Tecomán

Tecomán is a city on the hot coastal plain of southern Colima, about 47 km south of the state capital and a little over 10 km inland from the Pacific. It had 88,337 people at the 2020 census (116,305 in the municipality), and with neighbouring Armería it forms a metropolitan area of about 144,000. The valley around it is one of the richest farming areas of western Mexico, planted with limes, coconut palms, tamarind, mango and bananas, and Tecomán calls itself the lime capital of the world; local packers and processors use almost the whole fruit, pressing oil from the peel and leaves and extracting pectin. The name is usually translated from Nahuatl as place of our grandfathers.

When the Spanish arrived, the valley was home to the Tecos, whose town of Caxitlán was the strongest in the kingdom of Colima. In July 1523 Gonzalo de Sandoval founded the first Spanish Villa de Colima at Caxitlán, and that same year an Indigenous town, Santiago de Tecomán, was laid out two leagues away. The Spanish town soon moved to the present site of Colima, and Caxitlán declined, especially after a fire destroyed its church around 1800; the bare walls of its old inn still stand about 5 km north of Tecomán's railway station. In 2017 the state congress gave Tecomán the title of Heroica Ciudad for its people's resistance during the conquest.

The symbol of the modern city is El Limonero, also called the Tree of Life, a 33-metre sculpture by Sebastián weighing 110 tonnes and decorated with ten limes, one for each of the state's municipalities; another roundabout has giant figures of tlalchichis, the ancient Colima dogs. The Casa de la Cultura has a small museum of pre-Columbian pottery. The big dates are the Feria Nacional del Limón in January and early February, and the feast of the Virgen de la Candelaria on 2 February, with a procession held since 1876 and, the following Saturday, a 13 km pilgrimage carrying the image to the beach at Boca de Pascuales. Pascuales, about 12 km away, is known for powerful surf and seafood enramadas; El Real, 10 km south, also draws surfers, and the Laguna de Alcuzahue, 8 km away, has a crocodile reserve.