Left to right: Panoramic view of the city · Culiacán Botanical Garden ·Culiacán Cathedral · Tres Ríos District · Monumental letters ·Tomateros de Culiacán baseball monument · Sunset in Culiacán
The name derives from theNahuatl colhua ("ancestor" or a tribal name) and the locative –cán ("place"), rendering "place of the Colhua". Some historians alternatively interpret it as "snake place" or "crooked hill". The most accepted theory is "place of the colhuas", or "inhabited by the colhua tribe", and the most frequent meaning is "place of worshiping the god Coltzin".[2][3][4]
An ancient indigenous settlement called Huey Colhuacan dates back toTecpatl, corresponding to the year 628 CE. TheAztecs built it during their pilgrimage. Its exact location is unknown, but it is generally assumed that it was close to the current town ofCuliacáncito.[citation needed]
The city known today as Culiacán was co-founded in 1531 byconquistadorsLázaro de Cebreros andNuño Beltrán de Guzmán under the name "Villa de San Miguel". Upon their arrival in the 16th century, the Spanish found the existence of farmhouses organized in indigenous nations by thetribe of theTahues, which brought together a group of people of the same origin and language who had a common tradition.
Other indigenous peoples that inhabited the original territory of Culiacán were theTebacas,Pacaxes,Sabaibo, andAchires.
After their war of conquest in 1531, de Cebreros and de Guzmán organized the territories acquired into three provinces. One of them was Culiacán, which was delimited to the South by theElota River and to the North by the Mocorito River, depending on theKingdom of Nueva Galicia. Organized in this way, the territory lasted until 1786, the year in which the administration system was implemented,[clarification needed] withSonora andSinaloa forming the province of Arizpe and the older province of Culiacán remaining the same.
On 6 October 1821,independence was sworn in Culiacán. Culiacán was granted the category of city on 21 July 1823, when the provinces of Sonora and Sinaloa separated by decree from Congress. In 1824, by theConstitutive Act of the Mexican Federation, Sinaloa and Sonora reunited, forming theEstado de Occidente. On 13 October 1830, the provinces of Sonora and Sinaloa were definitively separated by decree, with the city of Culiacán designated the capital of the state of Sinaloa. In 1861, during the conservative government of theFrench Intervention, prefectures were installed, and the Municipalities Law was enacted that divided the Districts into City Councils. TheBadiraguato District was suppressed and became part of the Culiacán District as a municipality.
From 1859 to 1873, the capital of Sinaloa was moved from Culiacán to Mazatlán. In theRestored Republic, Governor Eustaquio Buelna confronted the merchants of the port. He returned to Culiacán, and the Local Congress gave it the status of capital of the state.
In 1878, Culiacán had three City Halls, whose headwaters were Culiacán,Quilá, andBadiraguato. This remained the case until 1880 when Badiraguato returned to being a district with the limits that previously corresponded to it.
Municipalities were established by law in 1912 as a new form of internal government. However, this law did not come into force until 1915, when political directories were suppressed, causing the districts to become free municipalities. Culiacán was established as a municipality by decree on 8 April 1915. Within its original limits was the current Municipality ofNavolato, which was segregated from Culiacán on 27 August 1982, depriving the city of 2,285 square kilometres (882 mi2) of valley agriculture.
Alfredo Campos and his guerrilla, entering Culiacán, in April 1912.
Sometime later, the State Congress approved the extension of the capital city's name, giving it its current official name of Culiacán de Rosales. "Rosales" honors the great Mexican military manAntonio Rosales, who fought in the second French Intervention and theReform War, along with serving as the governor of Sinaloa.
From the late 1950s onward, Culiacán emerged as a major hub fordrug trafficking to the United States. The completion of thePan-American Highway and the regional airport in the 1960s accelerated the expansion of workable distribution infrastructure for the enterprising few families that would later come to dominate the internationaldrug cartels along Mexico's Pacific Northwest. TheSinaloa Cartel made Culiacán its primary base.[5]
On 17 October 2019, after an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to arrest one of the Sinaloa Cartel's leaders, widespread gunfights broke out across the city, leading to multiple deaths, in what has been called the "Battle of Culiacán". One ofJoaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's relatives,Ovidio Guzmán, was arrested, but the police were eventually forced to release him.[6]
The coat of arms of the municipality and the city of Culiacán in Sinaloa, Mexico, has various elements that represent the history of the municipality yesterday and today.
