El Colomo

El Colomo is a town in the southeast of Manzanillo municipality, about 18 metres above sea level and covering 3.25 km². It is the ninth-largest locality in Colima: the 2020 census counted 9,664 people (4,913 women and 4,751 men), slightly fewer than the 10,255 of 2010, in 3,742 homes, 2,768 of them occupied. The climate is warm and semi-humid, with summer rain.

The town sits on the inland shore of the Laguna de Cuyutlán, the first of a string of communities running southeast along it: San Buenaventura, Venustiano Carranza (La Cualata), Nuevo Cuyutlán, Santa Rita and Armería. The lagoon is about 35 km long and up to 3 km wide, and between 1980 and 1982 nearly half of its 7,200 hectares had silted up. That led to the Tepalcates canal, which brings seawater into Vaso II, now an industrial port zone.

Port works have also uncovered the pre-Hispanic past of the surrounding hills. In 2009, when an 8.5 km power line for the liquefied natural gas terminal was laid out from the Tapeixtles–Colomo junction, INAH archaeologists recorded four sites along the route, among them Cerro Tepalcatepec, registered since 1987, with house and farming terraces on its lower slopes. The town's fiestas mark the anniversary of the founding of its ejido, with singing contests held in honour of the agrarian leader Homobono Llamas García.