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This paper presents a case study of the relationship between increasing plant use, sedentism and political complexity among societies on the Pacific coast of southern Mexico during the Early and Middle Formative period (1600–800 bce). I argue that each of these variables increased at different paces in the region. Some of the earliest ceramics in Mesoamerica are documented by 1600 bce as is increasingly sedentary village life. During the following centuries a number of political centres rose and fell. While macrobotanical remains of numerous domestic plant species have been recovered from Early Formative and earlier Archaic period contexts, the overall diet was very broad based with extensive resources exploited from the nearby swamp and estuary systems. Isotopic, ground stone and iconographic data all indicate that the subsistence base underwent a marked transformation during the Middle Formative Conchas phase (900–800 bce) which corresponds to an environmental shift to stable, moist conditions conducive to increased plant production. Therefore, there was over half a millennium during which ceramic-using, horticultural villagers developed political rank prior to the adoption of agriculture and evidence of the first stratified political organization in the region. Evidence from the Soconusco is reviewed and new data are presented from the site of Cuauhtémoc, which was occupied through the entire 800-year period in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]