Oaxaca

Oaxaca, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca, is one of Mexico’s 31 states, situated in the southern part of the country. Its neighbors are Guerrero to the west, Puebla to the northwest, Veracruz to the north, and Chiapas to the east, while to the south it has a long Pacific coastline. The capital is Oaxaca de Juárez. The state is divided into 570 municipalities, and nearly three-quarters of them—418 in total—operate under *usos y costumbres*, a system of self-governance rooted in local customs and traditions.

Oaxaca is famous for its Indigenous peoples and cultures. The Zapotecs and Mixtecs are the largest and best-known groups, but 16 distinct Indigenous cultures are officially recognized. Because the state’s rugged, isolating terrain has helped these cultures survive more fully than in most other parts of Mexico, most of them live in the Central Valleys region. This area is economically important for tourism, drawing visitors to archaeological sites like Monte Albán and Mitla, as well as to local crafts and native traditions. Another major tourist draw is the coast, featuring the resort of Huatulco and beaches such as Puerto Escondido, Puerto Ángel, Zipolite, Bahia de Tembo, and Mazunte. Oaxaca also ranks among Mexico’s top three most biologically diverse states—alongside Chiapas and Veracruz—for numbers of reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and plants.

The state’s name comes from its capital, Oaxaca, which itself derives from the Nahuatl word *Huaxyacac*. This refers to a tree called *guaje* in Spanish (*Leucaena leucocephala*) that grows around the capital. The Aztecs, who spoke Nahuatl, originally applied the name to the Valley of Oaxaca, and the Spanish adopted it during the conquest of the region. The modern state was created in 1824, and its seal was designed by Alfredo Canseco Feraud, approved under the government of Eduardo Vasconcelos. The word *Huaxyacac* was transliterated as “Oaxaca” using Medieval Spanish spelling, where the *x* stood for the sound *sh* (as in “shop”), making the pronunciation [waˈʃaka]. Over the 16th century, that sound shifted to a hard *j* (like the *ch* in Scottish “loch”), so Oaxaca came to be pronounced [waˈxaka]. Today, it is said [waˈxaka] or [waˈhaka], with the latter common in southern Mexico, the Caribbean, much of Central America, parts of South America, and in the Canary Islands and western Andalusia in Spain, where the *x* sound has softened to an *h*.

Most knowledge of prehistoric Oaxaca comes from the Central Valleys region. Evidence of human habitation dating to about 11,000 BCE was found in the Guilá Naquitz cave near Mitla. This site was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2010 because it contains “the earliest known evidence of domesticated plants in the continent,” and corn cob fragments from the same cave are considered the earliest documented evidence for maize domestication. Finds from around 5000 BCE show nomadic peoples, with some signs of early agriculture. By 2000 BCE, farming was established in the Central Valleys, with settled villages. The diet that developed then—based on corn, beans, chocolate, tomatoes, chili peppers, squash, and gourds, with hunted meat like tepescuintle, turkey, deer, peccary, armadillo, and iguana—remained until the Spanish Conquest.

The oldest known major settlements, such as Yanhuitlán and Laguna Zope, are also in this area. Laguna Zope is noted for small figurines called “pretty women” or “baby face.” Between 1200 and 900 BCE, pottery was produced locally, linked to similar work in La Victoria, Guatemala. Other important settlements from that period include Tierras Largas, San José Mogote, and Guadalupe, whose ceramics show Olmec influence. The Oto-Manguean language family, thought to have been spoken in northern Oaxaca around 4400 BCE, had split into nine branches by 1500 BCE.

Historic events in Oaxaca from as far back as the 12th century are recorded in pictographic codices painted by Zapotecs and Mixtecs early in the colonial period, but apart from those, little pre-colonial history survives, and our understanding relies mostly on archaeology. By 500 BCE, the Zapotecs inhabited most of the central valleys, with the Mixtecs on the western side; these groups often clashed. Archaeological evidence suggests that between 750 and 1521, the population may have peaked at 2.5 million. The Zapotecs were the first to dominate the Central Valleys, with their major center at Monte Albán, which flourished from 500 BCE to AD 750. At its height, Monte Albán housed 25,000 people and served as the Zapotec capital. It remained a secondary power center until the Mixtecs overran it in 1325. The site features stone reliefs called the Danzantes and high-quality ceramics.

After AD 750, large urban centers like Monte Albán declined across Oaxaca, and smaller dominions grew and evolved until the Spanish Conquest in 1521. Between 700 and 1300, the Mixtecs were scattered among dominions such as Achiutla, Tequixtepec-Chazumba, Apoala, and Coixtlahuaca. The Zapotecs occupied a large area from the Central Valleys to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.