Antón Lizardo

Antón Lizardo is a fishing village and small port on the Gulf coast, about 23 km southeast of Boca del Río along a paved road through the dunes and past the Mandinga lagoon. It belongs to the municipality of Alvarado and is part of the Veracruz metropolitan area. At the 2020 census it had 6,284 people, and it stands only about 8 m above sea level on the point that juts out towards the southern reefs of the Sistema Arrecifal Veracruzano. Its long beach of firm, dark sand, with calm and shallow water, is lined with palapas and fishing boats, and it is the main departure point for trips to the reefs and to Isla de En Medio.

The village is best known in Mexico as the home of the Heroica Escuela Naval Militar, the academy that trains the officers of the Mexican Navy. The school was founded in the port of Veracruz in 1897 and earned its title "heroic" when its cadets defended the city against the US occupation of 1914. Work on the present campus at Antón Lizardo began on 24 January 1948, and it was inaugurated on 11 November 1952 under President Miguel Alemán; women have been admitted since 2008. Earlier, in March 1860, during the Reform War, the waters off the point saw a small naval battle in which US Navy warships moved against the squadron of the rebel admiral Tomás Marín. The lands of the former hacienda of Antón Lizardo were transferred from Boca del Río to the municipality of Alvarado in 1897.

The origin of the name has given rise to several legends: a merchant from Nice whose ship ran aground here, a Spanish or French pirate, or an 18th-century hermit. The Veracruz city chronicler José Peña Fentanes traced it instead to a map from around 1536 marked "P. de Antón Nysardo", after a ship's master named Antón Niçardo who sailed to New Spain and had run aground near the point where the naval school now stands. Today visitors come for the seafood served in the beach palapas, such as fish a la veracruzana, arroz a la tumbada and seafood empanadas, and for boat tours to snorkel and dive on the reefs. Like the beaches of Veracruz and Boca del Río, it fills up on national holidays and during Carnival.