Palaú is a town in the
Mexican state
State most commonly refers to:
* State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory
**Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country
**Nation state, a ...
of
Coahuila
Coahuila, formally Coahuila de Zaragoza, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Coahuila de Zaragoza, is one of the 31 states of Mexico. The largest city and State Capital is the city of Saltillo; the second largest is Torreón and the thi ...
. It is located on the eastern boundary of the
Chihuahuan Desert, in the municipality of
Múzquiz. Temperatures in the summertime can easily reach 45 degrees Celsius and the winters are mild but wet. The main industry is
coal mining
Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...
.
When an Austrian engineer discovered these energy riches in the late 19th century, the northern portion of Coahuila quickly transformed from a sparsely populated region of cattle ranchers to an industrial powerhouse. Thousands of Japanese immigrants came seeking work; some of their descendants, with Japanese surnames, are still here. Simabuco is one of several Japanese Surnames and is traced back to Anastacio Simabuco one of the earliest settlers of Palau he is believed to have migrated from Okinawa, Japan at the turn of the 20th century.
Coahuila coal feeds steel mills in
Monclova
Monclova (), is a city and the seat of the surrounding municipality of the same name in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila. According to the 2015 census, the city had 231,107 inhabitants. Its metropolitan area has 381,432 inhabitants and ...
and
Monterrey
Monterrey (, , abbreviated as MtY) is the capital and largest city of the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo León. It is the ninth-largest city and the second largest metropolitan area, after Greater Mexico City. Located at the foothills of th ...
, the country's third-largest city. Two coal-fired electric plants near the
U.S. border supply as much as 8 percent of Mexico's electricity.
Population (INEGI 2005): 16,133 (men 8,063; women 8,070)
References
Info
Populated places in Coahuila
{{Coahuila-geo-stub