Mazatlán
Mazatlán is a city in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. The city serves as the municipal seat for the surrounding municipio, known as the Mazatlán Municipality. It is located on the Pacific coast across from the southernmost tip of the Baja California peninsula.
Mazatlán is a Nahuatl word for 'place of deer'. The city was colonized in 1531 by the Conquistadors where many indigenous people lived. By the mid-19th century, a large group of immigrants arrived from Germany. Over time, Mazatlán developed into a commercial seaport, importing equipment for the nearby gold and silver mines. It served as the capital of Sinaloa from 1859 to 1873. The German settlers also influenced the local music, banda, with some genres being an alteration of Bavarian folk music. The settlers established the Pacifico Brewery on 14 March 1900. Mazatlán has a rich culture and art community; in addition to the Angela Peralta Theater, the city has many galleries, museums and buildings of historic value.
With a population of 438,434 and 489,987 as of the 2010 census, Mazatlán is the second-largest city in the state. It is also a tourist destination, with its beaches lined with resort hotels. A car ferry crosses the Gulf of California, from Mazatlán to La Paz, Baja California Sur. The municipality has a land area of and includes smaller outlying communities such as Villa Unión, La Noria, El Quelite, and El Habal. Mazatlán is served by Mazatlán International Airport.
Etymology
Mazatlán etymologically comes from the Nahuatl language and means "Land of deer".Originally, the name Presidio of Mazatlán was used for what is now called Villa Unión. The port of Mazatlán served as a reference to arrive to Presidio by sea, and was called the Islands of Mazatlán. By decree of the Estado de Occidente, on September 11, 1828, Presidio of Mazatlán was renamed Villa of the Union. This freed the name Mazatlán, and since the port was known as Islas de Mazatlán, the name was adopted.
History
Early settlers
groups were in the region of Mazatlán prior to the arrival of the Spanish. These groups included the Totorames, who lived from the south bank of the River Piaxtla to the Río de las Cañas, as well as the Xiximes, who lived in the mountains in the bordering state of Durango.Colonial period
During the early years of the Spanish conquest in Sinaloa, the region currently occupied by the municipality of Mazatlán remained uninhabited. The nearest town was Chametla, which was occupied by the Spanish in 1531, and lent its name to the province, despite being abandoned shortly afterward.The city was colonized in 1531 by an army of Spaniards.
In 1534, the Valley of Mazatlán was divided into 25 Castellanos by an unknown person who did not stay there for long. In 1576, Don Hernando de Bazán, Governor and Captain General of Nueva Vizcaya, sent Captain Martín Hernández with his father, brothers, and soldiers to occupy the site of Mazatlán, granting them land and titles in return. The Captain's claims were ratified in the City of Durango in 1639, and endorsed in the same city in 1650.
Nuño de Guzmán's entry to Sinaloa in 1531, and the appointment of the conquered lands as provinces, prompted the internal territorial division of the State. Chametla was occupied by the Spanish, and listed the province extending from the Rio Cañas Elota to the boundary with the province of Culiacán. Both provinces belonged to the kingdom of New Galicia.
In 1565, the town of Chametla was gradually diminished by ongoing Indian raids. That year, Captain Francisco de Ibarra recovered the territory south of the state, rebuilt Chametla, and founded the Villa de San Sebastián, and awarded the region to Nueva Vizcaya, New Spain. The provinces under his jurisdiction included the villages of San Sebastián, Charcas, Copala and Pánuco.
During the last years of the seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, the territory within Sinaloa remained unchanged, until 1732, when the provinces of Sonora and Ostimuri were united, as were the provinces of Sinaloa, Culiacán, and Rosario, with San Felipe and Santiago being the principal cities.
In 1749, Sinaloa was divided into five provinces with their mayors and lieutenancy: Maloya, with jurisdiction over Chametla, Rosario, and San José; Copala, with jurisdiction over San Ignacio, Piaxtla, and Mazatlán; Culiacán, with jurisdiction over Badiraguato, and Sinaloa, which bordered the Mayo River.
In 1786, the intendant system was implemented due to the need to establish a provincial government. Arizpe Municipality was formed out of the territories of Sonora and Sinaloa. That year, the first mayor, Garrido Durán, established eleven subdelegations, eight of them in Sinaloa, with Mazatlán being within the subdelegation of Copala, which was later called San Sebastián.
