Mexcaltitán de Uribe, also known simply as Mexcaltitán, is a small man-made island-city in the municipality of

Santiago Ixcuintla Santiago de Ixcuintla is a municipality and a municipal seat in the western Mexican state of Nayarit. The municipal population was 84,314 inhabitants (census of 2000) with the municipal seat having 18,269. The area of the municipality was 1,831 ...

in the

Mexican state The states of Mexico are first-level administrative territorial entities of the country of Mexico, which is officially named Mexico, United Mexican States. There are 32 federal entities in Mexico (31 states and the capital, Mexico City, as a sepa ...

Nayarit Nayarit (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Nayarit ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Nayarit), is one of the 31 states that, along with Mexico City, comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 20 municipalities and its ...

. Its name derives from two

Náhuatl Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller ...

words, "mexcalli" and "titlán". Some historians have raised the possibility that it was the Aztlan of the

Aztec The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different Indigenous peoples of Mexico, ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those g ...

s, their home city and birthplace from where they set out on their pilgrimage in 1091 that led them to the founding of

Tenochtitlan , ; es, Tenochtitlan also known as Mexico-Tenochtitlan, ; es, México-Tenochtitlan was a large Mexican in what is now the historic center of Mexico City. The exact date of the founding of the city is unclear. The date 13 March 1325 was ...

. This island is now being promoted as a tourist attraction. It was designated a "

Pueblo Mágico In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain ...

" by the federal government in 2001, and, after losing the status for several years, was reinstated in the program in 2020. It is accessible by boat from La Batanga, which is the dock area located some 40 kilometers from

. It is known as "The Mexican

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

" (''La Venecia Mexicana''). Mexcaltitan1980 20x20

The principal tourist attraction of the island consists of its colorful houses with traditional water resistant roofs. During the rainy season it is necessary to travel by boat due to flooding in the streets.

Geographic location

The island is approximately 1100' (335m) in diameter, nearly round in shape.Mexcaltitan de Uribe - Google Maps (accessed 9 May 2019)
/ref> Currently it is a nationally recognized tourist center, located 22.3 mi (36 km) from the city of

, and 60 mi (98 km) from the city of

Tepic Tepic () is the capital and largest city of the western Mexican state of Nayarit, as well as the seat of the Tepic Municipality. Located in the central part of the state, it stands at an altitude of above sea level, on the banks of the Río Mo ...

History

During the 1960s, Mexican intellectuals began to seriously speculate about the possibility that Mexcaltitán was the mythical city of

Aztlán Aztlán (from nah, Astlan, ) is the ancestral home of the Aztec peoples. '' Astekah'' is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan". Aztlan is mentioned in several ethnohistorical sources dating from the colonial period, and while they each cite ...

, from where the Mexicas (later known as the Aztecs) left to initiate their pilgrimage. One of the first to consider

being linked to the Nayaritian island was historian Alfredo Chavero towards the end of the 19th century. Historical investigators after his death tested his proposition and considered it valid, among them Wigberto Jiménez Moreno. This hypothesis is still up for debate. In July 2009 the title of

was taken from the island city by the Mexican Secretary of Tourism, because it didn't comply with the observations made by the Comité Técnico during the National Meeting of Pueblos Mágicos which took place in February of the same year in Tapalpa, Jalisco. The designation was officially restored to Mexcaltitán in December of 2020.

Demographics

In the 2010

INEGI The National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI by its name in es, Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática) is an autonomous agency of the Mexican Government dedicated to coordinate the National System of Stat ...

census, the island had 818 inhabitants.

Infrastructure

Among other landmarks, the city boasts a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

, a

Catholic church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, the

ejido An ''ejido'' (, from Latin ''exitum'') is an area of communal land used for agriculture in which community members have usufruct rights rather than ownership rights to land, which in Mexico is held by the Mexican state. People awarded ejidos in ...

commission, an

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...

and a government operated hospital. The island is served by 2 ferries: La Batanga, the most transited, 3.7 mi (6 km) away from Mexcaltitán and El Matadero, smaller than the other, 1.2 mi (2 km) away from the

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

. The

(public farmland allotted to citizens) of Mexcaltitán consists of an extensive area of land and water, and is considered considerably superior to other nearby ejidos in the same district consisting of the cities of El Mezcal, Aztlán de las Garzas, San Miguel Nº 2, El Nuevo Mexcaltitán and San Vicente.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mexcaltitan de Uribe Islands of Nayarit

External links

Mexcaltitan: Home of the Aztec people.

Mexcaltitan, Nayarit: an island city in the swamp.