Cunduacán

Cunduacán is the seat of the municipality of the same name, in the Chontalpa sub-region of Tabasco, about 20 meters above sea level and some 26 km west of Villahermosa. The 2020 census counted 21,003 people. It is low, hot, humid country of cacao groves and oil fields, and locals are called cunduacanenses. Because so many notable people were born here it is nicknamed "the Athens of Tabasco".

The area's story starts with the Ahualulcos, who came from the Cárdenas coast to escape pirates and settled at Cimatán and nearby villages. The Cimatecos were the last people in Tabasco to submit to the Spanish, in 1564. In 1625 a ground collapse wrecked the old indigenous town, and on 8 September of that year the villa of La Natividad de Cunduacán was founded on a new site, with the Virgin of the Nativity as patron. The church of La Natividad de María opened in 1725 and for a time was the seat of the state's religious authority. The town got villa status in 1826, and on 1 November 1863, during the French intervention, Liberal forces under Gregorio Méndez Magaña won the battle of El Jahuactal nearby.

That battle has a monument and a mural by Marcelino Colorado Hernández on Calle Pedro Méndez, and a second mural, "Historia de Tabasco", covers a wall of the Palacio Municipal. The main park is named for the priest José Eduardo de Cárdenas, and in the hamlet of La Piedra Primera stands the 1724 church of Padre Jesús de Nazaret, known as Las Mirandillas. On the outskirts, the Hacienda La Chonita, dating from about 1800, is part of the cacao route and offers plantation tours. The municipal fair runs 1 to 5 May, and the town's founding is marked on 8 September.