Oaxaca is the name of both a state in Mexico and that state's capital city. This article is about the state. For the city, see Oaxaca, Oaxaca; for the ship, see Oaxaca (ship).

Oaxaca
Flag Coat of arms
Location within Mexico Location within Mexico
Country	Mexico
Capital	Oaxaca
Municipalities	570
Government
- Governor	Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (PRI)
- Federal Deputies	PRD: 7 PRI: 2 Convergencia: 1 PT: 1
- Federal Senators	PRI: 1 PRD: 1 Convergencia: 1
Area Ranked 5th
- State	93952 km  (0 sq mi)
Population (2005)
- State	3,506,821 (Ranked 10th)
HDI (2004)	0.7164 - medium Ranked 31st
ISO 3166-2	MX-OAX
Postal abbr.	Oax.
Website: Official site of the State Government

The Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca or simply Oaxaca wɑˈhɑkɑ (helpinfo), named for its largest city, is one of the 31 states of Mexico, located in the southern part of the country, west of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Oaxaca borders the states of Guerrero to the west, Puebla to the northwest, Veracruz to the north, Chiapas to the east, and the Pacific Ocean in the south.

Oaxaca, the historic home of the Zapotec and Mixtec peoples, contains more speakers of indigenous languages than any other Mexican state.^[1]

With an area of  km ( sq mi), Oaxaca is the fifth largest state in the Republic. According to the 2005 census it had a population of 3,506,821 people.

Notable Oaxacans include President Benito Juárez, born in the Oaxacan village of San Pablo Guelatao, as well as Rufino Tamayo, Porfirio Diaz, José Vasconcelos, Francisco Toledo, María Sabina, J. Alberto Canseco Díaz, Major League Baseball player Vinicio Castilla, chemical engineer Marco Rito-Palomares and many other writers, artists and politicians.

History

Pre-Columbian

Oaxaca's rugged terrain, which caused various groups to develop in relative isolation from one another, is responsible for the cultural and linguistic diversity of the region. The central Valley of Oaxaca was one of the most fertile areas of the Americas and allowed powerful and influential groups to emerge. The valley was first occupied by the Zapotec people, who were conquered by the Mixtecs in the thirteenth century. Society was mainly organized in villages by extended family groups with communal authority, although the civilizations of the Mixtecs and Zapotecs did have kings and religious orders.

Among these civilizations' many accomplishments were the domestication of many plants and animals including corn, beans, chocolate, tomatoes, chiles, squash, pumpkin, and turkeys. Also available in the fertile region of Oaxaca were pineapples, avocados, zapotes, and maguey. In the south, the Pacific Ocean was an important food source.

The civilizations built by these groups are reflected in important archaeological sites including Monte Albán, Mitla, Guiengola and Huijatzoo. Monte Albán was a great ceremonial center built on a flattened mountain top by the Zapotec people which reached its zenith between 600 and 900 AD The ancient Zapotec village of Teotitlán del Valle near the city of Oaxaca is one of the oldest human settlements in Mexico.

Throughout this era, there was significant local and regional trade. The most important economic activities were agriculture, hunting, fishing and mining; silver and gold having been fashioned by artisans for hundreds of years. Commercial routes passed through Oaxaca to the Mayan lands of the north and south to Central and South America. Major ports were located in present-day Salina Cruz, Astata, Huatulco, Puerto Angel and Pinotepa Nacional.

In the mid-fifteenth century the central valley was conquered by the Aztecs, who forced the surrounding Mixtec and Zapotec kingdoms to pay tribute to the emperor in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. The Aztec presence had the effect of increasing social and economic ties between Oaxaca and the Aztec heartland. Shortly after 1496, the Aztecs established a garrison in the center of the valley, around the Cerro del Fortín and down to the present Church of Carmen Alto where their temple was located. They called their garrison Huāxyacac, meaning "place of guaje trees" in the Nahuatl language, because of the great number of this species (Leucaena esculenta) in the area. Under Spanish rule, Huāxyacac would become Oaxaca, and the pronunciation of the x would transition from "sh" [ʃ] to the modern Spanish "j" [h].

Colonial

Tenochtitlan fell to the Spanish in August of 1521 and with it all of the Aztec empire. On November 25, 1521, Francisco de Oruzco arrived in the central valley to claim it in the name of the conquistador Hernan Cortes, who had been granted Oaxaca as his prize for the conquering of New Spain by the Spanish crown. Cortes was thereby named Marques del Valle de Oaxaca. The settlement founded by the Spanish in 1521 as Segura de la Frontera, later known as Nueva Antequera, was officially raised to the category of a royal city in 1532 by decree of Emperor Charles V (Carlos I) with the name of Antequera de Guaxaca.

Transformation was swift in the central valley with the Spanish introducing new food and methods of cultivation. Cortes himself ordered the cultivation of wheat in the Valley of Etla and the construction of mills. The Spanish cultivated sugar cane and imported silkworms. Disease introduced by the arriving Spanish greatly diminished the native population of Oaxaca, as did the insatiable appetite for gold, which led more and more Oaxacans into the dangerous mines.

