Full country name: United Mexican States
Area: 1,972,201 sq km
Population: 93.7 million
People: 60% mestizo (mixed European and Indian descent) and 30% indígena (Native Americans or Indians - including Nahua, Maya, Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Totonacs,
and Tarascos or Purépecha)
Language: Spanish and over 50 indigenous languages
Religion: 90% Roman Catholic
Government: Democracy
President: Ernesto Zedillo
It's a mountainous country with two north-south ranges framing a group of broad central plateaux known as the Altiplano Central. In the south, the Sierra Madre del Sur stretches across the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. From the isthmus, a narrow stretch of lowlands runs along the Pacific coast south to Guatemala. These lowlands are backed by the Chiapas highlands which merge into a steamy tropical rainforest area stretching into northern Guatemala. The flat, low Yucatán Peninsula is tropical savanna to its tip, where there's an arid desert-like region.