Tacotalpa

Tacotalpa is a small town on the Río de la Sierra, between Teapa and Tapijulapa, and the seat of the municipality that also includes Tapijulapa and Oxolotán. It looks like an ordinary sierra town today, but for a long stretch of the colonial era it was the capital of Tabasco.

In 1677 pirates destroyed Villahermosa, then the provincial capital, and the Spanish authorities moved the government inland to the safety of the hills, founding Tacotalpa de la Real Corona next to the old Zoque village. It stayed the capital for more than a century, and from here in 1717 the Spanish organized the force that took Isla del Carmen back from English pirates. It served as a temporary capital again during the US invasion of 1847 and the French intervention of 1863.

Little of that past survived the river: a great flood in 1836 swept away the royal buildings and much of the colonial town. The exception is the stone church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, begun in 1703 and finished in 1710, one of the oldest churches in Tabasco and the main reason to stop.