Over the 300 years of colonialism many aspects of life became Europeanized. Important government positions were filled with the Spanish and their descendants, and later by elite mestizos, persons of mixed European and indigenous ancestry.

Independence

Mexico's independence from Spain was won in 1821. Throughout the 1800s and into the early 1900s, Oaxaca remained largely an agriculture-based economy with little new industry. The automobile created a divide between the traditional villages and the new urban world of mobility and fast communication. A railroad was built connecting Oaxaca to Mexico city. Centuries of deforestation resulted in rampant erosion forcing migration to the cities and the U.S.

Recent

Main article: 2006 Oaxaca protests

In May of 2006 a teachers strike calling for higher wages led to the occupation of many buildings and streets in Oaxaca's capital city. On June 14, 2006, the Oaxaca Teachers Union was evicted. By October of 2006, supporters of the strike which was led by the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) had grown to tens of thousands calling for Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruíz Ortíz to resign. Demonstrators launched a widespread campaign of civil disobedience and took over the state-run television station. [1] On October 27, 2006, paramilitary forces fired on a crowd of protesters, killing three: Esteban Zurrita and Emilio Alonso Fabian, two locals involved in the demonstrations, and Brad Will, a U.S. independent journalist and activist who had been videotaping the protest.[2] On October 28, 2006, Mexican President Vicente Fox ordered riot police to regain control of the city. [3] On October 29, police and military forces used bulldozers, water cannons and tear gas to push Oaxaca's citizens back. [4] Government forces seized Oaxaca's town hall by mid-afternoon. At least one more person was killed in the most recent violence, raising the total of persons killed to "more than a dozen." [5] Early in the morning on November 2, Mexico's Day of the Dead holiday, the PFP attempted to clear barricades surrounding the Autonomous University of Oaxaca Benito Juarez, which houses the radio station Radio Universidad, one of the last radio or television outlets still under the control of the APPO. A pitched battle ensued, during which police threw tear gas onto University grounds and dropped gas canisters from low-flying helicopters. The protesters hurled rocks and fireworks at police and set buses and vehicles on fire as impromptu barricades. After several hours, the police withdrew, having failed at least temporarily to gain control of the area surrounding the University or to take the radio station off the air. Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN has also called for the resignation of Governor Ruíz. [6]

APPO's occupation of Oaxaca ended on the night of November 25, 2006, when the Federal Preventative Police, or PFP, again went on the offensive, this time making many arrests and clearing away APPO's last encampment, or planton, in front of Santo Domingo church. More than twenty buildings suffered fire damage that night, although it remains unclear who set the fires. Within a few days, activists handed the radio station of Oaxaca's Autonomous University back to the University, giving up what had become APPO's most effective rallying center. Many of those arrested by the PFP were sent to distant prisons. Many of those have subsequently alleged that they were tortured while in custody. Governor Ruiz remains in office.

During the subsequent months, civic leaders, Oaxaca's business community, and especially Oaxaca's tourism sector,have tried to bring Oaxaca back to its previous level of economic functioning. Starting in January, 2007, APPO has staged a series of marches. To date (the end of April, 2007), these have been peaceful.

On July 16, 2007 a large group of APPO supporters claimed they were peacefully marching up to the Galaguetza Stadium. They were stopped by an even larger contingent of local, state, federal and army forces, all in riot gear. Something ensued was not visible to this reporter. Tear gas was visible from over 1 mile away and city buses were left burning in the eastern road leading to the Stadium. [7]

Law and government

Due to its large size, rough terrain and the tendency of the indigenous communities to identify strongly with their village as opposed to their region, Oaxaca is divided in 571 municipios, the most of any one state, accounting for almost 1/4 of all the municipios in the country. Within municipalities are many towns and villages that are self ruled with a system called Usos y Costumbres, a system that advocates for retention of culture and practical ways of conducting daily business. However, since this leads to plurality for individual villages or towns, it tends to depart the ideologies of these villages from each other encouraging regional and tribal rivalries. Usos y Costumbres also contends that it protects the land of indigenous people because it encourages self autonomy. A critic of this is that regions compete for autonomy and differences in ideology (primarily within culture) and always end up forming another municipality. In addition since Usos y Costumbres advocates autonomy it fails to identify with its municipality (the village's head of government) and there is no direct communication between the State and villages. A failure of Usos y Costumbres to adapt quickly for political change leaves the villages and towns vulnerable to exploitation from interest groups and big government who don't see an incentive in aligning their goals and policies with the views of such towns.

Geography

Oaxaca is located where the Eastern Sierra Madre and the Southern Sierra Madre mountain ranges converge, resulting in a rugged mountainous terrain with a large temperate central valley. The average altitude is 1,500 meters (5,085 feet) above sea level.

Demographics

A dominant characteristic of the state of Oaxaca is its high concentration of people identifying as indigenous. It also has the greatest diversity of indigenous groups. There are sixteen different indigenous communities formally registered, though this number can be a bit misleading as there is great cultural diversity within many of those groups. In fact, it has been suggested that there is larger variety between dialects of Zapotec than there is between romance languages.

