Orizaba

History

The first people of the Ahuilizapan valley were possibly Totonacs. Toltecs passed through from 1051, Tlaxcalans invaded around 1200, and by 1455 the valley was under Mexica rule. Hernán Cortés first stopped here in May 1520. On a later visit in 1524, La Malinche married Captain Juan Jaramillo in nearby Huiloapan, and Cortés eventually gave the valley in encomienda to Juan de Coronel.

The colonial town grew because every convoy between Veracruz and Mexico City had to pass through and rest here, so inns and lodging houses appeared early. Around 1540 sugar production began, helped by abundant water, and the tobacco monopoly later added to its wealth. Carlos III granted it the rank of villa in 1774. José María Morelos took the town for the insurgents in 1812, and it became a city in 1830.

In 1836 Lucas Alamán founded Cocolapan, the first textile factory, and foreign-owned industries followed, drawn by the rivers; Orizaba was nicknamed the Manchester of Veracruz. It was briefly the state capital from 1874 to 1878 and had a lively artistic and literary life; the writer Rafael Delgado called it Pluviosilla. Labor unrest in the mills led to the 1907 Río Blanco strike next door, a prelude to the Revolution. The city has since turned toward tourism and was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2015.