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84 CHAPTER 4 ■ Love, Sex, and HIV/AIDS

Mexico’s leaders are using social marketing initiatives to change ingrained cul-
tural behaviors among adolescents and young adults and thereby reverse the trend
of increasing HIV/AIDS inflections.

M E XI C O: A C O U NTRY O V E R V I E W

The United Mexican States is a land of contrasts where affluence and poverty live
cheek by jowl and a wealth of natural splendors coexist with urban blight. Likewise,
the climate varies from tropical to desert; the terrain ranges from beachfronts to
deserts to mountain peaks.
With about 110 million inhabitants, Mexico is the most populous Spanish-
speaking country in the world. Although its territory is almost triple the size of
Texas, its northern neighbor, and spans three time zones, Mexico is primarily an
urban culture. Three-quarters of the population lives in cities, with 20 million
crowded into the capital (U.S. Department of State, 2008), where the contrast be-
tween riches and rags is painfully evident. Mexico City, in the heart of the country,
is a modern international business and arts center surrounded by sprawling shan-
tytowns and plagued by political turmoil and environmental concerns.
During its turbulent human history, the country has seen the rise and fall of
many regimes. Mexico had long been the site of advanced Amerindian civilizations
when it came under Spanish rule in the early 1500s. Hard-won independence did
not come until the early 19th century. From the 1930s until 2000, the nationalist
Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, dominated Mexico’s politics. The elec-
tion (in 2000) of Vicente Fox of the opposition party, center-right Partido Acción
Nacional (PAN), set a new political course that continued when PAN’s Felipe
Calderón took office six years later (Mexico factsheet, 2008).
With the country’s political situation in transition, a multitude of social and
economic problems have surfaced. Perhaps foremost is the contrast between the
haves and the have-nots. Mexico is one of the world’s most open economies, but it
is heavily dependent on trade, especially with the United States, which purchased
more than 80% of its exports in 2007 (U.S. Department of State, 2008). Although
Mexico is a major oil producer and exporter—petroleum accounts for nearly one-
third of government revenue—prosperity is only a dream for most Mexicans;
poverty and disease are the realities. Unemployment is less than 4%, but one-
fourth of the population is underemployed (Country profile: Mexico, 2008).
A popular response is to search for work in the United States. More than a mil-
lion poor Mexicans are arrested each year trying to cross the U.S. border illegally,
and hundreds die in the attempt (Country profile: Mexico, 2008). They leave be-
hind towns and villages virtually empty of able-bodied men to be husbands and fa-
thers. Even within the country, migration is an established pattern; many women