Mapping Mexico

U.S. president Barack Obama visited Mexico last week, amid escalating drug violence. He met with Mexican president Felipe Calderon, pledged support for Mexico's war against drug cartels, and vowed "to curb the flow of cash and guns going south." After he left, as if to underscore the problem, eight Mexican law enforcement officers were killed when gunmen brazenly tried to free a cartel leader from prison.

The increasingly deadly drug cartels are not just a Mexican problem. U.S. government reports have warned against the consequences of Mexico becoming a narco-state, and U.S. senators have pronounced Mexican drug cartels the "number one organized crime threat" in the United States.

Clearly, it's time for us to look at Mexico. We'll fly high over the land today for a big-picture view of the world's 11th most populous nation. Then we'll swoop in for a closer look at the history of Mexico over the next few days.

Fast Facts

761,606 – Mexico's total area, in square miles (1,972,550 sq km). That's about the size of Indonesia or Saudi Arabia, or three times the size of Texas.

Map Mexico
Map all of North America

111 million – Mexico's total population. That makes it the world's 11th most populous nation, trailing Japan. Mexico has more people than any country in Europe except Russia.

19 million – Population of the Mexico City metropolitan area, one of the world's largest. It's a city on par with New York and Mumbai, exceeded only by Tokyo.

Modernity, or Poverty and Drugs?

1.6 trillion – Mexico's gross domestic product (GDP), in U.S. dollars, adjusted for purchasing power parity. That makes Mexico the world's 11th largest national economy, ahead of South Korea, Canada, and Spain and behind Italy, Brazil, and France. A nation's GDP is the value of all the goods and services it produces in a given year. Economists adjust GDP for purchasing power parity to account for the fact that a dollar buys more in some places than it does in others.

3.5 million – Barrels of oil produced each day in Mexico in 2007. That makes Mexico the world's sixth largest oil producer. The top five oil producers are Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States, Iran, and China.

20 - Percentage of Mexico's population that lives in extreme poverty. Despite the country's overall wealth, income distribution remains highly unequal. Per capita income is about one-fourth that of the United States.

10,000 - Number of people killed in drug-related violence since the Mexican government declared war on the country's powerful drug cartels in December 2006. Mexico is a major drug-producing nation, and its drug cartels smuggle 90 percent of the cocaine used in the United States.

--Michael Himick and Steve Sampson