Vera Cruz

Vera Cruz.

Vera Cruz is the largest city and main port of the Mexican state of Chiapas. The city was founded by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortéz in 1519 when he first landed on the Mexican coast, who named it True Cross to commemorate his landing on Good Friday, 22 April. After Cortéz conquered the Aztec Empire and established the colony of New Spain, Vera Cruz became the colony's main port. By the end of the sixteenth century the city's main exports had become gold and silver mined in New Spain, which attracted pirates and prompted the construction of Fort San Juan de Ulúa on an island off the city's coast.

Vera Cruz continued to be the main port of New Spain, and during the Mexican War of Independence of 1799 - 1805 Spain placed troops there to maintain Mexico City's link with the sea. The last Spanish troops sailed from Vera Cruz on 17 March 1805, which marked the foundation of the Republic of Mexico. After the drafting of the Mexico City Constitution of 1820 established the United States of Mexico, President Andrew Jackson chose to focus the country's export trade in the newer ports of Tampico, Durango and Henrytown, Jefferson. Despite this, Vera Cruz continued to serve as an important city on the U.S.M.'s Caribbean coast. The arrival of French merchants in the 1820s led to the rise of a French Quarter in Vera Cruz that remained until the anti-French pogroms launched by Chief of State Benito Hermión in the 1880s.

In the wake of the Chapultepec Incident of 4 January 1916, President Victoriano Consalus established a curfew in Vera Cruz, Tampico, and Mexico City to calm fears of a potential uprising by Mexico's Negro slaves. Sobel does not indicate when the curfew was lifted; it is possible the curfew remained in place until the abolition of slavery in 1920.

Vera Cruz does not have an entry in Sobel's index.