Minatitlán

Minatitlán is a city on the west bank of the Coatzacoalcos River in southern Veracruz, north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and about 23 km by road upstream from the port of Coatzacoalcos. It had 101,336 inhabitants at the 2020 census and is the centre of a metropolitan area of about 359,000 people that includes Cosoleacaque, Jáltipan, Chinameca, Oteapan and Zaragoza. The city is best known for its oil refinery, the Refinería General Lázaro Cárdenas, whose roots go back to the experimental refinery set up here by the British firm Pearson & Son in the first decade of the 20th century and often described as the first in Latin America. Much of the city sits on reclaimed wetland, and the river, lagoons and marshes around it still flood in very wet years, as in 2008 and 2010.

The town was founded in 1826 by Tadeo Ortiz de Ayala, who was commissioned by the state government to settle the Coatzacoalcos basin. He named his new towns after heroes of independence with the Greek ending -polis; the state then changed the ending to the Nahuatl -titlán, so "Minapolis", named after the Spanish insurgent Francisco Javier Mina, became Minatitlán. Before that the spot was known as Paso de la Fábrica, where a colonial shipyard built the vessel "Nueva España". Minatitlán was briefly a customs port in the 1820s and 1840s, became a villa in 1853 and a city on 15 September 1910, the centenary of independence; for the occasion the refinery workers gave the town the statue of Miguel Hidalgo that still stands in the centre. Pearson's refinery passed to El Águila in 1909 and to Pemex with the oil expropriation of 18 March 1938, still a landmark date for the city.

The heart of the city is the Parque Independencia, laid out for the 1910 centenary, with its tall column and the blue-and-white parish church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, whose feast is on 29 June. A few blocks away the riverside malecón looks out over the wide Coatzacoalcos River, and the markets nearby are the place to try regional food such as chanchamitos (small pork tamales in corn husks), bollitos de elote and smoked carne de Chinameca. Carnival is the biggest party of the year, and the Zapotec community from the Isthmus holds festivities for different saints throughout the year. In 2001 the archaeological site of Lomas de Tacojalpan was identified on the riverbank within the municipality.