Culiacán
Culiacán, officially Culiacán Rosales, is the capital and largest city of Sinaloa in northwestern Mexico. It is located within the Culiacán Municipality. The city was founded on 29 September 1531 by the Spanish conquistadors Lázaro de Cebreros and Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán originally under the name "Villa de San Miguel", in honor of its patron saint Michael the Archangel.
According to the 2020 INEGI census, Culiacán had an estimated population of 808,416, making it the 21st most populous city in Mexico. Its metropolitan area, with a population of 1,003,530, was the 17th most populous metropolitan area in Mexico.
The city sits in a valley on the slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidental, at the confluence of the Tamazula and Humaya Rivers, where both join to form the Culiacán River 55 meters above sea level.
Etymology
The name derives from the Nahuatl colhua and the locative –cán, rendering "place of the Colhua". Some historians alternatively interpret it as "snake place" or "crooked hill". The most accepted theory is "place of the colhuas", or "inhabited by the colhua tribe", and the most frequent meaning is "place of worshiping the god Coltzin".History
Prehispanic era
An ancient indigenous settlement called Huey Colhuacan dates back to Tecpatl, corresponding to the year 628 CE. The Aztecs built it during their pilgrimage. Its exact location is unknown, but it is generally assumed that it was close to the current town of Culiacáncito.Founding
The city known today as Culiacán was co-founded in 1531 by conquistadors Lázaro de Cebreros and Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán under the name "Villa de San Miguel". Upon their arrival in the 16th century, the Spanish found the existence of farmhouses organized in indigenous nations by the tribe of the Tahues, which brought together a group of people of the same origin and language who had a common tradition.Other indigenous peoples that inhabited the original territory of Culiacán were the Tebacas, Pacaxes, Sabaibo, and Achires.
After their war of conquest in 1531, de Cebreros and de Guzmán organized the territories acquired into three provinces. One of them was Culiacán, which was delimited to the South by the Elota River and to the North by the Mocorito River, depending on the Kingdom of Nueva Galicia. Organized in this way, the territory lasted until 1786, the year in which the administration system was implemented, with Sonora and Sinaloa forming the province of Arizpe and the older province of Culiacán remaining the same.
Independent Mexico
On 6 October 1821, independence was sworn in Culiacán. Culiacán was granted the category of city on 21 July 1823, when the provinces of Sonora and Sinaloa separated by decree from Congress. In 1824, by the Constitutive Act of the Mexican Federation, Sinaloa and Sonora reunited, forming the Estado de Occidente. On 13 October 1830, the provinces of Sonora and Sinaloa were definitively separated by decree, with the city of Culiacán designated the capital of the state of Sinaloa. In 1861, during the conservative government of the French Intervention, prefectures were installed, and the Municipalities Law was enacted that divided the Districts into City Councils. The Badiraguato District was suppressed and became part of the Culiacán District as a municipality.From 1859 to 1873, the capital of Sinaloa was moved from Culiacán to Mazatlán. In the Restored Republic, Governor Eustaquio Buelna confronted the merchants of the port. He returned to Culiacán, and the Local Congress gave it the status of capital of the state.
Porfirian and revolutionary times
In 1878, Culiacán had three City Halls, whose headwaters were Culiacán, Quilá, and Badiraguato. This remained the case until 1880 when Badiraguato returned to being a district with the limits that previously corresponded to it.Municipalities were established by law in 1912 as a new form of internal government. However, this law did not come into force until 1915, when political directories were suppressed, causing the districts to become free municipalities. Culiacán was established as a municipality by decree on 8 April 1915. Within its original limits was the current Municipality of Navolato, which was segregated from Culiacán on 27 August 1982, depriving the city of of valley agriculture.
Sometime later, the State Congress approved the extension of the capital city's name, giving it its current official name of Culiacán de Rosales. "Rosales" honors the great Mexican military man Antonio Rosales, who fought in the second French Intervention and the Reform War, along with serving as the governor of Sinaloa.
