Boca del Río

Boca del Río is the city immediately south of the port of Veracruz, where the Jamapa river reaches the Gulf of Mexico; its name simply means "mouth of the river". The two cities have grown into one continuous urban area along the coast, and Boca del Río is where most of the metropolitan area's modern hotels, shopping centres and business venues are, including the World Trade Center Veracruz convention centre. The municipality had 144,550 people at the 2020 census, most of them in the neighbourhoods that run on from Veracruz; the old town at the river mouth, the municipal seat, had 9,988.

The Spanish first saw this stretch of coast in 1518, when Juan de Grijalva's expedition named the river Río de Banderas after the flags the local people waved from the shore. The area had been under Aztec rule since the 1470s, and its pre-Hispanic name is given as Tlapaquitan. The parish church of Santa Ana dates from 1776, and the town was linked to the Veracruz–Tierra Blanca railway in 1892. For most of its history it was a fishing village; it received city status in 1988 and grew quickly as Veracruz expanded south.

The old centre, with the Santa Ana church, the municipal palace and its plaza, still has seafood restaurants and jarana musicians, and it is the stage for the town's main festival, the feast of Santa Ana around 26 July, with processions, food and jarocho dance; Boca once entered Guinness World Records for the largest seafood-stuffed fish fillet. Nearby are the Casa Museo Agustín Lara, the "Casita Blanca" with mementoes of the composer, the gunboat Guanajuato turned into a naval museum, and a pirate museum devoted to the 17th-century raider Lorencillo. Boats leave from the river for trips through the mangroves and to the Isla del Amor, where Lara's romance with María Félix is said to have begun. Along the coastal boulevard lie the hotel beaches, of which Playa Mocambo, with calm, shallow water, palapas and seafood stands, is the best known; the Veracruz carnival parade also passes along this boulevard.