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Get your camera. It’s time for a Mexico-hopping photo tour. Many tourists never get past Mexico City, but there’s a lot much more to see.
Mexico has a variety of natural resources, landscapes, and climates, and its different cities and regions have different ways of life.
▲ One of Mexico’s poorest and most mountainous states is Chiapas. Many residents, like this woman, are Indians who survive by planting crops without tools or machines. They grow just enough for their families. Many people here are directly related to the Maya Indians and even speak Mayan languages. Tourists come to Chiapas for the Maya ruins.
Monterrey is called the City of the Mountains. The peaks of the Sierra Madre Oriental range pass through one of its suburbs. It is a busy industrial city, the third-largest in Mexico. Factories make glass, beer, cement, and other building materials. It is also a center for banking. Monterrey is one of Mexico’s wealthiest cities, with modern office buildings, wide highways, golf courses, shopping malls, and beach resorts. At right is the 230-foot-tall Faro del Comercio (Lighthouse of Commerce) monument and Monterrey Cathedral. ▶
▲ Chiapas is home to a group of rebels called Zapatistas. They have fought an armed revolt against the Mexican government since 1994. One reason is that the farmers of Chiapas were promised land after the 1910 revolution. But it was never given to them. The Zapatistas have called attention to the people’s need for land, economic help, and self-government. They have also called for the right to education and to preserve their traditional customs. The Zapatistas want to remind people all over the world that in spite of modernization, there are great inequalities. They are named for a hero of the Mexican Revolution, Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919).
▲ Here, a street vendor is selling handmade straw hats in Guanajuato city, the capital of Guanajuato state. The city is located in a long, narrow valley and is surrounded by the Sierra de Guanajuato mountains of central Mexico. Guanajuato means “mountainous place of frogs”!
◀ North America’s first cowboys were Mexicans. In the 1880s, they were called vaqueros. They taught American pioneers across the border the skills needed for ranching. Today, in central and northern Mexico, traditional cowboys are called charros. They hold competitions that are like rodeos. This charro is practicing for a charreada, as these contests are called. Charros get to show off their skills in horseback riding, bull riding, and steer roping. In ranching areas, some towns hold charreadas every month. They take place in special arenas called charro rings.
▲ Do you like fresh, delicious seafood? Then head for Veracruz. It is Mexico’s main port on the Gulf Coast. You can eat local shrimp, clams, oysters, crabs, and many kinds of fish.
