Colombia vs Mexico

Mexico is 1.7 times larger than Colombia — 1,964,375 against 1,138,910 km². Mexico is 2.5 times more populous than Colombia — 131,946,900 against 53,425,635 people.

Side by side

Population density

Mexico is 1.4 times more densely populated than Colombia — 67 against 47 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• Different currencies: the Colombian peso and the Mexican peso.
• Mexico spans 4 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — South America and North America.

Colombia

The only South American country with coastline on both the Pacific and the Caribbean. It has more bird species than any other country, around 1,900, and more orchid species too. The Andes split into three separate ranges here, and the Chocó on the Pacific side is among the wettest places on Earth, with over 10 m of rain a year in places.

Mexico

Mexico has the fourth-highest count of vertebrate and plant species of any country, and more reptile species than anywhere else. Chicxulub, under the northern Yucatán, is the roughly 180 km crater left by the asteroid impact 66 million years ago. The Sistema Sac Actun beneath the same peninsula is the longest known underwater cave system in the world, over 370 km surveyed.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.