South And Gulf Coast of Mexico Region Guide

Southern Mexico and the Gulf coast hold the country’s most indigenous population, its most complex cooking and its oldest civilisation.

Oaxaca is the draw for many: a colonial city of green stone at the centre of sixteen indigenous peoples, with the finest crafts in Mexico, seven moles, mezcal from the surrounding hills, and Monte Alban, a Zapotec city levelled into a mountaintop above it.

Chiapas is higher, wetter and more Maya: Palenque, the most beautiful of all Maya cities, set against jungle with howler monkeys in the trees, and San Cristobal in the highlands among Tzotzil and Tzeltal villages.

On the Gulf coast, Veracruz has the country’s oldest port, colossal Olmec heads carved three thousand years ago, and Mexico’s highest mountain rising straight off the coastal plain.

And nowhere else combines this much living indigenous culture with this much to look at.

Oaxaca

The city itself — Santo Domingo’s gilded interior, the Benito Juarez market, the mezcalerias — then Monte Alban, a Zapotec capital on a levelled mountaintop, and Mitla, whose walls carry geometric stone mosaic unlike anything else in Mesoamerica. The craft villages: Teotitlan for weaving, San Bartolo for black pottery, San Martin for alebrijes.

Chiapas

Palenque, where the Temple of the Inscriptions held Pakal’s tomb and the forest starts at the edge of the plaza. San Cristobal de las Casas in the highlands, and the Tzotzil villages around it — San Juan Chamula’s church, with pine needles on the floor and no priest, is extraordinary and photography is forbidden.

Canyons and water

The Sumidero Canyon by boat, walls rising a kilometre above the river. The waterfalls at Agua Azul and Misol-Ha, and the Montebello National Park lakes on the Guatemalan border.

The Gulf coast

Veracruz city for its portside culture and danzon in the square, Xalapa’s anthropology museum — the second best in Mexico — with the colossal Olmec heads, and El Tajin, whose Pyramid of the Niches has 365 of them.

The mountain

Pico de Orizaba, Mexico’s highest at 5,636 metres, glaciated and climbable with a guide.

This is the most indigenous part of Mexico, and that is the single most important thing about it.

Sixteen peoples in one state

Oaxaca is the most ethnically diverse state in Mexico: sixteen recognised indigenous peoples, and around a third of the population speaks an indigenous language — Zapotec, Mixtec, Mazatec, Mixe, Chinantec and more. Chiapas is comparable, with Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Ch’ol, Tojolabal and Lacandon Maya. These are not remnants; they are the majority in many municipalities.

Usos y costumbres

Most Oaxacan municipalities are governed under their own customary law rather than by party politics, with authorities chosen in assembly and service to the community obligatory and unpaid. It is a functioning parallel system recognised in state law.

Zapatismo

On 1 January 1994, the day NAFTA took effect, the Zapatista movement rose in Chiapas demanding indigenous rights and land. The armed phase lasted twelve days; the autonomous municipalities they established have functioned since, running their own schools and clinics. It remains a live political presence.

Syncretism

Catholic practice here carries pre-Hispanic elements openly — at Chamula most visibly, where the ritual involves pine needles, candles, Coca-Cola and live chickens.

Indigenous communities set the terms here, and this is the region where that matters most. Many Chiapas and Oaxaca villages govern themselves under usos y costumbres, and several prohibit photography absolutely — in San Juan Chamula, taking a photograph inside the church can get you detained by community police, and the prohibition is about belief rather than privacy. Ask, accept a refusal, and go with a local guide.

Buy crafts directly. Oaxaca’s weaving, black pottery and alebrijes and Chiapas’s textiles are made in villages where the intermediary takes most of the value. Cooperatives and workshop visits pay the maker.

Mezcal: choose small producers using traditional methods. Demand has driven agave shortages and the felling of wild species that take decades to mature.

The Lacandon rainforest has lost most of its extent to clearance; visit through community ecotourism projects, several of which are run by the Lacandon themselves.

Water and waste in the highland towns are under strain.

November to April is the dry season and the best window across the region: warm days, cool highland nights, and the ruins comfortable to walk.

Late October and early November is when to come if you can. Day of the Dead in Oaxaca is the most elaborate observance in Mexico, and the city fills.

Guelaguetza in the last two Mondays of July brings delegations from all of Oaxaca’s regions to dance, and is the state’s biggest event.

May to October is the wet season, with heavy afternoon rain, and Tabasco and Chiapas are among the wettest places in Mexico. The Gulf coast gets hurricanes from June to November, and the highlands get landslides.

The nortes hit the Veracruz coast between October and March — strong cold northerlies that close the port and drop temperatures for days.

Semana Santa is significant everywhere and fills the highland towns.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

Oaxaca in late October is the one time and place in this region where booking months ahead is essential and prices double.