Rolando Arjona Amábilis was the artist behind the official coat of arms of the Municipality of Culiacán, which was made official through municipal decree number 13 May 26, 1960, and published in number 90 of the Official Newspaper of the State of Sinaloa on 30 July 1960. Its shape is square with rounded corners ending in a point. The entire face of the shield is covered with acarmine color. In the center is ahieroglyph representing a hill with a human head inclined forward. This glyph alludes to Coltzin, "the crooked god", an authentic figure ofNahuatl mythology, who gave its name to the Nahuatlaca-Colhua tribe and, in turn, to the town of its residence, Colhuacán or Teocolhuacán.
Across the face of the shield, there are symbols of water referring to rivers. In the central part and towards the left side, a cross is followed by a path on which footprints can be observed that end in a small construction. These motifs symbolize the missionaries of San Miguel de Culiacán left for the North, and they are invoked as an obligatory tribute to the goodness and heroism of the missionaries.
On the carmine border, the word "Culiacán" can be read in its upper part, and in its lower part the word "Colhuacán", which corresponds to the true name of the place in theNahuatl language. In the upper part of the shield, there is a hill with a germinating seed and the figure of a golden sun, alluding both to the tropical climate of this region and to the fundamentally agricultural effort of its inhabitants.[7]
The government of the municipality of Culiacán corresponds to its City Council, which is elected by a universal, direct, and secret vote for a period of three years. The term is not renewable for the immediate period but can be continuous. The elected officials begin to exercise their position on 1 January of the year following the election. The City Council is composed of the Municipal President, a Procurator Trustee, and a body of councilors consisting of 18 representatives elected by relative majority and seven by the principle of proportional representation.
For its internal regime, the municipality is subdivided into 17 receiverships, which in turn are divided into police stations. The 17 receiverships of the municipality are: El Salado, Higueras de Abuya, Baila, Aguaruto, Emiliano Zapata, Adolfo López Mateos (El Tamarindo), Jesús María, Las Tapias, Quilá, Sanalona, San Lorenzo, Tacuichamona, Tepuche, Imala, Costa Rica, Culiacáncito, and Eldorado.
Culiacán is located in the central region of theState of Sinaloa, forming part of the Northwest of Mexico. The coordinates that correspond to it are 24 ° 48'15 "N (latitude) by 107 ° 25'52" W (West), with an altitude of 54 meters above sea level.[citation needed]
The relief of the municipality is well defined by a mountainous part and the coastal plain. The mountainous part corresponds to the physiographic region of the highlands, part of the Pacific slope of theSierra Madre Occidental mountain range with elevations of 300 to 2,100 meters above sea level.[9] The coastal plain lies to the West and is crossed by four regional rivers: theHumaya,Tamazula,Culiacán andSan Lorenzo. The Humaya has its origin in theState of Durango, entering Sinaloa throughBadiraguato; its waters are controlled by the Licenciado Adolfo López Mateos dam. The Tamazula River arises in the Sierra Madre Occidental near the Topia Valley; its waters are controlled by the Sanalona dam. The Humaya and Tamazula Rivers unite in front of the city of Culiacán to form theCuliacán River, which empties into theGulf of California. The San Lorenzo is borne from the Sierra Madre Occidental within the State of Durango, enters Sinaloa throughCosalá and empties into the Gulf of California.
Culiacán has a hotsemi-arid climate (Köppen:BSh), despite receiving an annual rainfall over 600 mm (24 in), due to its hot temperatures and high evaporation. Summers are very hot and humid, shade temperatures can reach 45 °C (113 °F) and high humidity can produce heat indices of 50 to 55 °C (122 to 131 °F), with the risk of heavy rainfall from decayingtropical cyclones also present. Winters are much milder, with less humidity and an average high of 27 °C, with warm nights.
The Municipality of Culiacán has a total population of 858,638 inhabitants, this according to the 2010 Population and Housing Census carried out by theNational Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).[14] It has a population density of 166.8 inhabitants / km2,[15] the Municipality concentrates 31% of the population in theState of Sinaloa, with 422,507 men and 436,131 women, with a ratio of 96.9 men for every 100 women.[14]
The city of Culiacán Rosales occupies only a part of the municipality of Culiacán and in 2010 had an urban area of 65 km2, being the largest in the state of Sinaloa and has a population of 675,773 inhabitants (of which 329,608 are men and 346,165 are women), according to the 2010 Population and Housing Census carried out by the (INEGI), resulting in a population density of 10,396.5 inhabitants / km2.[16] concentrating 78.7% of the total urban population of the Municipality. The ethnic groups most represented in the Municipality are theMixtec andNahuatl,[17] the total population ofindigenous language speakers (HLI population) is 13,081 people.[18] On the other hand, in the urban area of Culiacán, there are only 3,536 indigenous people.
