A report on Mexico, Mesoamerica and Veracruz

Puebla ( colony, settlement), officially Free and Sovereign State of Puebla (Estado Libre y Soberano de Puebla), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico.

It is bordered by the states of Veracruz to the north and east, Hidalgo, México, Tlaxcala and Morelos to the west, and Guerrero and Oaxaca to the south.

By the Mesoamerican period, the area was inhabited by a number of ethnicities.

Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller population in the United States.

Starting in the 1970s, scholars of Mesoamerican ethnohistory have analyzed local-level texts in Nahuatl and other indigenous languages to gain insight into cultural change in the colonial era via linguistic changes, known at present as the New Philology.

The largest concentrations of Nahuatl speakers are found in the states of Puebla, Veracruz, Hidalgo, San Luis Potosí, and Guerrero.

They were also present in large numbers in El Salvador, southeastern Veracruz, and Colima and coastal Michoacan.

Through their integration in the Mesoamerican cultural area the Nahuas adopted many cultural traits including maize agriculture and urbanism, religious practices including a ritual calendar of 260 days and the practice of human sacrifices and the construction of monumental architecture and the use of logographic writing.

With the achievement of Mexican independence in 1821, the casta system, which divided the population into racial categories with differential rights, was eliminated and the term "Indian" (indio) was no longer used by government, although it continued to be used in daily speech.

Mexico City (Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: Altepetl Mexico) is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America.

When the Spaniards arrived, the Aztec Empire had reached much of Mesoamerica, touching both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.

After landing in Veracruz, Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés advanced upon Tenochtitlan with the aid of many of the other native peoples,

Hidalgo, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Hidalgo (Estado Libre y Soberano de Hidalgo) is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, constitute the 32 federal entities of Mexico.

Located in the eastern part of the country, Hidalgo is bordered by San Luis Potosí and Veracruz on the north, Puebla on the east, Tlaxcala and State of Mexico on the south and Querétaro on the west.

The modern day state of Hidalgo is located within the pre-Hispanic region of Mesoamerica.

Oaxaca (, also , , from ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca (Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the Federative Entities of Mexico.

It is bordered by the states of Guerrero to the west, Puebla to the northwest, Veracruz to the north, and Chiapas to the east.

It has the largest ball court in the valley and stated to be the second largest in the Mesoamerican region.

When news reached Cortés of the death of several of his men during the Aztec attack on the Totonacs in Veracruz, Cortés claims that he took Motecuhzoma captive.

The fall of the Aztec Empire was the key event in the formation of the Spanish Empire overseas, with New Spain, which later became Mexico.

Scholars who were part of a branch of Mesoamerican ethnohistory, more recently called the New Philology have, using indigenous texts in the indigenous languages, been able to examine in considerable detail how the indigenous lived during the era of Spanish colonial rule.

Three major species of vanilla currently are grown globally, all of which derive from a species originally found in Mesoamerica, including parts of modern-day Mexico.

The Totonac people, who live along the eastern coast of Mexico in the present-day state of Veracruz, were among the first people to domesticate vanilla, cultivated on farms since at least 1185.