Anáhuac

Anáhuac was born neither from a mission nor a mine but from an irrigation scheme. It was founded on May 5, 1933, while still part of Lampazos de Naranjo, as the administrative seat of National Irrigation System No. 04, the Río Salado project, and as housing for the settlers who came to farm the new fields. The Nahuatl name means place near the water. On May 29, 1935, it became the seat of a new municipality that took in the town and the communities along the Salado. The plan was drawn by engineers and technicians of the National Irrigation Commission who had trained at universities in Paris, and instead of a colonial grid the main streets fan out from the center in a radial, modernist layout that is rare in northeastern Mexico. At the hub stands the brick and stone parish church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, near the Plaza Rosita.

The town has 16,414 people and sits about 200 meters above sea level in a hot semi-arid climate with fierce summers. Water is still the constant concern. The main source of irrigation is Lake Venustiano Carranza, better known as Don Martín, which actually lies across the state line in Juárez, Coahuila; water is sent from there by canal to the Salinillas reservoir. Salinillas holds about 19 million cubic meters, supplies Anáhuac's taps and fields, and was Nuevo León's fourth-largest reservoir before the Presa Libertad was built; in March 2026 it stood at 29 percent after more than a year at critical levels. The Salado River, fed by the Camarón and Galameses creeks and the Sabinas Hidalgo River, crosses the municipality.

Farms grow wheat, sorghum and fodder and raise cattle and goats, and in town there are broom and mop workshops, sawmills and auto-parts plants. The municipality, some 4,500 km², is the only one in Nuevo León that touches the United States, with the Rio Grande as its northern edge. In 1978 the state annexed the then-abandoned community of Colombia to it, and since 1992 Anáhuac has received federal revenue from commercial traffic on the Colombia–Solidarity international bridge. Its sister city, since 2007, is Tijuana.