The Mexican federal constitution requires the states to
organize themselves into municipios as the sole unit of local government.
As you have gathered, they are more analogous to counties than to
municipalities. There are no incorporated municipalities in the American
sense. The numbers of municipios vary widely from state to state, and the
Distrito Federal is not divided into municipios. You've found the five in
Baja California. Baja California Sur also has five. The other
extreme is the 570 in Oaxaca! The national total is 2,452. You can
find lists of the municipios in each state at
http://mapserver.inegi.gob.mx/dsist/municipios/MunCab00.cfm?c=364
Just select the name of the state from the drop-down box and click the
"Consultar" button. Easier still, just click the state on the
map.
There are detailed maps of Mexico that show municipios
on the Maps of Mexico site at
http://www.maps-of-mexico.com/mexico_states.shtml
The map of each of the 31 states and the Distrito Federal is divided
into 16 sections, and each section constitutes one web
page.
Highly detailed 2004 transportation and communications
infrastructure maps of each of the 31 states and the Distrito Federal are found
on-line at http://dgp.sct.gob.mx/index.php?id=440
in the Atlas por Entidad Federativa of the federal SecretarÃa de
Comunicaciones y Transportes. Municipios are shown. These maps are
very large zoomable PDF files, best suited to broadband
downloading.
All of this having been said, the boundaries of municipios in
some states appear to be in constant flux. Do not be surprised
if various maps disagree. It appears to be relatively easy to
get rural land in boundary areas switched from one municipio to another,
perhaps at the whim of the landowner. Before
each federal census, the first task is to inventory and map the
municipios as they then exist.
Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA
----- Original Message -----
From: Brendan
To:
BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2005 9:41
AM
Subject: [BoundaryPoint] FW: [roadgeek] Online maps of Mexican
Municipios?
BP folks,
Don't meant to cross lists here, but a
guy from another list I am on is requesting information that some of you might
be able to help him with. I'm curious myself if anyone can answer his
question. If you can help, please reply to the list and cc: him on the
response: adamnvillani@...
Thanks!
Brendan
Sherry
Monroeville, PA USA
From: adamnvillani
[mailto:adamnvillani@...]
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2005 5:49 AM
To:
roadgeek@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [roadgeek] Online maps of Mexican
Municipios?
In an attempt to spread my county-counting efforts
into Mexico, I've
encountered some difficulty finding good maps of where the
borders of
the municipios (county-equivalents) are in Mexico. The
best
information I've been able to find online are these
generalized
location maps of the municipios within the three states I've
visited:
http://antares.inegi.gob.mx/cgi-bin/map3.3/mapserv?map=/home/web/htdocs/map/estados/bc/bc.map
http://antares.inegi.gob.mx/cgi-bin/map3.3/mapserv?map=/home/web/htdocs/map/estados/son/son.map
http://antares.inegi.gob.mx/cgi-bin/map3.3/mapserv?map=/home/web/htdocs/map/estados/chih/chih.map
But
the detail on these maps is really low, and I haven't even been
able to
figure out how to go up a level to navigate around the
selection of maps of
the different states; instead I've been typing in
the state abbreviation in
the appropriate spot of the URL.
Has anybody found any maps, online or in
print, that show more detail
than just these general outline
maps?
Incidentally, it's interesting to note that Baja California is
divided
into just 5 municipios, compared with many more for most of the
other
states. Ensenada municipio covers everything down to the BCS
border.
In fact, I've visited all five of BC's municipios without
hardly
trying. In Sonora and Chihuahua, I've only got one each (San Luis
Rio
Colorado and Janos, respectively).
Adam