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.
Oaxaca de Juárez, or simply Oaxaca, is the capital and largest city of the eponymous Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of Oaxaca. It is in the Centro District in the Central Valleys region of the state, in the foothills of the Sierra Madre at the base of the Cerro del Fortín, extending to the banks of the Atoyac River.
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.
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.
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 Agustinillo is a small fishing village and beach in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. It is located in the municipality of Santa María Tonameca just east of the coastal communities of Mazunte and La Ventanilla. This is where the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains meet the Pacific Ocean.
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.
Ocotlán de Morelos is a town and municipality in the state of Oaxaca, about 35 km south of the center of the city of Oaxaca along Highway 175. It is part of the Ocotlán District in the south of the Valles Centrales Region. The area was a significant population center at the time of the Spanish Conquest, and for that reason an important Dominican monastery was established here in the 16th century. The complex still exists, with the church still being used for worship and the cloister area used as a museum. While mostly quiet, the city is an important distribution and transportation center for the south of the Central Valleys region of Oaxaca, a function which is expected to be reinforced with the opening of new highway being built to connect the city of Oaxaca with the Pacific coast. The city is known for artist Rodolfo Morales, who painted aspects of his hometown in his works and sponsored projects to save and restore historic monuments here. For generations the municipality has been known for its crafts, with the ceramics making Aguilar family producing some of the best known craftsmen.
Villa de Etla is a town and municipality located in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is located in the far northwestern part of the Central Valley of Oaxaca, about seventeen km from the capital. The town is centered on the church and former monastery of San Pedro y San Pablo, and as municipal seat functions as the local government for six other communities. Most of the town's history has been lost due to the lack of records, but oral tradition states that it was founded sometime in the 15th century. Today, the town is noted for its weekly Wednesday market, where one can find traditional merchandise such a local variety of white cheese, tamales, frames for donkeys and goat barbacoa prepared in an earthen oven.
Villa de Zaachila is a town and municipality in Oaxaca, Mexico, 6 km (3.7 mi) from Oaxaca City. It is part of the Zaachila District in the west of the Valles Centrales Region. In the pre-Hispanic era, it was the main city-state for the Valley of Oaxaca after the fall of Monte Albán, and the Zaachila Zapotecs were the prominent political force for much of the Valley of Oaxaca when the Spanish arrived. Since then, it has been mostly quiet, but political unrest has been prominent since 2006 and the municipality has two parallel governments.
Santa María Huatulco is a town and municipality in Oaxaca in south-western Mexico. It is part of the Pochutla District in the east of the Costa Region. The meaning of Huatulco, or Guatulco Coatulco is, "where they worship the tree", referring to an ancient legend.
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.
Juquila District is located in the center of the Costa Region of the State of Oaxaca, Mexico, on the Pacific coast. It has an area of 5,055 km2. As of 2005 it had a total population of 134,365 of whom 33,106 spoke an indigenous language. Economic activities include agriculture and tourism. The Santuario (Sanctuary) de Juquila is a major attraction.
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%.
Oaxaca handcrafts and folk art is one of Mexico's important regional traditions of its kind, distinguished by both its overall quality and variety. Producing goods for trade has been an important economic activity in the state, especially in the Central Valleys region since the pre-Hispanic era which the area laid on the trade route between central Mexico and Central America. In the colonial period, the Spanish introduced new raw materials, new techniques and products but the rise of industrially produced products lowered the demand for most handcrafts by the early 20th century. The introduction of highways in the middle part of the century brought tourism to the region and with it a new market for traditional handcrafts. Today, the state boasts the largest number of working artisans in Mexico, producing a wide range of products that continue to grow and evolve to meet changing tastes in the market.
Tropical Storm Vicente was an unusually small tropical cyclone that made landfall as a tropical depression in the Mexican state of Michoacán on October 23, 2018, causing deadly mudslides. The 21st named storm of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season, Vicente originated from a tropical wave that departed from Africa's western coast on October 6. The wave traveled westward across the Atlantic and entered the Eastern Pacific on October 17. The disturbance became better defined over the next couple of days, forming into a tropical depression early on October 19. Located in an environment favorable for further development, the system organized into Tropical Storm Vicente later that day.
Hurricane Agatha was the strongest hurricane to make landfall along the Pacific coast of Mexico in the month of May since records began in 1949. The first named storm and the first hurricane of the 2022 Pacific hurricane season, Agatha originated from a surface trough south of the Gulf of Tehuantepec. It steadily organized into a tropical depression early on May 28 and within hours intensified into Tropical Storm Agatha. Amid favorable environmental conditions, the cyclone underwent rapid intensification on May 29, strengthening into a Category 2 hurricane and reaching peak winds of 110 mph (180 km/h). Though the storm moved west-northwest early on, it curved toward the northeast in response to weakening high pressure over Mexico. On the afternoon of May 30, the hurricane made landfall just west of Puerto Ángel, Oaxaca, with slightly weaker winds of 105 mph (169 km/h).
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