After World War II
From the late 1950s onward, Culiacán emerged as a major hub for drug trafficking to the United States. The completion of the Pan-American Highway and the regional airport in the 1960s accelerated the expansion of workable distribution infrastructure for the enterprising few families that would later come to dominate the international drug cartels along Mexico's Pacific Northwest. The Sinaloa Cartel made Culiacán its primary base.On 17 October 2019, after an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to arrest one of the Sinaloa Cartel's leaders, widespread gunfights broke out across the city, leading to multiple deaths, in what has been called the "Battle of Culiacán". One of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's relatives, Ovidio Guzmán, was arrested, but the police were eventually forced to release him.
Coat of arms
The coat of arms of the municipality and the city of Culiacán in Sinaloa, Mexico, has various elements that represent the history of the municipality yesterday and today.Rolando Arjona Amábilis was the artist behind the official coat of arms of the Municipality of Culiacán, which was made official through municipal decree number 13 May 26, 1960, and published in number 90 of the Official Newspaper of the State of Sinaloa on 30 July 1960. Its shape is square with rounded corners ending in a point. The entire face of the shield is covered with a carmine color. In the center is a hieroglyph representing a hill with a human head inclined forward. This glyph alludes to Coltzin, "the crooked god", an authentic figure of Nahuatl mythology, who gave its name to the Nahuatlaca-Colhua tribe and, in turn, to the town of its residence, Colhuacán or Teocolhuacán.
Across the face of the shield, there are symbols of water referring to rivers. In the central part and towards the left side, a cross is followed by a path on which footprints can be observed that end in a small construction. These motifs symbolize the missionaries of San Miguel de Culiacán left for the North, and they are invoked as an obligatory tribute to the goodness and heroism of the missionaries.
On the carmine border, the word "Culiacán" can be read in its upper part, and in its lower part the word "Colhuacán", which corresponds to the true name of the place in the Nahuatl language. In the upper part of the shield, there is a hill with a germinating seed and the figure of a golden sun, alluding both to the tropical climate of this region and to the fundamentally agricultural effort of its inhabitants.
Politics
The government of the municipality of Culiacán corresponds to its City Council, which is elected by a universal, direct, and secret vote for a period of three years. The term is not renewable for the immediate period but can be continuous. The elected officials begin to exercise their position on 1 January of the year following the election. The City Council is composed of the Municipal President, a Procurator Trustee, and a body of councilors consisting of 18 representatives elected by relative majority and seven by the principle of proportional representation.Syndications
For its internal regime, the municipality is subdivided into 17 receiverships, which in turn are divided into police stations. The 17 receiverships of the municipality are: El Salado, Higueras de Abuya, Baila, Aguaruto, Emiliano Zapata, Adolfo López Mateos, Jesús María, Las Tapias, Quilá, Sanalona, San Lorenzo, Tacuichamona, Tepuche, Imala, Costa Rica, Culiacáncito, and Eldorado.Paramunicipals
- Culiacán Zoo
- JAPAC
- Municipal Institute of Sports and Physical Culture
- EME Park
- Municipal Institute of Culiacán Women
- MIA Institute
- Culiacán Municipal Institute of Culture
- Housing Institute
- DIF Culiacán
- The Chronicle of Culiacán
- Municipal Institute of Youth
- Municipal Commission of Populated Centers of Culiacán
- IMPLAN
- COMPAVI
Geography
Location
Culiacán is located in the central region of the State of Sinaloa, forming part of the Northwest of Mexico. The coordinates that correspond to it are 24 ° 48'15 "N by 107 ° 25'52" W, with an altitude of 54 meters above sea level.The city is located from Mexico City. From Culiacán to Tepic is only 502 km; to Durango, 536 km; to Hermosillo, 688 km; to Guadalajara, 708 km; to Monterrey, 1,118 km; to Chihuahua, 1,159 km; to Tijuana, 1,552 km; and to Matamoros, 1,434 km.