Malpaso Res

Chiapas (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃjapas], [tʃiˈapas]), officially Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas (Spanish: Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas), is one of the 31 states that, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 118 municipalities and its capital city is Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Other important cites in Chiapas include San Cristóbal de las Casas, Comitán, and Tapachula. Located in Southwestern Mexico, it is the southernmost State of Mexico. It is bordered by the states of Tabasco to the north, Veracruz to the northwest and Oaxaca to the west. To the east Chiapas borders Guatemala, and to the south the Pacific Ocean.

In general, Chiapas has a humid, tropical climate. In the north, in the area bordering Tabasco, near Teapa, rainfall can average more than 3,000 mm (120 in) per year. In the past, natural vegetation at this region was lowland, tall perennial rainforest, but this vegetation has been destroyed almost completely to give way to agriculture and ranching. Rainfall decreases moving towards the Pacific Ocean, but it is still abundant enough to allow the farming of bananas and many other tropical crops near Tapachula. On the several parallel "sierras" or mountain ranges running along the center of Chiapas, climate can be quite temperate and foggy, allowing the development of cloud forests like those of the Reserva de la Biosfera el Triunfo, home to a handful of Resplendent Quetzals and Horned Guans.

The geography of Mexico describes the geographic features of Mexico, a country in the Americas. Mexico is located at about 23° N and 102° W in the southern portion of North America. It is also located in a region known as Middle America. From its farthest land points, Mexico is a little over 3,200 km (2,000 mi) in length. Mexico is bounded to the north by the United States (specifically, from west to east, by California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas), to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, to the east by the Gulf of Mexico, and to the southeast by Belize, Guatemala, and the Caribbean Sea. The northernmost constituent of Latin America, it is the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world. Mexico is three times the size of Texas.

Almost all of Mexico is on the North American Plate, with small parts of the Baja California Peninsula in the northwest on the Pacific and Cocos Plates. Some geographers include the portion east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec including the Yucatán Peninsula within North America. This portion includes Campeche, Chiapas, Tabasco, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán, representing 12.1 percent of the country's total area. Alternatively, the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt may be said to delimit the region physiographically on the north. Geopolitically, Mexico is generally not considered part of Central America. Politically, Mexico is divided into thirty-one states and a federal district, which serves as the national capital.