Government and Political Geography
The state was created by a federal decree in 1824, and is the fifth largest state in Mexico. The state government consists of an executive branch, headed by the governor, a unicameral legislature and a judiciary branch headed by a state supreme court presided over by seven judges.
The area of Oaxaca has been divided into small entities since far back into the pre-Hispanic period. Much of the reason for this is the highly mountainous geography, although the occupation of the area by numerous ethnicities is a factor as well. The area resisted large scale Spanish domination through the colonial era, and maintained local traditions and customs better than other areas of Mexico. Even today, the state has far more municipalities and semi autonomous local authorities than any other state in the nation. Oaxaca is divided into 570 municipalities, about one-quarter of the total of the country. Many of the municipalities of the state had been ill-defined from colonial times until the 1990 INEGI survey which delineated them with exact coordinates. The most populated municipality is the capital, followed by San Juan Bautista Tuxtepec and Juchitán de Zaragoza. There is also a system of thirty districts to group municipalities.
The state has traditionally been divided into seven regions, which took into account variables such as ethnic makeup, economics and geography. Today, the state is divided into eight regions called Valles Centrales, La Cañada, La Mixteca, Sierra Madre del Sur, Sierra Norte, el Istmo, La Costa and El Golfo. These still take into account the traditional variables, but geography plays a larger role. The Cañada Region comprises the fourth and fifth districts with a total of 45 municipalities. The Coast Region consists of the 21st, 22nd and 30th districts with a total of 50 municipalities; the Isthmus Region consists of the 28th and 29th districts with a total of 41 municipalities; the Mixteca Region consists of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 9th, 10th and 16th districts with a total of 155 municipalities; the Papaloapam Region consists of the 6th and 7th districts with a total of 20 municipalities; the Sierra Sur Region consists of the 15th, 23rd, 26th and 27th districts with 70 municipalities; the Sierra North Region consists of the 12th, 13th and 14th districts with 68 municipalities; the Central Valleys Regions consists of the 11th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 24th and 25th districts with 121 municipalities.
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