Córdoba

History

Córdoba was founded in 1618 for a specific reason. Enslaved Africans who escaped from the region's sugar estates had formed free communities in the hills, led by Gaspar Yanga, and travelers on the royal road between Veracruz and Mexico City were being attacked. Four landowners from the Huatusco area asked the viceroy, Diego Fernández de Córdoba, for permission to establish a Spanish town. King Felipe III approved it in late 1617, the first council met on April 26, 1618, and thirty heads of family settled on the Lomas de Huilango. The town took the viceroy's name and the nickname City of the Thirty Knights.

Sugar cane, and its position on the trade corridor to the port, made the villa prosper. In May 1821 its residents held out against royalist troops in defense of the Plan of Iguala, a battle remembered every May 21. On August 24 of that year Agustín de Iturbide and Juan O'Donojú, the last Spanish viceroy, met here and signed the Treaties of Córdoba, which ended the War of Independence.

Córdoba became a city in 1830 and received the title Heroica in 1880. The coffee boom of the late 1800s and the Veracruz to Mexico City railway brought new wealth, and from 1916 to 1920 it served as the state capital. It was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2023.