Mexico City, as its name suggests, is the capital of Mexico, being located in the southern portion of the Mexico Valley, two thousand and three hundred meters high. Considered the largest city in the world, the Mexican capital has more than twenty-two million inhabitants in its metropolitan area. The metropolis was built on top of the Aztec capital during Spanish colonization, which took advantage of the existing buildings to found another strategic point in America.
In fact, the first natives to inhabit the place settled on the shores of Lake Texcoco, approximately fifteen hundred years before Christ. With the growth of the Aztec Empire, an island in the center of the lake was the chosen place, in the year 1325, to build its capital, which was called Tenochtitlan. Less than two hundred years later, however, Spanish explorer Herman Cortes discovered Tenochtitlan, which was promptly invaded and destroyed to make way for a new city, belonging to Spain. This new city was chosen as the Spanish capital in that region of America and quickly its new inhabitants started to build drainage channels for the lake, new streets and buildings.
In the year 1821, Mexican revolutionaries invaded and captured Mexico City, but about twenty years later, it ended up falling under American rule. The capital was occupied by the United States in 1847, during the Mexican War, in which the two countries disputed territories at the borders. In 1863, when Napoleon III appointed Austrian Duke the Emperor of Mexico, the capital had to succumb to French power, remaining under his control for four years.
According to relationshipsplus, when Mexico became independent, the capital finally broke free from its invaders and began a new phase of development. Nowadays, Mexico City has a huge industrial center, in which national and foreign industries have been installed. The main products manufactured there are textile and construction materials, pharmaceutical and petrochemical products, shoes, automobiles and steel. If, on the one hand, industry employs a large part of the population and moves trade across the country, on the other, and due to its large quantity and lack of inspection, it collaborates to further increase the extremely high levels of air pollution in the City of Mexico, which is considered one of the most polluted metropolises in the world.
The number of cars and trucks circulating in the metropolitan area is another factor that contributes to air poisoning, which causes a series of respiratory diseases in the local population. In addition to being an important industrial hub, Mexico City is also a popular tourist destination for people from all over the world. The old buildings, which date back to the colonization period, and some vestiges of Aztec culture attract thousands of visitors every year. Among these buildings that are listed as archaeological monuments are the Aztec pyramids, located in the region of San Juan de Teotihuacan, on the outskirts of the capital, the National Cathedral, whose construction began in 1573, Plaza México, the Basilica of Guadalupe and the National Palace.