Poverty in Mexico

I read an article that briefly noted that half of Mexico's population of 104 million lives in poverty. Yes, it was tech article and so it also noted that about half a million people have high-speed internet connections.

But I was thinking... I know we have our own problems here in the United States, but how is it possible that 52 million people live in poverty in Mexico? That seems like a rather large number. I'll admit right away that I know very little about Mexico, knowing mostly only what I see from pictures and video taken by friends who have gone to Mexico to build houses and what I've seen from Mexican TV as I've flipped past.

It seems like there's a very willing workforce (many risk their lives to travel illegally to this country for work), lots of land (slightly less than 3 times the size of Texas) and what seems like a pretty nice climate. Texas has 22 million residents so 3 times that would be 66 million. So I guess there is actually a lot more people per square mile on average in Mexico.

Since I started writing this, I have learned more from the CIA Fact Book (should be a link from the title above). Maybe change is in the wind, but is taking a long time. Vicente Fox was the first person elected that didn't belong to the political party that has controlled the government since the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

So maybe it's more about patience, maybe change is underway. I hope that's the case. (Yeah, little old imperial me trying to figure out what's best for some other country.)

Ok, so this post ended up going somewhere completely different than where I expected. But at least I learned something.