Mexico was formerly one of the worst drained large cities of the
New World, its subsoil being permanently saturated and its artificial
drainage being through open ditches into the San Lazaro Canal
which nominally discharged into Lake Texcoco. The difference in
level between the city and the lake being less than six feet and the
lake having no natural outlet, typhus fever became a common epidemic
in its lower and poorer sections. The earliest effort to correct
this evil was by the Dutch engineer Maartens (Span., Martinez),
who planned a deep cutting through Nochistongo. Hill, north of the
city, to carry away the overflow of Lake Zumpango (7493 ft.
elevation) to the river Tula, a tributary of the Panuco. The cutting
was 13 m. long and is known as the Tajo de Nochistongo. It was
begun in 1607—a year when the city was completely flooded—but
was not completed until 1789, and then it was found that the city
was still subject to partial inundations, although an enormous sum
of money and 70,000 lives of Indian labourers had been expended
upon it. The worst inundation in the history of the city occurred
in 1629, when its streets were covered to a depth of 3 ft. and
remained flooded until 1634. In 1856 President Ignacio Comonfort
invited tenders for drainage works conditional on the use of waste
waters for irrigation purposes, and the plan executed consists of a
canal and tunnel 43 m. long, starting from the east side and 414 ft.
below the mean level of the city and running north to Zumpango
and thence eastward into a tunnel over 6 m. long, which discharges
into a small tributary of the Panuco river near the village of
Tequixquiac. The greatest depth of the tunnel is 308 ft. below the
surface. The works were inaugurated in 1900.
For the water supply the Aztecs used the main causeway through their city as a dam to separate the fresh water from the hills from the brackish water of Texcoco, and obtained drinking water from a spring at the base of the hill of Chapultepec. The Spaniards added three other springs to the supply and constructed two long aqueducts to bring it into the city. Three other sources were added during the 19th century, and in 1899–1900 steps were taken to secure a further supply from the Rio Hondo. Besides these there are 11 public and 1375 private artesian wells in the city. All these sources are estimated to yield about 220 to 230 litres per head.
Considerable attention has always been given to education in Mexico, but in colonial times it was limited in scope, and to the dominant classes. The old university of Mexico, with its faculties of theology, law and medicine (founded 1551 and inaugurated 1553), ceased to exist in 1865 and was succeeded by schools of engineering, law and medicine, which have been signally successful. The government also maintains schools of agriculture, commerce, fine arts, music, pharmacy, technology, and an admirable preparatory or high school, besides a large number of primary and secondary schools for which modern school buildings have been erected. Normal and industrial schools for both sexes are maintained, the latter (artes y oficios) performing a very important service for the poorer classes. In 1908 there were 353 government schools in the city, including 13 professional and technical schools, and nearly 200 private schools. There are also several scientific organizations and societies. The Mexican Geographical Society (Sociedad mexicana de geografía y estadistica) , founded in 1833, has rendered invaluable services in the work of exploration and publication; there are also the Geological Society, the Association of Engineers and Architects, and the Society of Natural History.
Through lack of water-power and cheap fuel Mexico has never been rated as a manufacturing city. However, the development of electric power, and the possibility of transmitting it for long distances, have worked a noteworthy change in this respect, and a large number of industries have been added in recent years. The largest of these electric-power plants is on the Necaxa and Tenango rivers, in the state of Puebla, 92 m. from the city, which is designed to furnish 40,000 horse-power for industrial and lighting purposes, and a duplicate plant was decided upon in 1904. Another plant is in the suburb of San Lazaro, the current being distributed by over 100 m. of underground mains in the. city and many miles of overhead wires in its outskirts and suburbs. Other plants are at San Ildefonso, 12 m. distant, and on the Churubusco river, 16 m. south. According to a British consular report for 1904 there were 153 manufacturing establishments in the city producing cotton, linen and silk textiles, leather, boots and shoes, alcohol and alcoholic beverages, beer, flour, conserves and candied fruits, cigars and cigarettes, Italian pastes, chocolate, starch, hats, oils, ice, furniture, pianos and other musical instruments, matches, beds, candles, chemicals, iron and steel, printing-type, paint and varnish, glass, looking-glass, cement and artificial stone, earthenware, bricks and tiles, soap, cardboard, papier mâché, cartridges and explosives, white lead, perfumery, carriages and wagons, and corks. To these should be added the foundries and iron-working shops which add so much to the prosperity of modern Mexico. Perhaps the most important of these manufactories are the cotton mills, of which there are 13, and the cigar and cigarette factories, of which there are 10. In the suburbs, oils, chemicals, cigarettes and bricks are made at Tacuba; cotton textiles at Contreras, San Angel and Tlalpam; paper and boots at Tacubaya, and bricks at Mixcoac and Coyoacan. A little farther away are the woollen mills of San Ildefonso, the paper-mills of San Rafael, and important works for the manufacture of railway rolling stock.
