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Mexico Travel :: State of Oaxaca

The first settlements with a clear social hierarchy began to appear in the Valley of Oaxaca between 1150 and 850 BC. Around 500 BC, a hilltop at the junction of the valley's three arms was levelled off, and construction began on the Zapotec city of Monte Alban, one of the most long-lived of the major pre-Columbian cities. The exterior of one of the first temples was lined with a series of bas-reliefs called the Danzantes ('Dancers'), which may actually represent dead and mutilated captive chiefs. These reliefs also contain hieroglyphic texts that represent the earliest known dates marked in the 52-year calendar system. Archeologists believe that the Zapotecs invented this system, which was used by all the great Mesoameriean cultures to the end of the Classic era (AD 900). The Zapotec state also included cities like Yagul, Zaachila and Teotitlan. Before its abandonment around AD 700, Monte Alban had a population of 25,000 and covered 6.5 square kilometers (2.5 square miles). In the centuries that followed the Zapotec collapse, the Mixtec tribes of northwestern Oaxaca began to develop and reach beyond their mountainous homeland. The Mixtec history is chronicled in eight codices (folding paper books) that tell of the linking of the Mixtecs with the remains of the Zapotec nobility through intermarriage and the gradual Mixtec takeover of Zapotec cities.

In the 15th century, the Aztecs made repeated attempts to conquer Oaxaca but were themselves overthrown before they could accomplish this. Cortes was tantalized by tales of Oaxaca's wealth and sent an expedition led by Luis Marin to the south; the Zapotecs and Mixtecs successfully repelled him. While Cortes was away in Spain being dubbed Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca, his rivals conquered the state and founded the Villa de Antequera de Oaxyacan in the valley east of Monte Alban. The Dominicans arrived and built monasteries there and in the northwestern mountains. Until Acapulco opened in 1578, the little harbor of Huatulco was the principal Mexican port for trade to Peru and Central America. The Spanish divided Oaxaca into huge encomiendas, and the majority of Indians died from disease and overwork in mines, sugar plantations and estates. A 1570 Indian rebellion was violently crushed.

Nevertheless, in 1800 Oaxaca was still predominately Indian, and 20 languages and many more dialects were spoken here. In 1810, dozens of conspirators were shot before they could take arms against the royalist government, Jose Maria Morelos' army captured Oaxaca in 1812, but the royalists returned the favor in 1815. In 1848, a liberal lawyer of Zapotec Indian descent named Benito Juarez became governor; his term was marked by economic progress, political order, public works and school construction. One of his allies was a young local officer named Porfirio Diaz (who later turned against him). Juarez went on to become president, and his stern, Lincolnesque figure dominated Mexican politics for two decades. Oaxaca was isolated from the main movements of the Revolution. Today, Oaxaca is occasionally torn by violence erupting from land tenure disputes, whose foundations were laid by the 16th-century Spanish administration.

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