The major site is El Tajín, located near Papantla, but the culture reached its apogee in Cempoala (about five miles (8.0 km) inland from the current port of Veracruz), when it was conquered by the Aztecs.

Unrest continued, eventually forcing the government to sign an amnesty pact and giving the Africans the right to form their own community, exacting as a condition that bandits be suppressed.

[13] In 1746, the state was divided into the civil jurisdictions of Pánuco, Tampico, Huayacocotla, Huauchinango, Papantla, Misantla, Xalapa, Jalacingo, Veracruz, Córdoba, Orizaba, Cosamaloapan, Tuxtla, and Cotaxtla.

[13] The port city of Veracruz, and the fort of San Juan de Ulúa, where Cortés landed three hundred years earlier, was where the loyalist soldiers of the Spanish Crown made their last stand against the independence movement in 1824.

However, his reign quickly encountered resistance from those favoring a republican form of government, including from Antonio López de Santa Anna from his stronghold in Veracruz state.

Normally, this move would have been blocked by the United States under the Monroe Doctrine, however, that nation was occupied with a Civil War at the time, and the European powers believed that the Americans could not act.

In December, Spanish troops commanded by general Manuel Gasset occupied the port of Veracruz, without any local resistance,[20] followed a month later by French and British forces.

[13] By the end of the century, many infrastructure improvements, such as roads and railways (especially the Ferrocarril Interoceánico) had been completed with the major cities being Veracruz, Orizaba, Xalapa, Córdoba, Jalacingo, Chicontepec and Tantoyuca.

This victory encouraged more actions, until strikes at the factories in Rio Blanco, Nogales, Santa Rosa and Contón de Orizaba resulted in dramatic violence in January 1907.

[27][28] Veracruz shares common borders with the states of Tamaulipas (to the north), Oaxaca and Chiapas (to the south), Tabasco (to the southeast), and Puebla, Hidalgo, and San Luis Potosí (on the west).

[27] More than 40 rivers and tributaries provide water for irrigation and hydroelectric power; they also carry rich silt down from the eroding highlands, which is deposited in the valleys and coastal areas.

[31] The northern part of the state as well as the higher mountain areas, are convergence zones between lowland evergreen tropical forests and more temperate flora and fauna.

Species that predominate include Mayan breadnut (Brosimum alicastrum), sapodilla (Manilkara zapota), rosadillo (Celtis monoica), Bursera simaruba, Dendropanax arboreus, and Sideroxylon capiri.

This ecoregion extends into the central part of the state, with vegetation changing to include mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla), sapodilla (Manilkara zapota), Bernoullia flammea, and Astronium graveolens.

Some of these include green-cheeked amazon (Amazona viridigenalis), Tamaulipas crow (Corvus imparatus), Altamira yellowthroat (Geothlypis flavovelata) and crimson-collared grosbeak (Rhodothraupis celaeno).

Many endangered mammal species can be found here including two endemic rodents (Peromyscus ochraventer and Neotoma angustapalata), the jaguar (Panthera onca), ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), jaguarundi (Herpailurus yaguarondi) and white-nosed coati (Nasua narica).

Some, such as Costus dirzoi, Daphnopsis megacarpa, Eugenia sotoesparzae, Inga sinacae, Miconia ibarrae, Mormodes tuxtlensis, and Thelypteris rachyflexuosa, are native only to this area.

[28] Using relatively recent night light data and electricity consumption in comparison with Gross County Product, the informal sector of the local economy in Veracruz state is shown to have grown during the period of the Fox Administration though the regional government remained PRI.

The small amount of local spatial autocorrelation that was found suggests a few clusters of high and low literacy rates amongst municipios in Veracruz but not enough to warrant including an I-statistic as a regressor.

Programs in the past that might move economic activity from the informal to the formal sector have not succeeded suggesting public finance issues such as tax evasion will continue to plague the state with low government revenues.

Chief agricultural products include coffee, vanilla, sugarcane, tobacco, bananas, coconuts, and vegetables, but local farmers depend mainly on corn and beans.

Although Veracruz is an important source of metals such as iron and copper, a great deal of its mining involves non-metallic minerals as sulfur, silica, feldspar, calcium, kaolin and marble.

Leather items include shoes, jackets, bags, wallets, belts and boots and are usually made in the La Huasteca region, Teocolo, Citlaltépetl and Naolinco.

From Europe, the Spanish brought saffron, parsley, thyme, marjoram, bay laurel, and cilantro as well Asian spices such as cloves, cinnamon, and black pepper.

This area is noted for a number of unique dishes such as frijoles en achuchutl, made with black beans, pork rind, chayotes, squash seeds, and jalapeño peppers.

[44] During the colonial era, a movement called the "estilo veracruzano" (Veracruz style) developed mostly focusing on landscapes in the state with a certain amount of indigenous influence although the painters themselves were criollo or Mexico-born Spanish.

A number of these are early murals such as El comercio in the Jáuregi de Xalapa market as well as an untitled work in a private home in Córdoba which deals with the fusion of the Spanish, indigenous and African ethnicities in Mexico.

[51] Writers born at the end of the 19th century, such as Gregorio López y Fuentes, Manuel Maples Arce and Jorge Mateo Cuesta Porte-Petit were often concerned with social issues.

The most numerous include the Nahuas, Totonacs, Huastecs, Popolucs, Zapotecas, Chinantecas, Otomis, Mazatecas, Tepehuas, Mixtecas, Zoques, Mixes, Mayas and Tzotzils, all indigenous groups.

There are also 31 smaller regional airfields in municipalities such as Acayucán, Cazones de Herrera, Córdoba, Cuitlahuac, Juán Rodríguez Clara, Ozuluama, Platón Sánchez, Playa Vicente, Soconusco, Tamalín, Tamiahua, Tecolutla, Temapache, Tempoal and Tierra Blanca.