Independent Mexico
Among the first decrees that the legislature enacted was that the addition of each of the eleven districts, and this union, corresponding to the Union Villa Mariano Balleza, be given the name of one of the leading insurgents, parish priest Dolores Hidalgo, on the night of September 15, 1810.In 1813, the Cadiz constitution came into effect. Article 310 of that constitution provided for the installation of local councils in towns that had more than 1,000 inhabitants. In 1814, Fernando VII repealed that constitution but it was later reinstated in 1820, and the first municipalities in Sinaloa were founded.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Mazatlán was a native fishing village located north of Cerro de la Aduana. In 1821, it was declared the first port of Mazatlán on Mexico's Pacific coast.
Jurisdictionally, Mazatlán remained dependent on the sub-delegation of San Sebastian, unaffected by the divisions between the states of Sonora and Sinaloa. In 1824, they got together to form the Western State. After the imposition of new internal divisions of five departments and municipalities divided into parties, Mazatlán was in the department of San Sebastian, which was formed with the parties of its name, San Ignacio and the Rosary, and it extended to the River of Reeds.
In 1830, the Western State was divided into two states. The first constitution of the state of Sinaloa, promulgated on December 12, 1831, divided the territory into eleven districts with their respective parties, leaving the district town of La Union separated from Concord and San Ignacio.
Until the early 19th century, Mazatlán was a collection of huts inhabited by indigenous people whose major occupation was fishing, according to Abel Aubert du Petit-Thouars, a French explorer. In 1829, a Filipino banker named Juan Nepomuceno Machado arrived and established commercial relations with vessels coming to Mazatlán from far off places such as Chile, Peru, the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific. By 1836, the city had a population of between 4,000 and 5,000. It subsequently became the largest port on the Mexican Pacific coast.
In 1846 during the Mexican-American War, Mazatlán was invaded and occupied by the U.S. military as part of the U.S. Pacific Coast campaign. In 1859, the port was blockaded by Captain Sidney Grenfell of the British warship H.M.S. Amethyst. On November 13, 1864, the French Army and the Imperialist forces took possession of Mazatlán, until they were deported on November 13, 1866, by General Ramón Corona's forces. After customs officials seized twenty-three ounces of gold from the British warship Chanticleer on June 18, 1868, which at the time was blockading the port, its captain, William H. Bridge, threatened to bomb the city on November 22.
During the California Gold Rush, fortune hunters from the United States' East Coast sailed from New York Harbor and other Atlantic ports to Mexican ports in the Gulf of Mexico. After landing, the aspiring miners travelled over land for weeks to Mazatlán, where they would embark from the port to arrive in San Francisco in another four to five weeks.
When Félix Zuloaga Tacubaya proclaimed the Plan of Ignoring the Constitution of 1857, the garrison of the Plaza de Mazatlán did not remain outside this proclamation, and on January 1, 1858, the Plan of Mazatlán was proclaimed, which followed Zuloaga's Plan.
The capital of Sinaloa, until the year 1853, had been Culiacán. However, that year, the capital was transferred to Mazatlán. On July 22, 1867, the federal government passed a law that forbade state capitals from also acting as ports. As a result of this law, on September 20, 1873, the State Legislature decreed that Culiacán would be the state capital again.
The Siglo XIX constitution of 1852 decreed a new internal division in Sinaloa, which reduced it to nine districts by removing San Ignacio, which had been annexed to the Cosalá, and Choix, which had been annexed to El Fuerte. It also amended the name of the district from Villa de la Unión to the port of Mazatlán. That same constitution also decreed the headquarters and council facility policies in each district.
In 1861, the political headquarters were removed and turned into prefectures, and the same year the State Legislature adopted the Act on Municipalities. In 1868, the district had five municipalities in Mazatlán; one in the center and the other four in Villa Unión, Siqueiros, La Noria, and The Milkweed.
On the morning of November 13, 1864, French Navy ships fired twelve cannon shots into the city, causing minor damage to several homes, but not causing any deaths. The attack stopped when the prefect of the city made known to the invaders that the Mexican Army had left the square and the city was formally ceded to the French.
The Mazatlán Times was a weekly published by the American A. D. Jones. The first issue appeared on May 12, 1863. The publisher boasted that his was the only weekly English-language newspaper, not only in Mazatlán and Sinaloa, but throughout Mexico.
In 1873, according to the census of the State, the District of Mazatlán was reduced to three municipalities: Mazatlán, Villa Unión, and La Noria. Siqueiros had been annexed in 1870 to the central municipality, and The Milkweed to La Noria.