Mexico has one of the world's largest economies, it is the tenth largest oil producer in the world, the largest silver producer in the world and is considered both a
regional power and
middle power.
[17][18][19][20] In addition, Mexico was the first
Latin American member of the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD (since 1994), and considered an upper-middle income country by the World Bank.
[21] Mexico is considered a
newly industrialized country[22][23][24][25] and an
emerging power.
[26] It has the
fourteenth largest nominal GDP and the
tenth largestGDP by
purchasing power parity. The
economy is strongly linked to those of its
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners, especially the United States of America.
[27][28] Mexico ranks sixth in the world and first in the Americas by number of
UNESCO World Heritage Sites with
32,
[29][30][31] and in 2010 was the tenth most visited country in the world with 22.5 million international arrivals per year.
[32] According to
Goldman Sachs, by 2050 Mexico is expected to become the world's fifth largest economy.
[33] PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) estimated in January 2013 that by 2050 Mexico could be the world's seventh largest economy.
[34]Contrary to a widespread misconception, Spain did not conquer all of the Aztec Empire when Cortes took Tenochtitlan. It required another two centuries to complete the conquest: rebellions broke out within the old Empire and wars continued with other native peoples.
After the fall of Tenochtitlan, it took decades of sporadic warfare to subdue the rest of Mesoamerica. Particularly fierce was the Chichimeca War (1576–1606) in the north.
Economics. The Council of Indies and the mendicant establishments, which arose in Mesoamerica as early as 1524, labored to generate capital for the crown of Spain and convert the Indian populations to Catholicism. During this period and the following Colonial periods the sponsorship of mendicant friars and a process of religious syncretism combined the Pre-Hispanic cultures with Spanish socio-religious tradition.
Equestrian statue of Charles IV in
Mexico City, the king was the maximum authority of the
Viceroyalty of New SpainThe resulting hodgepodge of culture was a pluriethnic State that relied on the "repartimiento", a system of peasant "Republic of Indians" labor that carried out any necessary work. Thus, the existing feudal system of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican culture was replaced by the encomienda feudal-style system of Spain, probably adapted to the pre-Hispanic tradition. This in turn was finally replaced by a debt-based inscription of labor that led to widespread revitalization movements and prompted the revolution that ended colonial New Spain.