Bacalar

History

Maya groups founded the town in the early 5th century under the name Sian Ka'an Bakhalal; Bakhalal means surrounded by reeds. After the League of Mayapán broke apart in the 15th century, it was the most important town of the chiefdom of Uaymil. The Spanish first reached it in 1531, when Alonso Dávila founded a settlement he had to abandon under Maya attack. In 1544 Melchor Pacheco established Salamanca de Bacalar, a remote outpost on the route toward Guatemala and Honduras that was always hard to keep populated.

Pirates reached the lagoon through its channels again and again during the 17th century, drawn by the trade in logwood, and in 1652 Diego el Mulato sacked the town so badly that the coast was almost deserted. The fort of San Felipe was finished in 1729, settlers from the Canary Islands arrived in the 1730s, and a safer Bacalar prospered exporting mahogany, logwood, sugar, and livestock.

In 1848, at the start of the Caste War, Maya rebels took and destroyed the town. Survivors fled to British Honduras, and Bacalar stayed empty until Mexican forces returned in 1902. It has grown steadily since, became a city in 2007 and the seat of its own municipality in 2011, and gained a Tren Maya station in 2024.