Puebla had between twenty and thirty people to the square kilometer, the south was less populated. Chiapas averaged about nine and Yucatan three. The north was sparsely populated and large districts were practically unoccupied. Sonora had only about 1.5 to the square kilometer, Coahuila 1.4, Chihuahua 1.2, and the arid territory of Lower California one person to six square kilometers. In 1890 the total was estimated at 11,632,924,[1] and the census of 1910 declared that there were 15,160,369 souls in the republic.[2]
It appears that through all the history of the republic the population has had a slow but fairly steady increase. It has never been sufficient to develop the resources of the country, an inability accentuated by lack of capital and lack of technical education. The country may still be divided into three zones as to density of population as at the beginning of the Diaz regime. First there is the group of border states next to the United States, a
- ↑ The following schedule of estimates for the first part of the Diaz régime is quoted in Luis Pombo, Mexico: 1876-1892, Mexico, 1893, p. 1:
1874—9,343,470 (Garcia Cubas)
1878—9,384,193 (Secretaria de Gobernación)
1880—10,001,884 (Emiliano Busto)
1886—10,791,685 (Bodo von Glumer)
1888—11,490,830 (Dirección General de Estadística)
1889—11,395,712 (Garcia Cubas)
1890—11,632,924 (Antonio Peñafiel)
For further discussion of this subject see Wallace Thompson op. cit., pp. 56-85. - ↑ Boletín de la dirección general de estadística, 5, Mexico, 1914, p. 18.
memoria de hacienda del ano económico de 1877 a 1878, México, 1880, p. 420.
