Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave, officially Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (Spanish: Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is Xalapa-Enríquez.

This state is located in Eastern Mexico. It is bordered by the states of Tamaulipas to the north, San Luis Potosí and Hidalgo to the west, Puebla to the southwest, Oaxaca and Chiapas to the south, and Tabasco to the southeast. On its east, Veracruz has a significant share of the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico.

The state is noted for its mixed ethnic and indigenous populations. Its cuisine reflects the many cultural influences that have come through the state because of the importance of the port of Veracruz.

In addition to the capital city, the state's largest cities include Veracruz, Coatzacoalcos, Córdoba, Minatitlán, Poza Rica, Boca Del Río and Orizaba.

Etymology
The full name of the state is Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave. Veracruz was named after the city of Veracruz (From Latin Vera Crux, in English, literally: "True Cross"), which was originally called the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz. The suffix is in honor of Ignacio de la Llave y Segura Zevallos (1818–1863), who was the governor of the Veracruz from 1861 to 1862. The state’s seal was authorized by the state legislature in 1954, adapting the one used for the port of Veracruz and created by the Spanish in the early 16th century.

Economy
Veracruz has one of Mexico’s leading economies, based on agriculture and petroleum. Using relatively recent night light data and electricity consumption in comparison with Gross County Product, the informal sector of the local economy in Veracruz state is shown to have grown during the period of the Fox Administration though the regional government remained PRI. The assumption that the informal economy of Mexico is a constant 30% of total economic activity is not supported at the local level. The small amount of local spatial autocorrelation that was found suggests a few clusters of high and low literacy rates amongst municipios in Veracruz but not enough to warrant including an I-statistic as a regressor. Global spatial autocorrelation is found especially literacy at the macro-regional level which is an area for further research beyond this study. Improved literacy bolsters both the informal and formal economies in Veracruz indicating policies designed to further literacy are vital for growing the regional economy. While indigenous people are relatively poor, little evidence was found that the informal economy is a higher percentage of total economic activity in a muncipio with a high share of indigenous people. While the formal economy might have been expanding relative to the informal economy in 2000, by 2006 this process had been reversed with growing informality. While rural municipios have smaller economies, they are not different than urban municipios in the share of the economy that is informal. Programs in the past that might move economic activity from the informal to the formal sector have not succeeded suggesting public finance issues such as tax evasion will continue to plague the state with low government revenues.

The state contains 1,675.3 km (1,041.0 mi) of railway. Most of this is conceded by the federal government to private companies, with strategic stretches maintained directly by the government. Some of the private companies include Kansas City Southern de México and Ferrosur. These lines are used almost exclusively for the transportation of freight, which in 1999 added up to 37 million tons. Three rail line serve the port of Veracruz exclusively. One is dedicated to the port of Coatzacalcos.