TABASCO PLAIN

tropical lowland on the Gulf of Mexico, Tabasco state, southeastern Mexico. Occupying the coastal lowlands south of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and north of the Yucatn Peninsula, the Tabasco Plain is a hot and humid land made up of alluvial materials deposited by the Grijalva and Usumacinta rivers and is covered with dense, tropical forest. Rainfall is heavy, and lagoons and swamps are common on the low-lying delta lands, where annual floods inundate enormous areas. Tabasco was one of the original homelands of the Olmec, a preclassic people whose impact on succeeding Mexican and Mayan cultures was great. The first Europeans to enter the region were Juan de Grijalva (1518) and Hernn Corts (1519), but control was not wrested from the Indians by the Spanish for another 20 years and only after bitter fighting. The Tabasco Plain was the scene of more fighting during Mexico's war with France in the 1860s. The fertile soil of the plain yields crops of bananas, coconuts, cacao, coffee, and sugarcane; various hardwoods are processed. The discovery of abundant reserves of oil in the late 1970s brought a significant influx of people to the once sparsely populated region.