Poza Rica de Hidalgo

Poza Rica de Hidalgo is the largest city in northern Veracruz: it had 189,457 people at the 2020 census, and its metropolitan area, spilling into Coatzintla, Tihuatlán, Papantla and Cazones, passes half a million. The centre sits in a small valley of the Cazones River basin at about 60 metres, and newer districts climb the hills to the northeast. It is a young city with no colonial buildings; it lives from oil, trade and services for the whole region, including nearby towns in Puebla.

Traces of settlement from around AD 800 were found in 2011 in the old Arroyo del Maíz ejido. By 1871 Poza Rica was a Totonac community in Coatzintla municipality, named after a pool on the Cazones that was thick with fish. In the early 1900s a narrow-gauge railway from Cobos, the port of Tuxpan, to the Furbero oil fields passed through, and the hamlet was known as kilometre 56. In 1930 the El Águila company struck the Poza Rica No. 2 well, so rich that in December 1932 it moved its camp here from Palma Sola, and workers from all over the country came in on the little Cobos-Furbero train.

The oil workers organised what became Section 30 of the national union; in 1937 they held a 57-day strike against El Águila, and a delegation asked Lázaro Cárdenas to expropriate the field, which he did on 18 March 1938. In the 1940s Poza Rica was called Mexico's oil capital. Accidents left their mark: in 1947 the worker Adolfo Rendón put out the fire at the Poza Rica 6 well and asked only for a school for his neighbourhood as a reward, and in November 1950 a hydrogen sulphide leak killed 25 people. After a fire in Poza de Cuero, residents campaigned to break away from Coatzintla, and the municipality of Poza Rica de Hidalgo was created on 13 November 1951. The city is now the headquarters of Pemex's Northern exploration and production region.

Its most important artwork is Pablo O'Higgins's outdoor mural on the Palacio Municipal, unveiled on 18 March 1959: 5 by 47 metres, made of more than 11,000 ceramic tiles. The Parque de las Américas on the Cerro del Abuelo has the best view over the valley and the flare stacks that lit the city in its early years. Food mixes Totonac and Huasteca cooking: zacahuil, bocoles, molotes, enchiladas, estrujadas, zaragalla tamales and shrimp huatape. For visitors, Poza Rica is the practical base for El Tajín, 15 km away, and for the beaches at Cazones, Tuxpan and Tecolutla.