Talk:Administrative divisions of Mexico

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Instead of (state) and (city) parentheticals, would be cleaner to have, for instance, Oaxaca state and Oaxaca (or perhaps Oaxaca City)? You can link to those without ugly pipes, and this would seem to accord better with journalistic usage (at least in the US). --Brion 02:25 Sep 20, 2002 (UTC)

Why was this moved from List of states of Mexico? It is a list of states of Mexico, that should be the name of the article.
Because this is the agreed format from Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries. This article should not remain just a list of states, but rather develop into a general description of what a Mexican state is and how they fit into the historical and political picture. -Scipius 03:49 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this, and I'd like to propose this pattern:

  • Keep [[Veracruz]], [[Guanajuato]], [[Oaxaca]], etc for the cities.
  • Use [[Veracruz (state)]], [[Guanajuato (state)]], [[Oaxaca (state)]], for the states. (And, of course, where disambiguation isn't needed, simply [[Sonora]])
  • Use [[Name, State]] when needed to disambiguate: e.g., León, Guanajuato.

There's a fair amount of work involved in bringing them all into line, but it seems logical to me and worth the effort. It keeps things simple, and it avoids both jarringly foreign formulations like [[Chihuahua City]] and the overly complicated solutions like [[Veracruz (city)]] that we've got at present.

On a related note, Monterrey, Mexico should probably be relocated to Monterrey, Nuevo León, if not to Monterrey – why bother disambiguate with Monterey, California, since the spellings are different? –User:Hajor 01:58, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Odd naming of articles for cities/states of same name

My biggest complaint is about Chihuahua, where a disambiguation page should be located, including Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua (city), and Chihuahua (dog) (and apparently Chihuahua (cheese)). I fixed this, and someone put it back wrong.

The Canadian province of Ontario (and not Ontario, California) has the article at Ontario, the U.S. state of Washington (and not Washington, District of Columbia) has the article at Washington, so why are the Mexican states backwards?   –radiojon 18:42, 2004 Aug 9 (UTC)

(Also, on a related note: like the city of New York, the city of Mexico has "City" (or "Ciudad") nowhere in its real name.)

Isn't the reason the Mexican states are "backward" precisely because there are two wiki-conventions for city names: the one used by the USA & Canada (Albuquerque, New Mexico, etc.), and the one used by the rest of the world (Paris, Mecca, etc)? I suppose we could "federalize" the Mexican city names (i.e., Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Durango, Durango), but wouldn't that need a change of policy? It'd also be a whole bunch of work for a lot of very obscure places — check the municipalites in Oaxaca! I also don't think that Chihuahua should be a disambiguation page: depedredernding on the naming convention system used, either the city or the state should get it. Sluj 22:28, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hi there, radiojon: I'm the person who "put Chihuahua back wrong" a couple of months ago -- at which time I left notes on the article talk and your talk pages, offering an explanation and inviting a dialogue, both of which remained unanswered.
I still maintain that this is primary topic disambiguation -- in all these pairings of cities and states with the same name, it was the city that was founded first, and the state that was named after the city. With the exception of Durango, Durango (foreign disambig needed), all these Mexican cities with states named after them are at Colima, Veracruz, etc. -- with an italic link to the corresponding state at the top, of course. This, I think, is entirely in accordance with the convention for naming non-US/Canada cities. See, for example, the approach used with Madrid, the first line of which links to Madrid (disambiguation), where you'll find Madrid (province) and Madrid (autonomous community). In other words, with reference to Chihuahua, the state, the dog, and the cheese are all secondary to the city.
The current set-up also gives us a consistent approach for dealing with all these Mexican cities and states. You appear to be bothered only about Chihuahua. Adopting a different approach with those two would break the coherent pattern followed by Aguascalientes, Campeche, et al. I think that would be a retrograde and undesirable step.
The 'federalisation' of the convention for naming Mexican cities (ie, Chihuahua, Chihuahua)? Phew! While that would be preferable to artificial constructs such as Chihuahua (city), and that's what we've been doing for disambig purposes (Nogales, Sonora, Guadalajara, Jalisco), adopting it as a blanket rule would be overkill for the level of Mexican coverage we have at present -- and largely counter-intuitive in an English-speaking context (Mexican states enjoy nothing like the same name recognition as US states or Canadian provinces).
So, again, I believe things should be left the way they are. But I'd love to read further input from the other Wikipedians who are heavy-duty contributors to Mexican articles. –Hajor 15:53, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Well, although I do concede that most (if not all) of those Mexican States are named after the cities, I still think that the State should have priority since a) Politically and geographically is more important b) They will be linked way more often than the cities. To illustrate my point, let?s take the State of Oaxaca. We will need a link to the state in every single municipality (Oaxaca has 570!), in every single river that passes by, in every single lake, lagoon, dam, forest, desert, valley, plateau, mountain, cave, indigenous group, highway, bridge, volcano, beach, port, island... Even in biographies: governors, senators, people that fought battles there, colonized?
Keep in mind that most of us do not advocate the application of the North American convention to Mexican cities (City, State), so whenever we want to be more specific, we make links like Xyz, Oaxaca not Xyz, Oaxaca (state). By giving priority to the States we could type less and have fewer links to fix in those articles made by visitors, newbies or people not familiar with the country (most wikipedians). If someone says that José Vasconcelos was born in Oaxaca but links to the state instead of the city, s/he is still OK, not as precise as s/he intended to be, but s/he?s still correct. But if someone says that the cave of Guilá Naquitz is in Oaxaca and points to the city instead of the State, s/he is just plain wrong.
Cheers, Ruiz 05:52, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That's not quite the question being asked, but it's food for thought -- do we want to reassign Colima (etc) to the states and use a different convention for the similarly named capitals? Presumably we'd use Veracruz, Veracruz (etc) for the cities, to keep in line with the disambiguations we already have: Sacramento, Coahuila, La Paz, Baja California Sur, etc. (What I really would object to is unnatural stuff like Zacatecas City, except as redirects.)

