The state capital, Oaxaca de Juárez, lies approximately in the centre of the state, it is surrounded by valley walls that dominate a landscape once deemed as "so mountainous that it cannot even be crossed on foot" by the leader of the Spanish Conquest, Hernán Cortés.

This physical geography means little of Oaxaca's land area has ever been ideal for agricultural development and so very little civilisation or industrial advancement has been made there.

The proximity of tectonic fault lines and the related threat of earthquakes inland and hurricanes in coastal areas have meant that, due to the architectural restrictions and real dangers this creates, the state has received very little investment in any field of industry other than tourism.

The human environment that a societal evolution so unaffected by other societies has created is characterised by an extremely rich and aesthetic culture which pervades all activities of contemporary life as much as it has done since the sixteen indigenous cultures that still survive emerged, presently believed to be around 2,500 B.C. for the largest indigenous group, the Zapotecs. 576, almost 25% of Mexico's total number of municipalities are in the state of Oaxaca.

With a land area roughly equal to that of England, the State of Oaxaca has a population of only 3.5 million inhabitants, by far the largest single settlement being the governmental, legislative and financial centre, the eponymous capital. From here, the official 1 million-strong indigenous population (the largest of all the Mexican states) and the remaining mestizo (the mixed race produced by Spanish colonialism) population have been controlled by the right-wing Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.) since Independence.