Oaxaca, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca, is one of the 32 states that compose the Federative Entities of the United Mexican States. It is divided into 570 municipalities, of which 418 are governed by the system of usos y costumbres with recognized local forms of self-governance. Its capital city is Oaxaca de Juárez.
Puerto Escondido is a small port and tourist center in the municipality of San Pedro Mixtepec Distrito 22 in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Prior to the 1930s, there was no town. The bay had been used as a port intermittently to ship coffee, but there was no permanent settlement due to the lack of potable water. The name "Puerto Escondido" had roots in the legend of a woman who escaped her captors and hid here. The Nahuatl word for this area was Zicatela, meaning “place of large thorns". Today, it refers to the area's most famous beach.
Tourism in Mexico holds considerable significance as a pivotal industry within the nation's economic landscape. Beginning in the 1960s, it has been vigorously endorsed by the Mexican government, often heralded as "an industry without smokestacks," signifying its non-polluting and economically beneficial nature.
Zihuatanejo, and/or Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, is the fourth largest city in the Mexican state of Guerrero. It was known by 18th-century English mariners as Chequetan and/or Seguataneo. Politically the city belongs to the municipality of Zihuatanejo de Azueta in the western part of Guerrero, but both are commonly referred to as Zihuatanejo. It is on the Pacific Coast, about 240 km northwest of Acapulco. Zihuatanejo belongs to a section of the Mexican Pacific Coast known as the Costa Grande. This town has been developed as a tourist attraction along with the modern tourist resort of Ixtapa, 5 km (3.1 mi) away. However, Zihuatanejo has kept its traditional town feel. The town is located on a well-protected bay which is popular with private boat owners during the winter months.
Huatulco, formally Bahías de Huatulco, centered on the town of La Crucecita, is a tourist development in Mexico. It is located on the Pacific coast in the state of Oaxaca. Huatulco's tourism industry is centered on its nine bays, thus the name Bahías de Huatulco, but has since been unofficially shortened to simply Huatulco. Huatulco has a wide variety of accommodation from rooms for rent, small economy hotels, luxury villas, vacation condominia, bed and breakfasts, as well as several luxury resorts standing on or near the shores of Tangolunda Bay. The Camino Real Zaashila, Quinta Real Huatulco, Las Brisas, Dreams Resort & Spa, and the Barceló are examples of the most popular larger resorts in the area.
Huatulco International Airport is an international airport located in Santa María Huatulco, in the State of Oaxaca, Mexico. The airport manages both domestic and international air traffic for the southern and southeastern Pacific coast of Oaxaca, and it serves as an international gateway to the Mexican tourist destination of Huatulco and the Costa Region of Oaxaca. The airport is owned by Aeropuertos del Sureste (ASUR).
Mazunte is a small beach town on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. It is located 22 km southwest of San Pedro Pochutla on coastal Highway 200. Mazunte is located some 10 km to the west of Puerto Ángel and just about 1 km from San Agustinillo and 264 km south of the capital of Oaxaca. There are two etymologies for the name. Some sources state that “Mazunte” is derived from a Nahuatl phrase, “maxotetia” which means “please deposit eggs here.” However, older residents of the community state that it is from the word “mizontle,” used by locals to refer to a crab species that used to be very abundant in the area.
Playa Zipolite is a beach community located in San Pedro Pochutla municipality on the southern coast of Oaxaca state in Mexico between Huatulco and Puerto Escondido.
San Pedro Pochutla is a city and municipality located in the south of Oaxaca state, Mexico next to the Pacific Ocean. It is an important commercial, transportation and administrative hub for the Pochutla District in the east of the Costa Region. Pochutla is located at the junction of coastal Highway 200 and Highway 175 to Oaxaca, with 175 functioning as the town's main thoroughfare. Its name means "place of kapok trees ", and most of the city is built on a lakebed which was drained during the colonial period. The municipality is best known as being the home of the oceanside communities of Puerto Ángel and Zipolite.
Puerto Ángel is a small coastal town in the Mexican state of Oaxaca located in the municipality of San Pedro Pochutla. It, along with San Agustinillo and Playa Zipolite are known as the "Riviera Oaxaqueña". It is located 9 km south of city of Pochutla approximately 50 kilometers west of Huatulco and 80 kilometers east of Puerto Escondido. Despite tourism development since the 1960s, the town is still mostly a fishing village, located on a small bay surrounded by rocky hills that lead into the Sierra Madre del Sur. It was founded in the mid-19th century as a port for the region's coffee and lumber industries but since then other means of shipping these products has replaced it.