That'd be a heck of a lot of work. Are you seriously proposing it? For the record, the affected entries would be: Aguascalientes, Campeche, Chihuahua, Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Oaxaca, Puebla, (Querétaro seems to have sorted itself out nicely with the recent name-change), San Luis Potosí, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, and Zacatecas. And, depending on the deviousness of the approach chosen, we might not be able to lose the (state) flag from Baja California, Durango, Hidalgo, and México.

(Shouldn't Mexico (state) be at México (state) anyway?)

Another thing is as we set about the task of scribbling stubs for all 800 Oaxacan municips (to say nothing of the rest of the country), we're going to find that a lot of them will be needing disambiguating in and of themselves, to distinguish them from other towns in other states and in other countries. Take a look at Santa Fe. The most natural disambig method is to put Santa Fe, Nuevo León, anyway, so the state reference is going to be there already.

As a related comment ("typing less"), do you know how the 'pipe trick' works with articles with parts of the titles between brackets? You don't have to type [[Oaxaca (state)|Oaxaca]] -- you can omit the repeat of 'Oaxaca' after the pipe, thus [[Oaxaca (state)|]]. So Oaxaca takes you to Oaxaca (state). Something I learned just the other week. –Hajor 20:46, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, here?s a summary of my proposal:

  • Articles such as Guanajuato, Oaxaca, Zacatecas, etc. should point to the state and disambig. as a primary topic disambig. (even Chihuahua since the dog is named after the State -- not the city by the way [1]). Arguments are stated in my first comment, about 12 entries would be affected, two of those could be solved as with Queretaro, since the official name of the city of Puebla is Puebla de los Ángeles and Oaxaca = Oaxaca de Juárez but I strongly discourage it since nobody uses those names in everyday speech (and what's up with that fixation with 19th century politicans, anyway? Every other city in Mexico seems to be dedicated to one of them).
  • Regarding the cities/municipalities, I propose the following convention: unless the name is unique, they should be moved to City (State) to take advantage of the pipe (see last paragraph in Hajor?s comment above). Therefore, every municipality would take the form of either Acapulco or Guadalajara (Jalisco). If it's too much work then I preffer Zacatecas (city) over Zacatecas, Zacatecas and definitely over Zacatecas City (unless, of course, is Mexico City, which is the official name both in English and Spanish). In short: Santiago (Nuevo León) over Santiago, Nuevo León and Colima (Colima) over Colima (city) and over Colima, Colima.