The city ranks 20th in number of foreign population, which amounts to 6,693 inhabitants, which represent almost 1% of the total population; Among the main nationalities are Americans, Canadians, Spanish, Italians, Greeks, Argentines, Cubans, Colombians, Brazilians, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Ukrainians, Venezuelans, Dominicans, Germans, among others.
The presence of people of Greek origin that occurred in the 1940s and 1950s coincided with the incipient but flourishing emergence of agriculture. This attracted a lot of Hellenic labor for the tillage of the land. This attracted a greater number of people; today, they make up the few thousand people who continue to live in the city. It is believed that the Greek community is the largest in Mexico.
The total number of dwellings that exist in the city is 221,144, of which only 176,799 dwellings are occupied, with an average of 3.81 inhabitants per inhabited dwelling.[citation needed] In general, cement roofs, walls, and floors are used for the construction of the house, although homes or buildings do not cease to exist, most of them have sheet roofs and earth floors. This occurs mainly in the area peripheral to the south of the city, where settlements of new inhabitants are growing in number.
Hotel Lucerna.
Of the 176,799 occupied dwellings, 173,704 have electricity, 171,614 have piped water, 171,489 have drainage, and 169,550 have the 3 services simultaneously.[citation needed]
Among the noteworthy buildings are Torre Tres Ríos, Torre Santa María, Torre Tres Afluencias, Mileto 4 Ríos, Estela Corporate Center, Ceiba, BioInnova Building, Tower 120, and Dafi, all located in theTres Ríos Urban Development district.
The HistoricalCenter of Culiacán is the original area of the city, in which most of the buildings of the Spanish colonization between the 16th and 19th centuries are found, it comprises a territorial extension of approximately 247,123 ha (2,471 km2). From the '70s onwards, there was a process of depopulation of the area due to the high costs of rents, the bustle of the main streets and avenues, and the priority of having more commercial spaces, but in recent years there has been a process of repopulation of the same with the construction of apartments in the periphery of the center and a project of urban reorganization in which it is intended to have a higher population density.
Culiacán downtown in April 2010.
Las Colonias, which are the first settlements that populated the perimeter around the original urban area by people from different social strata to have a largely wide space close to the center; Among the best known and with the largest population, we find: Infonavit Humaya, Tierra Blanca, 6 January, Stase, Juntas de Humaya, Almada, Miguel Alemán, Centro Sinaloa, Morelos, Palmito, El Barrio, Aurora, etc.
The subdivisions are areas divided by various construction companies, where certain sections feature the same style of housing, accommodating people of lower middle class, middle and upper middle class. Among the most well-known are: La Conquista, Villas del Rio, Valle Alto, Los Pinos, Villa Verde and Villa Fontana.Residentials are considered to be areas strategically built for people with high purchasing power, with spacious houses, and large green areas. In most cases, they are private. Examples of these neighborhoods include:Tres Ríos, Chapultepec, Los Álamos, Guadalupe, Lomas de Guadalupe, Colinas de San Miguel, Montebello, La Campiña, Las Quintas, Isla Musalá and La Primavera.
Culiacán's economy is mainly agricultural and commerce. It is a trade center for produce, meat, and fish. Among other industries, Culiacán represents 32 percent of the state economy.
Coppel,Casa Ley,Homex, and other companies of national importance are headquartered in Culiacán.
As of 2024, Culiacán has just over 68 urban transport routes, which serve about one million users. The Culiacán urban transport is operated by RedPlus.[19]
The city has a train station operated byFerromex, which is used only to transport freight. It is connected to Mazatlán in the south and Guaymas in the north.
Culiacán uses the "Millennium" International Bus Station ("Central Internacional de Autobuses "Millennium) to travel across of Mexico and to the United States (Arizona and California).
Though several high-speed roads have been built, most of the city's streets are rather narrow, and traffic jams are common during rush hour. There are 300,000 cars in Culiacán, making the per capita number of cars one of the highest in the country.[citation needed]
Culiacán has several roads (avenues, boulevards, streets, etc.), but some of these are the main quick motor vehicle connection to other points of the city.
