Tehuantepec

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Tehuantepec is a town in the southeast of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The town's name comes from the Nahuatl tecuani-tepec, meaning "jaguar hill".

The town gives its name to the isthmus, gulf, and railway of Tehuantepec, and stands about 25 kilometres (15 mi) from the mouth of the Tehuantepec River. Oaxaca, Oaxaca is about 250 km away, and the nearest city is Salina Cruz at a distance of 13 kilometers. It occupies the slope of a hill on the Pacific side of the divide, with a beautiful view of the river valley and the distant sierras to the north. The population of about 33,500 (in 1990) is composed almost wholly of indigenous Zapotecs. The women are the traders in Tehuantepec and do little menial work. Known as "Tehuanas", these women are known throughout Mexico for their colorful dresses, assertive personalities, and relatively equal relations with men, leading some to characterize them as "matriarchal". Local industries include the distilling of "caña," a cane spirit, and the weaving of cotton fabrics dyed with the juice of a marine shell-fish (Purpura patula) found on the neighboring coast. Indigo was formerly grown in the vicinity and cochineal gathered for export, but both of these industries have declined.

Porfirio Diaz, as a captain of the Mexican Army, had his headquarters in Tehuantepec in the 19th century during the early years of the French intervention in Mexico.

In the late 19th Century, the American engineer James Buchanan Eads proposed to the United States Congress the idea of a rail system for moving ships between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. His idea was approved in 1887 by the Congress but promptly blocked by the United States House of Representatives the United States were already considering the idea of building a canal across the Isthmus of Panama.