San Francisco del Mar

San Francisco del Mar, also called Pueblo Nuevo, is the seat of a municipality in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec whose territory takes in long sandbars between the Laguna Superior and Inferior, the Mar Muerto and the Gulf of Tehuantepec. According to INEGI's municipal compendium, about a third of the municipal area is water, more than a quarter is mangrove, and the climate is warm and subhumid, 26 to 30 °C with 1,000 to 1,500 mm of rain. The town stands about 10 m above sea level and had 5,461 residents in 2020.

The original San Francisco, now called Pueblo Viejo, stood on the sand. The seat moved to the present site on 27 April 1970, the religious images followed in August 1971, and on 11 January 1972 President Luis Echeverría signed the return of lands to the municipality. Pueblo Viejo is still inhabited, with 931 people in 2020. The people are Huave, or Ikoots, speakers of a language unrelated to any other.

Life revolves around fishing and, to a lesser extent, maize, sorghum, sesame and melon. Among the festivals is Corpus Christi on 11 June, when the Negritos dance through the streets; their repertoire includes the Malinche, the Frog, the Snake, the Deer and the Little Bull, and they performed at the Guelaguetza in 2019 and 2020. In the Dance of the Bull and the Horse, twenty or more Negritos run from the bull while the rider tries to lasso it. Wikipedia dates the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi to 4 October and that of Saint Rose of Lima to 23 August.

On 7 September 2017 the magnitude 8.2 earthquake off Chiapas affected much of the population.