Cheers, Ruiz 18:52, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hm. That would be okay with me if other people like that. However to be contrary, I do think there is something to be said for having articles at titles like "Campeche State" or "Campeche state", as that's something that could be writtin into article text. I'm not too fond of the parenthesis disambiguations when there are other good options availible. A thought, -- Infrogmation 21:09, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK, here's my counterproposal:
  • I find Ruiz's arguments for having the states located at the "just the name" location very compelling. Yup, I'd be willing to go along with that, and to do some of the necessary grunt work. So: Chihuahua, Oaxaca, etc. for the states. (It was the link about the dog being named after the state that really clinched it.)
    • Re Infrogmation's appeal for the states to be at Campeche State, etc. -- I don't subscribe to that. Of course, if the Great Move proposed above is accepted, Campeche State would be a live redirect to Campeche, and there'd be nothing to stop anyone linking to Campeche State in an article. However, most of the time I find myself writing "in the state of Campeche, anyway. (The supporting example from the other side of the border is Washington state, which is a redirect.)
    • BTW, the state of Hidalgo is now at Hidalgo -- I thought the list of second-rate items at Hidalgo (disambiguation) made it a pretty clear case of primary disambiguation. Now, the only hurdle left is Durango...
  • Where I do have problems is the proposed treatment of cities. In the interests of consistency, since we have (just an example, but there's plenty more like it) Córdoba, Veracruz already as the page title, then we should continue with that pattern. So, if we're going to give the states the "name only" slots, then the logical location for the cities is Chihuahua, Chihuahua and Guanajuato, Guanajuato. The "Federal" format, à la US & Canada.
    • Of course, all the necessary redirects from Zacatecas (city) etc. would be in place, but the actual articles relating to Mexican cities, when disambiguation is necessary, would be located be located at the "federalised" city, state format.
    • Puebla de los Ángeles vs. Puebla, Puebla? *shrug* I'd prefer the latter. But it's nothing to worry about -- nothing that a redirect can't fix.
    • I don't like the idea of putting the cities at Benito Juárez (Veracruz) -- no other country uses that format, and that's not really the function that parentheses are supposed to perform in article titles. However, having pages such as Oaxaca (Oaxaca) or Tula (Hidalgo) there as redirects, and pipe-trick-linking to those when we type articles to make the formatting and typing easier -- well, that simply strikes me as an absolutely splendid idea. (I've just done a similar massive dab-session with Thebes (Egypt) and Thebes (Greece).)
I hope I've made my points in a convincing fashion. Ruiz, buddy -- I'm not saying "federalise" all the town names, just do it when necessary. It's not a road we want to travel all the way down but -- as shown by Guadalajara, Jalisco and Durango, Durango, it's one we've already embarked on. –Hajor 02:28, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good enough. In short: 1) The states get the "main article" (primary topic disambig at the top). 2) Cities/municipalities: North American convention unless the name is unique (please, no Teotihuacan pointing to Teotihuacan, State of Mexico, or Teotihuacan, Mexico State, etc.) Ruiz 07:41, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It looks like we're in agreement, then (taking silence as consent). Now, more importantly, is anyone in a mood to undertake this rather messy task, or is it just going to remain a set of good intentions? –Hajor 01:20, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Naming of state articles

moved here from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Subnational entities/Naming Tobias Conradi (Talk) 03:56, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

w/r/t to the States of Mexico (trailing bracket lowercase english partial) -- we have actually reached agreement on how to proceed on Talk:States of Mexico; we just haven't got round to implementing it yet. Please take a look at the discussion there, and take the comments on board before proceeding to do anything with those article locations. –Hajor 19:02, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

who is we ;-)? is your solution worldwide stable? e.g. did you coordinate with Nigeria? At least allow redirects. I will not change anything regarding Mexican states anymore. Tobias Conradi 20:14, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

who is we
-- A couple of other users -- high volume contributors on Mexico articles -- and myself, when this cropped up a few months ago.
is your solution worldwide stable? e.g. did you coordinate with Nigeria?
 -- Hell, no. States of Nigeria is a right mess. Besides, internal consistency in accordance with the usages and customs of each country is more important than worldwide uniformity.
At least allow redirects.
-- Of course.
I will not change anything regarding Mexican states anymore.
 -- Please contribute to the discussion at Talk:States of Mexico if you have anything to add. And, if we ever do get round to implementing what's outlined there, please give due consideration to jumping in and lending a hand.
–Hajor 20:32, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

thx for your feedback and inviting me. Will do my best Tobias Conradi 22:09, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
States of Venezuela has it uppercase. Tobias Conradi 05:28, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
FYI, the situation with Venezuela is somewhat different, and I think it reflects a difference in local usage. A Mexican will say (or write), "está en el estado de Oaxaca"; a Venezuelan would prefer, "algo pasó en el Estado Vargas." A difference in how the 'estado' flag is perceived. Miranda State is fine for Venezuela, I think, but I would have been reluctant to see Campeche State (although it does exist as a redirect, of course) sanctioned for the Mexican states. –Hajor 13:36, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Color of Maps