Mexico 15 (Plan Mar de Cortes-Mexican Federal Highway 15)
Primavera (Plan Mar de Cortes-La Primavera)
Eje El Trébol (Plan Mar de Cortes-Blvd. Jesús Kumate)
Eje Federalismo Tunnels (Gabriel Leyva Solano/Francisco I. Madero-Federalismo)
UdO (Blvd. Rolando Arjona-Blvd. Lola Beltrán) under construction
Gasolinera del Valle (Blvd. Jesús Kumate-Blvd. Emiliano Zapata) under construction
Japac Country (Blvd. Pedro Infante-Blvd. Rolando Arjona) spring 2013
On 17 February 2014, investigators from Mexico and the United States learned thatJoaquín Guzmán Loera, or El Chapo, was using underground sewage tunnels in Culiacán by constructing hatches connecting to the drainage network in the bathtubs of his city "stash houses".[20]On at least one occasion, authorities chased Guzman into the tunnels but lost him. An AP reporter said some of the tunnels were well-lit, had wood paneling, and was air-conditioned.[20]
Culiacán is a rail junction and is located on thePanamerican Highway that runs north to the United States and south to Guadalajara and Mexico City, and the Benito Juárez Highway or Maxipista, which is a toll road that runs parallel to the toll-free federal highway. It is connected to the north with Los Mochis and to the south with Mazatlán, Tepic, and Guadalajara with the Federal Highway 15.
Culiacán is linked to the satellite city ofNavolato by a freeway that now reachesAltata on the Pacific Ocean coast. Culiacán is also linked toTamazula de Victoria in Durango state.
Freeway 280-30 (west: Navolato-Altata)
Freeway 3-225 (north: Melchor Ocampo-Guamuchil)
Freeway 5-325 (south: Costa Rica-El Dorado)
Tamazula Interstate Freeway (northeast: Sanalona-Tamazula de Victoria)
Culiacán CathedralLas Riveras Park on Old Waterfront
Culiacán Cathedral, a 19th-century church, began construction in the 1830s.
PlazuelaAlvaro Obregón was the place for social gatherings in the 1800s.
La Lomita or Templo de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is the tallest church in Culiacán, situated on a hill with a view of the entire city.
The Regional History Museum in the "Parque Constitución", a large art museum downtown and several small art galleries, is owned by several local universities.
The Botanical Garden and Centro de Ciencias de Sinaloa, a science museum, holds the fifth-largestmeteorite on earth.
A baseball stadium, the Estadio Angel Flores, is the home of Los Tomateros de Culiacán; a bigger football arena, called Estadio Banorte (formerlyEstadio Carlos González), is the home of LosDorados de Sinaloa, a Mexican football team.
In addition, this city has a unique gastronomic diversity in its style.[21][22]
Parque Las Riberas (in Spanish) is the area attached to the Tamazula and Humaya rivers. Different species of trees, such as willows, poplars, Guamúchiles, and eucalyptus, can be seen. The White Bimodal Bridge, which connects the park with the city center, facilitates access for pedestrians, and at night, it becomes a light show that contrasts with the Black Bridge in Culiacán.
Located to the east of the city, this area is 10 ha and is home to different ecosystems and hundreds of plant and tree species, as well as the art installation Encounters by James Turrel. The Culiacán Botanical Garden has a variety of more than 2,000 plants.
Orabá Island, as its name indicates, is an island between the confluence of theTamazula River and theHumaya River, where theCuliacán River is born. It is part of a series of parks and gardens that have been built on the banks of the three rivers.
Located next to the heart of the city, forming part of the Civic Center Constitución with an extension of 13.5 hectares, it houses 1,400 animals belonging to more than 450 species, including mammals, reptiles, and birds. It was built on 14 December 1950, as part of the Development Plan of the Sinaloa State Government, which contemplated the need to create a natural area that would contribute to promoting the education of flora and fauna existing in this region under the mandate of the State Governor. General Gabriel Leyva Velásquez, supported by Emilio Aguerreverre, Municipal President of Culiacán.
The Tres Ríos Water Park is a recreational space that was built at the confluence of the Humaya and Tamazula rivers, precisely where the Culiacán River is born.
This park is very close to Parque Las Riberas. It is the largest and most visited park in the northwest of the country.
The dancing or dancing fountains of Culiacán are a spectacle of hundreds of independent fountains programmed to "dance" to the sound of typical Sinaloan music. This show is presented every day in an area of the 3 Ríos Project where the flagpole is located, more specifically, at the mere confluence of the Humaya and Tamazula rivers.
^"Klimatafel von Culiacán, Sinaloa / Mexiko"(PDF).Baseline climate means (1961–1990) from stations all over the world (in German). Deutscher Wetterdienst.Archived(PDF) from the original on 24 February 2020. Retrieved24 January 2016.
^De acuerdo a estimaciones del extinto INI a partir de la base de datos del XII Censo General de Población y Vivienda del INEGI 2000. Dimensión de la población hablante de lengua indígena de acuerdo con el número de hablantes, solo incluye personas de 5 años y más.
_(cropped).jpg)