The sixteen groups and the number of speakers of their language according to the 2005 census are listed below:

Zapotec - 357,134 Mixtec - 290,049 Mazateco - 164,673 Chinanteco - 104,010 Mixes - 103,089 Chatino - 42,477 Trique - 18,292 Huave - 15,324

Cuicateco - 12,128 Zoque - 10,000 (est) Amuzgo - 4,819 Chontal - 4,610 Tacuate - 1,726 Chochotec - 524 Ixcateco - 207 Popoloco - 61

Of these, 477,788 are non-Spanish monolingual. [8]

Tourism and regional festivals

Oaxaca's principal industry is tourism, with over  km ( mi) of beaches, colonial architecture, archaeological treasures, crafts and folkart. The prominent colonial destination is the city of Oaxaca which contains the Santo Domingo Temple, the Government Palace, the Macedonio Alcala Theater, the Rufino Tamayo Museum of Prehispanic Art, and the House of Cortes.

Monte Alban is the dominant archaeological destination, having been the capital of the ancient Mixtec-Zapotec empire. Mitla, originally meaning "place of the dead" in Zapotec, is known for its unique ancient tile work. [9]

Major festivals include the dia de los muertos (day of the dead) and noche de los rabanos (night of the radishes). In Zapotec villages, families traditionally finance the large communally organized dances and feasts on patron saints' days through a system of making small loans over many years and then calling them in on an occasion when the family has volunteered to be the festival sponsor or mayordomo; this economic system is known in Zapotec as guelaguetza. This practice has given its name to the largest festival of dance and music in the state, the Guelaguetza, [10], a major attraction for regional, national, and international tourists that is put on annually at a stadium built for the purpose overlooking the city of Oaxaca.

Transportation is provided by a toll-road that leads to Mexico City through Puebla and another that leads from Oaxaca City to Huatulco. Major airports are found in Oaxaca City, Huatulco and Puerto Escondido and are served by the airlines Aeromexico, Aerocaribe, Aerotucan, Aviacsa, and Mexicana.

Culture

Crafts

Oaxaca has a number of native crafts, including the production of alebrijes, weaving and black clay objects. Alebrijes are popular wooden figurines of mythical beings, animals, and fantastic combinations of both, usually painted with very vibrant colors.

Zapotec weaving traditions were studied at length by Edwin Scheier and Mary Goldsmith in the 1960s [11].

Cuisine

For the same reasons its people are so diverse, Oaxaca also boasts a tremendous diversity of regional cuisine, nicknamed "Land of the Seven Moles." An abundance of fruits and vegetables are grown in the central valley, tropical fruits are found in the north and fish and shellfish dominate the cuisine of the south. Oaxaca is also known for Oaxaca cheese (quesillo) which is now exported around the world and even made in many locations in the United States. There is also a breakfast specialty, generally only available in Oaxaca - huevos oaxaqueños - eggs poached in a chili-tomato soup. Another specialty is chapulines, an unusual dish composed primarily of barbecued grasshoppers. Oaxaca is also known for producing mezcal, a spirit similar to tequila.

Corn is the staple food but the preparation of corn dough varies wildly, from entomadas and empanadas to tamales and tortillas. Black beans are also a common ingredient, as is the pasilla oaxaquena chile which gives many dishes their distinct hot, smoky taste and red color.

Oaxaca is also well-known for its chocolate, which is made from ground cacao beans, and frequently includes almonds, cinnamon and many other ingredients. [12]

Plants and shamanism

Oaxaca is also known for at least two plants which are native to this particular area of the world, both used in Shamanism: Psilocybe mushrooms and Salvia divinorum. Though the former is preferred in shamanic practice, the latter is known to be the most potent naturally occurring hallucinogen and belongs to the Mint family.



Other entheogens in the region include:
Calea zacatechichi
Coleus pumilus
Coleus blumei
Lophophora williamsii (Peyote)
Rivea corymbosa (Ololiúqui)
Ipomoea_tricolor (Commonly Morning Glory)
Datura stramonium
And several 5-MeO-DMT/Dimethyltryptamine containing plants, often used in Ayahuasca brews.

See also

• Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca
• 2006 Oaxaca protests
• Municipalities of Oaxaca

Major communities

• Huajuapan de León
• Juchitán de Zaragoza
• Oaxaca (Oaxaca de Juárez)
• Salina Cruz
• San Juan Bautista Tuxtepec
• Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán
• Santa Lucía del Camino
• Tehuantepec (Santo Domingo Tehuantepec)

Notes

Bibliography

• Spencer, Charles S., 2007. State Formation in Ancient Oaxaca. History & Mathematics: Historical Dynamics and Development of Complex Societies. Moscow: KomKniga. ISBN 5484010020

External links

• (Spanish) Official site of the State Government
• (Spanish) Official site of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca
• (English) (Spanish) Keep up-to-date on the revolution
• Oaxaca Travel and Tourism at the Open Directory Project
• Oaxaca Times
• - Electronic articles published by the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History.

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