Pacific Coast historical timeline

The Pacific coast’s history is maritime and, for two and a half centuries, transpacific.

Before the Spanish

The Purepecha of Michoacan built a state that successfully resisted the Aztecs, holding a fortified frontier against them and working metal — copper and bronze — more skilfully than anyone else in Mesoamerica. Further south the Mixtec and Chatino occupied the sierra and the coast.

The Manila galleon

From 1565 to 1815, a Spanish galleon crossed annually from Manila to Acapulco, carrying Chinese silk, porcelain and spices to be traded for Mexican silver and hauled overland to Veracruz for Europe. It was the longest continuously operated trade route in history and it made Acapulco a world port for one month a year and a backwater for the other eleven. Asian goods, techniques and people arrived this way — the china poblana dress and the coconut spirit of the coast both come from it.

Independence and after

The coast and the Guerrero sierra were strongholds of the independence struggle, and Jose Maria Morelos and Vicente Guerrero both came from here. The Guerrero mountains later saw a peasant insurgency and a brutal counter-campaign in the 1960s and 1970s.

Tourism

Acapulco became Mexico’s first beach resort in the 1940s and the glamour destination of the following two decades. Puerto Vallarta followed after the filming of The Night of the Iguana there in 1963, and the government-planned resorts at Ixtapa and Huatulco came later.

Recent years

Guerrero has suffered badly from organised crime, and Hurricane Otis destroyed much of Acapulco in October 2023.