Tenochtitlan became North America’s biggest capital
Mexico City is Mexico’s capital and largest city and North America’s most populous urban giant—a cultural and financial heavyweight. The 2020 census counted about 9.21 million in 1,495 square kilometres of city proper. It began as Mexica Tenochtitlan around a lake island and is one of only two American capitals founded by Indigenous peoples.
The oldest human traces here include the Peñón woman, dated by a 2003 study to about 12,700 years ago, among the oldest remains in the Americas. The Mexica arrived around the 14th century and founded Tenochtitlan in 1325 or 1327 on an island in the valley's lake system, sharing it with Tlatelolco. Legend says their god Huitzilopochtli marked the spot with an eagle on a prickly pear devouring a rattlesnake. By 1521 their empire touched both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific.
Cortés reached the city on 8 November 1519 along the Iztapalapa causeway and was greeted by Moctezuma II, whom he soon placed under house arrest. On the Noche Triste of 30 June 1520 the Aztecs drove the Spaniards out, but Cortés returned with a siege in May 1521. Hunger, thirst and smallpox wore the city down until Cuauhtémoc surrendered that August, and the Spaniards rebuilt on the ruins to their own plan, naming it Ciudad de México from 1585.
The territory became the federal district in 1824. Residents won elected leadership in 1997, left-wing parties have held power since, and the city legalised abortion, same-sex marriage and gender change; in 2016 the district was formally renamed Ciudad de México. Humboldt is credited with the nickname City of Palaces. Locals rarely use the polite capitalino, and many proudly adopt chilango, once an outsiders' insult, while dismissing everywhere else as the provinces.
The city sits at 2,240 m in 16 boroughs. Greater Mexico City counts about 21.8 million people, second in the Western Hemisphere after São Paulo, and the city proper is the second-largest Spanish-speaking city after Lima. In 2011 the metro area produced $411 billion, about 22 percent of national output.
Source: Mexico City
