Solidaridad () is one of the eleven municipalities that make up the

Mexican state A Mexican State (), officially the Free and Sovereign State (), is a constituent federative entity of Mexico according to the Constitution of Mexico. Currently there are 31 states, each with its own constitution, government, state governor, a ...

Quintana Roo Quintana Roo, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Quintana Roo, is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, constitute the 32 administrative divisions of Mexico, federal entities of Mexico. It is divided into municipalities of ...

. Its municipal seat is the town of

Playa del Carmen Playa del Carmen, known colloquially as Playa, is a resort city located along the Caribbean Sea in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. It is part of the municipality of Solidaridad. As of 2020, the city's population was just over 3 ...

. Solidaridad is home to the

Maya Maya may refer to: Ethnic groups * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Mayan languages, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (East Africa), a p ...

archaeological site of Xcaret.

Geography

The municipality has some small but rich continental sites including the ecotourism park of Xcaret. Prior to the creation of the

Municipality of Tulum Tulum Municipality (, ) is one of the eleven municipalities that make up the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. It became a municipality when it was formed on 13 March 2008, at which time it was separated from Solidaridad Municipality. Tulum is ho ...

, the municipality was situated between latitudes 20° 45' and 19° 46' north and longitudes 86° 57' and 88° 05' west, and had an area of . Today, it borders the municipalities of

Benito Juárez Benito Pablo Juárez García (; 21 March 1806 – 18 July 1872) was a Mexican politician, military commander, and lawyer who served as the 26th president of Mexico from 1858 until his death in office in 1872. A Zapotec peoples, Zapotec, he w ...

and

Lázaro Cárdenas Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (; 21 May 1895 – 19 October 1970) was a Mexican army officer and politician who served as president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940. Previously, he served as a general in the Constitutional Army during the Mexican Revo ...

to the north and Tulum to the south; and is separated in most places from its neighboring municipality to the east (

Cozumel Cozumel (; ) is an island and municipality in the Caribbean Sea off the eastern coast of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, opposite Playa del Carmen. It is separated from the mainland by the Cozumel Channel and is close to the Yucatán Channel. The ...

) by a stretch of the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere, located south of the Gulf of Mexico and southwest of the Sargasso Sea. It is bounded by the Greater Antilles to the north from Cuba ...

known as the Cozumel Channel. The ecotourism park of

Xel-Ha Xelha (, Spanish: Xelhá; Yucatec Maya: Xel-Há) is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, located on the eastern coastline of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the present-day state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. ...

and the

Calica Calica is a quarry and a port on the Quintana Roo coast of Mexico. The name is short for the full Spanish name Calizas Industriales del Carmen, "calizas" Spanish for lime or limestone (cognate to the English "calcite.") Ultramar and Transcarib ...

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

quarry are not part of Solidaridad as they belong to the neighboring municipality of

. These are the only two mainland locations for the municipality of

with sizes of and respectively. All of the

from

is exported to the US, and the quarry has its own docks and also serves visiting cruise ships.

Orography and hydrography

Like most of the Yucatan Peninsula, Solidaridad is almost entirely flat with a gentle slope towards the sea, so from west to east, most of the area never reaches an altitude above above sea level. Like the rest of the peninsula's surface the land has a

base that does not allow the formation of surface water flows such as rivers and streams, the water instead form flows in underground rivers that sometimes rise to the surface in the

cenote A cenote ( or ; ) is a natural pit, or sinkhole, resulting when a collapse of limestone bedrock exposes groundwater. The term originated on the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, where the ancient Maya commonly used cenotes for water supplies, and ...

s. Lakes and

s are the major water bodies of the

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

Communities

The largest localities (cities, towns, and villages) are:2010 census tables: INEGI

History

Solidaridad is one of the youngest municipalities in the country: it was formed on July 28, 1993, by decree of the State Congress during the administration of

Mario Villanueva Madrid Mario Ernesto Villanueva Madrid, sometimes known as "El Chueco",''Chueco'' is a Spanish adjective meaning "crooked"; it was originally a reference to Villanueva's facial features which are affected by some sort of facial paralysisUNESCO./ref> ...

. At this time the municipality of

was split into two, with the mainland section constituting the new municipality of Solidaridad. On March 13, 2008, Solidaridad was split in two when the new

was formed, as a result its land area and population were adjusted.

Demographics

The municipality has a population of 159,310 according to the results of the Population and Housing Census of 2010 conducted by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía), of these, 83,468 are men and 75,842 are women. By this time, Tulum Municipality was already separated from Solidaridad. Currently most of its population are immigrants, mainly from the southeastern states of Mexico; but also, according to the National Institute of Migration, Mexico (Instituto Nacional de Migración de México), the municipality has 12 percent of its population of foreign origin.

References

External links

* — {{Quintana Roo 01 Municipalities of Quintana Roo