Saltillo
Saltillo is the capital and largest city of the northeastern Mexican state of Coahuila and is also the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. Mexico City, Monterrey, and Saltillo are all connected by a major railroad and highway. As of a 2020 census, Saltillo had a population of 879,958 people, while the Saltillo metropolitan area population was 1,031,779, making Saltillo the largest city in the state of Coahuila, and the 14th most populated metropolitan area in the country.
Saltillo is considered the most competitive city in Mexico for cities with over one million inhabitants. Saltillo's success is due to its strong performance in the Urban Competitiveness Index, which is developed by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness. The ICU evaluates cities based on 35 indicators, including law, society, infrastructure, labor market, political system, and innovation. Saltillo is also the safest capital city in Mexico, according to INEGI data from 2025.
Saltillo is one of the most industrialized cities in Mexico and has one of the largest automotive industries in the country, with plants such as Tupy, Grupo Industrial Saltillo, General Motors, Stellantis, Daimler AG, Freightliner Trucks, BorgWarner, Plastic Omnium, Magna, and Nemak operating in the region. The city and its metropolitan area also house a large number of plants providing manufactured goods to various other multinational companies, including Tesla's new plant in Mexico, located less than an hour away in the neighboring Santa Catarina, Nuevo León also Saltillo is a prominent manufacturing hub noted for its commerce, communications, and manufacturing of products both traditional and modern.
History
Colonial era
Founded in 1577 by Conquistador Alberto del Canto as Villa de Santiago del Saltillo, it is one of the oldest post-conquest settlements in Northern Mexico. The name of the city comes from a small waterfall that draws water from a spring. Nowadays, the spring is located within the Parish of the Holy Christ of the Ojo de Agua and is still visited by the local population.In 1591, the Spanish resettled a community of their Tlaxcaltec allies in a separate town, San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala, located just across an irrigation ditch from Saltillo. The measure was taken in order to aid stalled colonization efforts and cultivate the land. In its early years, Saltillo grew slowly due to the hostility of the indigenous Chichimeca people and frequent water shortages. A hundred years after its founding, its population was only about 300 people, whilst the population of the adjacent Tlaxcaltec town, San Esteban, was about 1,750.
In the eighteenth century, Saltillo was a commercial center on the northern frontier which served as a bridge from central Mexico to regions further northeast such as the New Kingdom of León, New Santander, Coahuila, and Texas. It also supplied the silver mines of Zacatecas with wheat. It never rose to great prominence, but it did develop a commercial core and an agricultural and ranching sector that supplied its needs, with surpluses that could be sold. Saltillo became administratively important at the end of the eighteenth century, when a branch of the Royal Treasury was established in the city.
Merchants, most of whom were Iberian Peninsula-born Spaniards, constituted the most important economic group, handling a wide variety of goods and selling in shops. They were the provincial branch of the transatlantic merchant sector, with ties to Mexico City merchants. Peninsular merchants in Saltillo married into the local elite society, acquired rural properties, and sought local office.
In the late seventeenth century, an annual trade fair was established, which carried Mexican livestock and manufactured goods to places as far as China and Europe. Saltillo could produce wheat commercially as long as there was access to water, but as with many other parts of the North, drought was a consistent threat. In the eighteenth century, there was a demand for draft animals, which Saltillo supplied.
Early Mexico
In 1824, Saltillo was made the capital of the state of Coahuila y Tejas, substituting Santiago de la Monclova as such. Three years later, Mexican Constituting Congress sanctioned that the city's name be changed to Leona Vicario, after one of the few female figures of the Mexican War of Independence. However, in 1831, a new State Congress decree merged Leona Vicario with the contiguous town of San Esteban and the name was changed back to Saltillo.For nearly a decade, Saltillo held the administrative seat of a territory which included Coahuila alongside most of the territory of the current U.S. state of Texas until it was lost in the 1836 in the Texas Revolution. The Republic of Texas continued to have border disputes with Mexico's Centralist Republic, which continued to object to its independence. Peace was further disturbed by Comanche and Apache raiding, private vendettas, and separatist movements. On October 23, 1840, the Battle of Saltillo took place when 110 Texians and Tejanos crossed the Rio Grande to attack the city's government in support of an attempt to create a separate Republic of the Rio Grande between Texas and Mexico.
In 1845, Texas was annexed by the United States and its disputes with Mexico, aggravated by the Polk Administration, soon expanded into the Mexican–American War. The first phase of the war ended in September 1846 with Gen.Zachary Taylor's hard-won siege and occupation of Monterrey in Nuevo León. The War Department ordered him to remain there, but Taylor violated the armistice and went with Gen.William Worth and 1200 men to occupy Saltillo on 16 November to protect the approaches to his main army in Monterrey. Antonio López de Santa Anna had been allowed through the blockade of Veracruz to bring the war to a swift conclusion but had instead rallied the Mexican army and moved north. Gen.John E. Wool was sent to nearby Agua Nueva on December 21 and the indecisive Battle of Buena Vista occurred from Saltillo between February 22 and 23,1847, after which López de Santa Anna's army was forced to move south to protect San Luis Potosí and counter a seaborne invasion by Gen.Winfield Scott.
Porfiriato and Mexican Revolution
Modernity reached Coahuila with the arrival of the railroad in 1880, during the Porfiriato. In 1890, telegraph, telephone, and street lighting networks were created in addition to the construction of cultural buildings, including theaters and plazas, and buildings of a social nature such as hospices, civil hospitals, and sanitary structures consisting of drinking water and drainage systems.During the 19101920 Mexican Revolution, Saltillo was occupied in separate events by the forces of Victoriano Huerta, Francisco Villa, and then by those of Venustiano Carranza. Hundreds of peasants were forced to join these various groups. As a result, many fled to Texas, including aristocratic families.
20th century
In 1923 the Antonio Narro Agrarian University was founded. Two decades later in 1943, the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education was established in the city, then in 1951, the Technological Institute of Saltillo and in 1957, the Autonomous University of Coahuila was established.Saltillo's agricultural climate in the second half of the 20th century was rapidly transforming into industrial activity; huge orchards disappeared and factories began to dominate the landscape.
In the second quarter of the twentieth century, Saltillo changed from agricultural and textile activities towards industrial activities, with the creation of companies such as CIFUNSA, CINSA, Éxito, and Molinos el Fénix, among others.
The true industrial explosion occurred in the '70s and '80s with the arrival of the car industry to the region. Companies such as General Motors and Chrysler, along with their respective satellite companies or suppliers, came to Saltillo. Since then, Saltillo and its Metropolitan Zone are known as the "Detroit of Mexico". However, a movement is currently underway to diversify the industry, with the arrival of pharmaceutical companies, household appliances, chemicals, ceramics, and even parts for the aerospace industry.