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State of MexicoThe state of Mexico rings the Valley of Mexico outside Mexico City and also bulges far to the southwest, almost to the Rio Balsas. The Valley of Mexico has been occupied for many millennia. In the town of Santa Isabel Iztapan, just north of Mexico City, ditch diggers found the remains of two mammoths that had been butchered with stone and obsidian knives around 12,000-10,000 BC. Closer to our era, settlements in this region show the influence of the Olmec culture centered on the Gulf coast. Just after the birth of Christ, a plan for a city was laid out in the northeastern corner of the Valley of Mexico. No one knows where the builders came from, but the city became Teotihuacan, the most powerful urban center in Mesoamerica for seven centuries and the site of the great Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, two of the marvels of the world. At its zenith around AD 600, Teotihuacan contained 200,000 people, making it the sixth largest city in the world at the time. Teotihuacan probably sustained itself through trade; the city contained wards for Zapotecs, Mayas and other tribes, and artefacts made here have been found as far away as Guatemala. Around AD 700 unknown tribes invaded and burned the city. The Toltecs and later the Aztecs made pilgrimages to Teotihuacan, because they believed the gods resided in the huge pyramids. The Toltecs controlled the Valley of Mexico from Tula, while the Otomis to the west had capitals in Toluca and Malinalco. After the Toltec collapse, their descendants mingled with the Otomis and Chichimecs from the north to become a new Toltec-Chichimec culture centered around the valley's network of lakes. The major settlements included Chalco and Texcoco, which was ruled by a family of philosopher kings. By 1427 these tribes had been subjugated by a savage tribe of Chichimecs, who called themselves the Mexica and had recently moved to Tenochtitlan, an island in the middle of the lakes. They founded the Aztec empire, which was to rule central Mexico for almost a century. When Bernal Diaz del Castillo entered the valley with Cortes, the marvelous scene before him led him to write: 'With such wondrous sights to gaze on we did not know what to say, or if this was real that we saw before our eyes.' After the Conquest in 1521, Cortes and his captains divided the Valley of Mexico into encomiendas, large estates (Cortes took the largest). Mexico City became the Spanish capital and development quickly extended throughout the valley. In the following centuries, Indian culture disappeared under the onslaught of Franciscan and Dominican missionaries, new forms of agriculture, early industries, mines and epidemics. In November 1810, any hope of a speedy finish to Mexico's battle for independence ended when Miguel Hidalgo halted his army in a pass between Toluca and Mexico City and decided to return north rather than attack the capital. Over the next decade Toluca was the site of many battles between Morelos's army and the royalists. In 1910, Zapata's peasant revolutionary army entered the state from the south and within two years controlled Chalco and Amecameca on Mexico City's outskirts. Throughout much of the Revolution, hunger, disease and looting were rampant in the region. Over the last 40 years Mexico City has expanded its boundaries and transformed what were once quiet towns into heavily polluted suburbs. Only the southwest of the state remains agricultural. Travel to Mexico
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