Coatzacoalcos

Coatzacoalcos is a port city on the Bay of Campeche in the far south of Veracruz, built mostly on the west bank of the Coatzacoalcos River where it meets the Gulf of Mexico. With 212,540 people at the 2020 census it is the third-largest city in the state after Veracruz and Xalapa, and the head of a metropolitan area that also takes in Nanchital and Ixhuatlán del Sureste. Its name is Nahuatl and is usually translated as "where the snake hides"; a popular legend ties it to Quetzalcóatl, who is said to have set off by raft from here, promising to return. The Pacific port of Salina Cruz is only about 160 km away across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which has made the city a crossroads for centuries.

The area lies in the old Olmec heartland, and digging for the river tunnel in 2008 turned up pre-Hispanic pieces from several cultures. When the Spanish arrived, Coatzacoalcos was a regional trading capital; in June 1522 Gonzalo de Sandoval, sent by Cortés, founded the Villa del Espíritu Santo upriver. The municipality was created on 22 December 1881, the town was renamed Puerto México in 1900, became a city in 1911 and took back the name Coatzacoalcos in 1936. In 1907 Porfirio Díaz opened the port's docks together with the Tehuantepec railway, and traffic boomed until the Panama Canal opened. In July 1940 refugees from the Spanish Civil War landed here from the ship Santo Domingo. From the 1970s the oil boom transformed the city: the Pajaritos, Cangrejera and Morelos petrochemical complexes lie nearby, and Pemex's petrochemical arm has its headquarters here.

For visitors, Coatzacoalcos is a working city rather than a resort, but its seafront is lively. The coastal malecón runs for kilometres along the Gulf, lined with hotels, restaurants and cafés, and ends at the Paseo de las Escolleras, a stone jetty of almost a kilometre where people walk out at sunset to watch ships enter the river. A pyramid on the malecón houses a small museum of archaeological finds from the region, and there is a lighthouse museum in the former keeper's house. The local kitchen mixes Gulf seafood with dishes from Tabasco and the Isthmus; minilla, a shredded fish stew, was created here, along with the taminilla tamal filled with it. The patron saint, San José, is celebrated on 19 March, the city's Zapotec community holds its own festivities, and the annual sábalo (tarpon) fishing tournament draws anglers from across the state.