Is it just me, or do the yellow and brown maps bother others as well? I'd be willing to make higher resolution maps for locating places in Mexico, and a numbered map as well (at some point these should all be SVG I suppose). But what colors would be good? Is the standard (on lots of pages anyway) wikipedia grey, with blue oceans, and some color highlighting okay? What do people think?

Also, shouldn't some map be made for each state localizing cities within that state? Simply having a national map with the state highlighted isn't very useful, especially for big states with varied geography, etc.

I'll take responses at my talk page

--Jacobolus 09:12, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)


Compare to:


What do people think? The DF definitely needs a closer-up view! How should this be done? Maybe 2 maps on pages of those states in the center of the country, or just an inset that shows the center closer up? I'll take ideas at my talk page. So far all of the states in the above format have been uploaded to the commons. --Jacobolus 08:26, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganization of Mexican state / city articles

Perhaps it's time to embark on the plan we agreed on above -- a scheme which I find very logical and convincing. The following steps are entailed:

–Hajor 04:43, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] United Mexican States

Even though "United Mexican States" has been the traditional translation of "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" in English, gramatically, it is not the most exact translation. United Mexican States would be the translation of Estados Mexicanos Unidos (which would make more sense in Spanish). Estados Unidos Mexicanos (which even in Spanish sounds weird) they are imposing the first adjective "unidos" before "mexicanos", in order to highlight the phrase "United States". A more truthful rendering would be "Mexican United States". Any comments?

I think it would be correct "United States of Mexico", though I know it sounds quite like the U.S. but, come on, it how it's named after all.
NO, "United States of Mexico" is not a literal translation (the official name is not "Estados Unidos de México"). I do believe the proper translation should be "Mexican United States". --Alonso 14:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Maybe, but if United Mexican States is the common rendering into English then it isn't really our business to "correct" it. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 15:16, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you, but I have to say that this area of "original work" in which the wikipedia is not supposed to engage, is quite blurry. I mean, in some cases, "truth" prevails (that is, facts prevail over common misconceptions in the articles) while in other cases, it is preferable merely to "report" than to "propose" even if renown scholars have proved some theories wrong. --Alonso 04:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New article

I rewrote the article and renamed it as "Political Divisions of Mexico" --Alonso 04:02, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect fixes

I fixed all the Baja California (state) redirects.
Baja California peninsula redirects to Baja California Peninsula. If someone finds the time, this should be fixed. JackSparrow Ninja 23:21, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] General information template for Mexican States?

How about importing the template used in es.Wikipedia for general information on Mexican states? The infobox doesn't provide a lot of general information the way it's set up now... I'm thisclose to doing it myself, but I'm afraid I have been trying to understand how templates work for a while now, and quite honestly, I'm really confused. If anyone can help with that, I can get to work on setting it up on each individual state entry. Comments? Thoughts? --Enakarasuma 03:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe it was decided some time ago that the special infobox for Mexican states was not really that useful (or that special) and it was better to use the general template instead anyway, to reduce maintenance. -- Rune.welsh | ταλκ 04:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh well, that sucks. I thought it would provide a good deal of useful information, but I guess that gives me one less thing to do... Thanks for the reply! --Enakarasuma 18:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

What template were you talking about specifically? Because the template on the es.wiki's article on political divisions is the same shown here. --Alonso 18:59, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's an example. It includes a lot more information, including elevation, HDI, time zones, etc., while the one used right now (as shown here) barely includes any information at all. --Enakarasuma 01:29, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, you were referring to the individual state's template. Yes, I like the es.wiki template better, but like Rune.welsh says, it does require a lot of maintenance. If you are up for the task of creating and maintaining them, I'd say, go ahead and change them. --Alonso 22:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Land area

The Campeche article shows a land area of 50,812 km²; this article shows 57,727 km². The Quintana Roo article shows a land area of 50,212 km²; this article shows 42,535 km². These are great and significant differences. Was there a big territorial shift? Which numbers are correct? Backspace 02:25, 9 June 2007 (UTC)