Medellín

Medellín de Bravo is the seat of Medellín municipality on the Sotavento plains, about 20 km south of downtown Veracruz, and part of the port's metropolitan area. Before the Spanish arrived the place was called Tecamachales, a Nahuatl name read as "in the stone jaw". The present name came from Hernán Cortés, who was born in Medellín in Extremadura: after the Noche Triste in 1520 he sent Gonzalo de Sandoval to found a town of that name here.

The church of San Miguel Arcángel, the town's patron, was opened in 1529 in the presence of Juan de Zumárraga, bishop of Mexico, and local tradition counts it as the second church built in New Spain; the official municipal encyclopedia calls it one of the oldest in the Americas. The "de Bravo" honours the insurgent Nicolás Bravo, who on 18 October 1812 set 300 Spanish prisoners free even though the viceroy had executed his father. In 1915 Medellín formed Veracruz's first agrarian committee, and its ejido was the first in the state.

The Jamapa and Cotaxtla rivers water the municipality, which lives from farming, with mangoes and pineapples among its crops. The main festivals are Candelaria on 2 February, San Miguel Arcángel on 29 September with dances, a funfair and sports, and the Virgin of Guadalupe on 12 December. May brings the Mango Festival, with a parade of floats and the crowning of a queen, and June the Pineapple Festival, both with son jarocho. Local food includes beef barbacoa, corn and masa tamales, carnitas, cocadas, milk sweets and pepitorias, as well as fish and shrimp.