La Crucecita, along with Tangolunda and Santa Cruz, comprise the resort area known as Huatulco, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is the community closest to the bays but it is only 4 km (2.5 mi) from Federal Highway 200. It has grown along with the development of tourism in the area. The town is within the Santa María Huatulco municipality, which is part of the Pochutla District in the Costa Region of Oaxaca, Mexico.
La Ventanilla is a small village on a beach and lagoon in the municipality of Santa María Tonameca, Oaxaca, Mexico. It is best known as an ecotourism center based on its natural resources. It is located on the Costa Chica section of Oaxaca, just west of Mazunte. The La Ventanilla area consists of a long, unbroken stretch of undeveloped beach and a lagoon wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Sierra Madre del Sur. In the 1990s, the area was nothing more than a coconut plantation with three families living there, and did not have electricity until 1999. Today, the area is home to about twenty five Zapotec families who are dedicated to preserving the ecology of both the beach and the lagoon and live in a small village located on the far east end of the beach.
The Costa Chica of Guerrero is an area along the south coast of the state of Guerrero, Mexico, extending from just south of Acapulco to the Oaxaca border. Geographically, it consists of part of the Sierra Madre del Sur, a strip of rolling hills that lowers to coastal plains to the Pacific Ocean. Various rivers here form large estuaries and lagoons that host various species of commercial fish.
Mermejita is a small beach village in the central part of Oaxaca's coast, west of San Agustinillo and Mazunte and east of Chacahua. Until recently, the area was completely uninhabited, but now it is attracting adventurers who are building Robinson Crusoe-style houses, using local materials. It is known as a nudist beach, and one of only two places in Oaxaca where the rare leatherback turtle nests.
Bahia de Tembo is a beach on a secluded bay on the Pacific coast in Oaxaca, Mexico. It can be accessed via an unsurfaced road that exits highway 200 roughly 5 km south of the San Pedro Pochutla junction.
Santa María Tonameca is a town and municipality located on the southern coast of Oaxaca, Mexico, about 268 km from the capital city of Oaxaca. It is part of the Pochutla District in the east of the Costa Region. It is a very rural area, which is best known for the beach communities of Mazunte, San Agustinillo and La Ventanilla. The National Turtle Center, a research center and aquarium is located in Mazunte, along with conservation centers for butterflies and iguanas. The town itself is the site of the largest annual festival in the area, celebrating the rescue of a cedar image of the Virgin Mary from the rubble of the town church after an earthquake on 11 May 1870.
The Costa Region or Costa Chica lies on the Pacific coast of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, south of the more mountainous Sierra Sur inland from the coast. It includes the districts of Jamiltepec, Juquila and Pochutla.
Pochutla District is located in the east of the Costa Region of the State of Oaxaca, Mexico. The primary city is San Pedro Pochutla.
According to the Mexican government agency Conapo, Oaxaca is the third most economically marginalized states in Mexico. The state has 3.3% of the population but produces only 1.5% of the GNP. The main reason for this is the lack of infrastructure and education, especially in the interior of the state outside of the capital. Eighty percent of the state's municipalities do not meet federal minimums for housing and education. Most development projects are planned for the capital and the surrounding area. Little has been planned for the very rural areas and the state lacks the resources to implement them. The largest sector of Oaxaca's economy is agriculture, mostly done communally in ejidos or similar arrangements. About 31% of the population is employed in agriculture, about 50% in commerce and services and 22% in industry. The commerce sector dominates the gross domestic product at 65.4%, followed by industry/mining at 18.9% and agriculture at 15.7%.
Puerto Arista is a small community and tourist attraction located on the north coast of Chiapas, Mexico in the municipality of Tonalá. While it originally was a port, its lack of harbor and suitability for large cargo ships eventually shifted the economy to tourism in the 20th century. It is popular with people from Chiapas as it is located close to the state capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez as well as the regional city of Tonalá. It is the most visited beach in Chiapas and one of its most popular tourist destinations, despite its relative lack of sophisticated tourism infrastructure. Puerto Arista is home of one of the state’s four marine turtle sanctuaries, design to help protect the various species which come here to lay their eggs.
Mexico 