of Mexico, located in North America, lies between the United States of America to the north and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast. Mexico is composed of a diversity of ethnic groups. The majority are mestizos (people of mixed Spanish-Indian blood), while the remainder include Amerindians (with 239 living languages), Caucasians, Afro-Americans, Middle Easterners, and Asians.
Spanish explorers arrived in Mesoamerica in the early sixteenth century C.E.. They discovered some of the greatest cultures in the history of the Americas, including the Olmec civilization, which began about 1200 B.C.E., and the Aztec empire, which dominated the central and southern regions of Mexico in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) and his followers—Spaniards and a thousand allies from Tlaxcala (an Indian nation that had resisted Aztec rule)—conquered the Aztecs in 1519–21 and established Spanish rule in the region. During the colonial period the Roman Catholic Church dominated the religious life of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. A small number of Spanish Jews also arrived in the region during and after the Spanish conquest.
After Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821, the Catholic Church began to lose its privileged role in Mexican society, although it continued to monopolize the country's religious life.
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