Viva Mexico!

This is an outline map of Mexico, with each state outlined against a white background (click on it for the full size image). I use maps like this a lot, usually of counties in U.S. states, because I am a data junkie. The Census is my favorite thing the government does (well, apart from the National Park Service, and maybe NASA), and I like to analyze raw data and generate maps from it. I am aware that that this is an absurd hobby, but I would be a weirdo anyway even if I didn’t do it. I’m okay with that.

In any event, reading up on the Mexican town of Zihuatenejo (which I know of as a huge fan of the movie The Shawshank Redemption but only recently discovered was in fact a real place) I became curious about the comparative development indexes (not the UN-created HDI, but Smitty’s Quality of Life Index, a value I use to rank relative quality of life among nations using CIA data (another absurdly dorky hobby) and whose formula I derived myself) of different Mexican states. I looked everywhere online for a blank map of Mexico’s states, but found the only ones were in unusual file formats and were not actually blank, having colors and faded lines and thus being useless.

So I downloaded a map from the Perry-Castaneda Map Library at the University of Texas, erased all the text and darkened the lines. Having spent twenty minutes on this, I lost interest in the project. But I thought, some teachers might like a blank map of Mexican states so they could teach Mexican geography in school, and who knows, there’s probably like a half percent chance somebody else out there has the same idiot hobbies I have and would like such a map. So here it is: an outline map of Mexico. It’s a jpeg; feel free to download it and use it for classes or make maps as you see fit. Just don’t copy it unchanged onto your own website and claim it’s yours.