Aztaco Republic

Aztaco Republic 𐐓𐑊𐐰𐐿𐐰𐐻𐑊𐐰𐐻𐐬𐐿𐐰𐐷𐐬𐐻𐑊 𐐈𐑆𐐻𐐰𐐿𐐬 Tlacatlatocayotl Aztaco
Flag
Motto: Land of the Great Heron
Anthem: Red Sails
Capital and	Angatahuaca
Official languages	Nahuatl
Demonym(s)	Aztatec
Government	Constituent Republic
• Techiuhqui	Chiucnahuacatl Michiuhqui
Legislature	Aztaco Nenonotzaloyan
Constituent of Zacapican
Population
• 2022 census	19,182,109

The Aztaco Republic (Nahuatl: 𐐓𐑊𐐰𐐿𐐰𐐻𐑊𐐰𐐻𐐬𐐿𐐰𐐷𐐬𐐻𐑊 𐐈𐑆𐐻𐐰𐐿𐐬, Tlacatlatocayotl Aztaco) is one of the nine constituent republics of the United Zacapine Republics. It borders the Tlaximallico Republic to the west and the Anamictlan Republic to the south, with a maritime border with the island-bound Mixincayoco Republic across the straight of the same name. Aztaco the second largest of the Zacapine Republics by population at some 19 million residents, behind only the the Zacaco Republic and its 21 million inhabitants. The constituent Republic is home to the majority of the east coast population of Zacapican. It's capital is Angatahuaca, the largest city in Zacapican and one of the largest in the world. The Angatahuaca metropolitan area is home to roughly one in five of the Zacapine citizens and accounts for a third of the national GDP. The population of Aztaco is highly concentrated within this major urban zone, located on its southern coast, with only 3 million Aztatecs living anywhere outside it.

Aztaco consists of of a large peninsula dominating the east coast of Zacapican, with the bulk of the population living along the coastal plains and flatlands backed by the mountainous Aztaco interior. The Tenatepemec range bisects the peninsula along its central southwest-northeast axis, forming two distinct and divided lowland regions along the northern and southern coasts. Of these, the southern is larger with greater distance between the coast and the foothills of the central highlands. In the north, this ribbon of flat land amenable to human settlement and agriculture is narrow, with the foothills running right up to the shoreline in places. This has historically prevented the settlement of a large population in the north and contributes to the lack of any major urban centers on the northern coast of the peninsula along the calm and easily navigable Gulf of Xochicuahuico. Instead, the seagoing peoples of Aztaco settled in the south along the coastline of the rough and storm-plagued Amictlan Ocean, with the rich fisheries of the Matlayahualoyan directly offshore.

For the majority of the last millennium, the Aztaco Republic and Angatahuaca in particular was politically dominant over the rest of the country. Aztapamatlan, the polity which ruled the territory prior to the Zacapine Revolution, was in large part a hegemony of Angatahuaca, at the time confined to the island of Aztlan roughly one kilometer off the shores of the Aztaco mainland. The city had humble origins as a Purépecha trading colony in the year 744, growing through the subsequent decades and centuries into the dominant state of the peninsula and later the sole hegemonic power over the entire southern portion of Oxidentale and further beyond. The ports of Angatahuaca were the primary jumping-off point of the Aztapaman colonial missions to the continent of Malaio, and likewise became the main repository for the wealth of trade and tribute which was extracted from the east. In the 20th century, despite loosing its status as the capital in the Revolution, Angatahuaca remained the foremost urban center of Zacapican, experiencing a meteoric population boom in the era of migrations. Millions of people, from the hinterlands of Zacapican as well as from all six continents, came to Angatahuaca to start new lives in the "boomtown of the world". Many of those who came to Angatahuaca would eventually settled outside of it, in its environs and growing satellite cities, helping to further expand the Angatahuaca urban zone into what it is today.

Geography

View of the Tenatepemec foothills, with the southern flats extending to the horizon

The peninsula that makes up the mainland of the Aztaco Republic has a high level of relief and average elevation with an interior dominated by the Tenatepemec range, the Great Mother mountains. These mountains, and indeed the entire peninsula like its twin the Anamictlan peninsula to the south are the product of a relatively old uplift phenomenon which occurred upwards of 500 million years ago, making the mountain formations exceptionally old and highly weathered. Marine rocks and volcanic formations are evident in the folded layers which make up the Tenatepemec geological formation. The central highlands of the peninsula form an impediment to transportation and trade over land, historically pushing the societies of the Aztaco towards a seafaring focus and maritime travel between cities, and has in the modern day required expensive tunneling and bridging projects to bring lines of terrestrial transportation through the mountains to connect the north and south of Aztaco, as well as to link the Aztaco Republic in general to the rest of the country. The interior is a zone of logging activity and some agriculture in the valleys and on terraced slopes of hills and mountains, but is largely underdeveloped and sparsely populated due in no small part to the difficulty of conducting agriculture or other industrial activity on any significant scale.

