Another plant that has only recently come to the attention of the scientific community is tlanochtle, a small fruiting plant that grows in the highlands of Veracruz, at altitudes above two thousand meters. The Aztec physician Martin de la Cruz wrote about tlanochtle four hundred and fifty years ago, but it seems to have fallen out of cultivation since then. Its Latin name is Lycianthes moziniana . The coastal plains support lush, green vegetation, edged with sandy beaches. The rainforests harbor many species of birds.
Fishing is an important occupation among people who live on the coast.
Development Naturally, these wide sandy beaches in front of lush tropical plants are a favorite target of tourism development. Oaxaca's coast, isolated from the rest of Mexico by mountains, hosted jungles filled with many species of plant and animal life. Its bays and coves supported coral. The government evicted people from their ancestral lands to build thirty thousand rental rooms for two million tourists a year. The tourist invasion has resulted in prices geared to a dollar economy.