The railway connexions include direct communication with one port on the Gulf coast and with two on the Pacific—lines were under construction in 1909 to two other Pacific ports—and indirect communication with two on the Gulf. The Mexican and Interoceanic lines connect with Vera Cruz, the Mexican Central with Manzanillo, via Guadalajara and Colima, and the Vera Cruz & Pacific (from Cordoba) with the Tehuantepec line and the port of Salina Cruz. The last-mentioned line also gives indirect connexion with the port of Coatzacoalcos, and the Mexican Central, via San Luis Potosi, with Tampico. A southern extension of the Mexican Central, via Cuernavaca, has reached the Balsas river and will be extended to Acapulco, once the chief Pacific port of Mexico and the dépôt for the rich Philippine trade. A Mexican extension of the (American) Southern Pacific which has been completed from Nogales to Mazatlan is to be extended to Guadalajara, which will give the national capital direct communication with the thriving ports of Mazatlán and Guaymas. In addition to these, the Mexican Central and Mexican National, now consolidated, give communication with the northern capitals and the United States, and the Mexican Southern runs southward, via Puebla, to the city of Oaxaca. These railways, with the shorter lines radiating from the city, connect it with nearly all the state capitals and principal ports.
The population by the census of 1900 was 344,721—an increase of 14,947 over the returns of 1895. The great majority of the inhabitants is composed of Indians and half-breeds, from whom come the factory workers, labourers, servants, porters and other menial wage-earners. In former times Mexico was overrun with mendicants (pordioseros), vagrants and criminals (rateros), and the “Portales de las Flores” on the east of the Plaza Mayor was a favourite “hunting-ground” for them because of its proximity to the cathedral; but modern conditions have largely reduced this evil. The foreign population includes many capitalists and industrial managers who are doing much to develop the country, the American colony being concentrated in a fine modern residential district on the south-western side of the city.
History.—The City of Mexico dates, traditionally, from the year 1325 or 1327, when the Aztecs settled on an island in Lake Texcoco. The Aztec name of the city was Tenochtitlan, derived either from Tenoch, one of their priests and leaders, or from tenuch, the Indian name for the “nopal,” which is associated with its foundation. The modern name is derived from Mexitli, one of the names of the Aztec god of war Huitzilopochtli, which name was later on applied also to the Aztecs themselves. The island settlement, which was practically a lake-village built on islets—some of them undoubtedly artificial, and perched on stakes—grew rapidly with the increasing power and civilization of its inhabitants, who had the remains of an earlier civilization (Tula, Teotihuacán, Cholula, and other older towns) to assist in their development. About the middle of the 15th century their mud-and-rush dwellings were partly replaced by stone structures, grouped around the central enclosure of the great teocalli, and bordering the causeways leading to the mainland. The town had reached its highest development when the Spaniards appeared in 1519, when it is said to have had, including suburban towns, a total of 60,000 dwellings, representing about 300,000 inhabitants. It was at that time about 12 m. in circumference, everywhere intersected by canals, and connected with the mainland by six long and solidly constructed causeways, as shown in the plan given in the edition of Cortés’s letters published at Nuremberg in 1524 (reproduced in vol. i. of H. H. Bancroft’s History of Mexico, San Francisco, 1883, p. 280). Allowance should be made for the habit of exaggeration among the Spanish adventurers of that time, and also for the diplomacy of Cortes in magnifying his exploits to win the favour of his king. The truth is, without doubt, that the dwellings of the lower classes were still built of reeds and mud, and covered the greater part of the city’s area, otherwise it is impossible to understand how a mere handful of Spanish soldiers, without tools and explosives, could so easily have levelled it to the ground. After its almost total destruction in November 1521, Cortes employed some 400,000 natives in rebuilding the city on its former site. Since then the lake has decreased greatly in extent, its area being reduced to 1112 sq. m. and its shore-line being more than 3 m. distant from the city it once surrounded. During Spanish rule the only break in the ordinary course of events was the revolt of 1692, which resulted in the destruction of the municipal buildings. The city was not much disturbed by the struggle for independence,