The northern coast, which by many definitions includes portions of the eastern part of the peninsula facing the Mixincayoco strait, represents a narrow band of primarily agricultural activity on the flat lands there. This land is somewhat more amenable for certain types of crops due to the warmer weather affected by the tropical currents which feed into the Gulf of Xochicuahuico, and this portion of the Aztaco coastline is also shielded by the mountains from the often severe storms and cold weather events which can hit the south in wintertime. The northern shore historically gained a reputation as a comfortable destination for retirees and leisure-seekers because of this milder weather and relative lack of major urban zones clogging the landscape. This reputation was tarnished by the Xochitlalpan disaster, which resulted in the radiological contamination of a stretch of the northern band of the Aztaco and part of the nearby Tenatepemec range. The associated Xochitlalpan zone of alienation today splits the northern coast into two seperate areas, with no through traffic of any kind being allowed to pass through the zone, and indeed any entry into the zone being closely regulated by the Aztaco Republican Guard and agents of the CETZ.

The southern coast of the Aztaco peninsula affords much more room for agriculture and building than does the north, and is also home to two major bays which offer a natural harbor for ships seeking shelter from the rough seas of the Amictlan. Therefore, it has been on the flats of the southern coast that the great cities of the Aztaco Republic are found. The difficult interior of the region nevertheless plays a role in the flats, as it has historically influenced the cities and polities based in that area, not least of which were the Angatahuaca city state and the hegemony of Aztapamatlan it became, to have a maritime focus. The flats have generally been sufficient to support agriculture to sustain the local population, but the surrounding geography has forced the states of the Aztaco to expand primarily by way of sea lanes and oceanic voyages. This has had lasting effects into the 20th and 21st centuries, with Angatahuaca being by far the most connected city in Zacapican to the rest of the world thanks to its impressive maritime tradition and status as the foremost of Zacapine cities. It was by sea that the bulk of foreign immigration came to settle in Angatahuaca and the wider Aztaco. The descendants of these immigrants remain largely tied to the sea, with the overwhelming majority of Aztatec residents living within a dozen kilometers of the sea or other navigable waterway.

Economy

Angatahuaca-Amegatlan port facilities

The economy of the Aztaco Republic is centered squarely within the Angatahuaca metropolitan area, causing its activity and the wealth it generates to be geographically concentrated within this small area. More specifically, virtually the entire Aztatec economy is headquartered in the Angatahuaca bay area as well as the Nocheztlitlan bay area directly to the southwest. The base economic activities, agriculture, fishing and mining, play a decreased role in Aztaco compared to the rest of the country. The Aztaco Republic is by far the most economically developed of the Republics, accounting for the majority of the nascent Zacapine services sector. The banking and financial services industry, design and engineering sector, and the entertainment sector growth in Zacapican since the 1980s has been localized primarily in this region, later expanding to some of the important cities of the west coast. Of the three quintessential industries Zacapine urban centers are known for, steel production, machine manufacturing and shipbuilding, only the latter has remained a major presence in the Angatahuaca bay area, although some steel and machine production activity remains in satellite communities such as Amegatlan and outlying cities, chiefly Nocheztlitlan. Angatahuaca in particular has undergone significant deindustrialization with most heavy industry relocating to these other cities in southern Aztaco or moving out of the Republic altogether.

The Angatahuaca-Amegatlan port is the premiere center for the Zacapine fishing industry's operations. The region became a center of the industrial fishing operation of the east coast thanks to its proximity to the Matlayahualoyan oceanic region, with hosts massive congregations of fish on a seasonal basis due to the currents and the topography of the ocean floor there. The waters around Aztaco are also well known stops in the migration patterns of many species of whale, which additionally fueled the Zacapine whaling industry in the 19th and 20th centuries before the significant decline in this sector in the 1950s. What began as a somewhat localized operation with fishing boats exploiting the rich nearby fisheries soon expanded into a truly global and international operation of large factory ships catching and processing large catches across the world, returning to port at Amegatlan-Angatahuaca harbor facilities, the entry point from which fish and seafood products are distributed across the country in order to meet the immense demand for seafood on the Zacapine market. The CIT oceanographic institute, headquartered in Angatahuaca, closely monitors the activities of the fishing industry across the country and most of all in the Aztaco Republic with a mandate from the Zacapine federal government to curtail overexploitation of the local fisheries and reign in the escapades of fishing industry players active abroad.