Ciudad Victoria (Spanish pronunciation: [sjuˈðað biɣˈtoɾja] ⓘ) (English: Victoria City) is the capital city of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas and the seat of the Municipality of Victoria. It is located in the northeast of Mexico at the foot of the Sierra Madre Oriental. It borders the municipality of Güémez to the north, Llera to the south, Casas Municipality to the east, and the municipality of Jaumave to the west. The city is located 246 km (153 mi) from Monterrey and 319 km (198 mi) from the US - Mexico border. Ciudad Victoria is named after the first president of Mexico, Guadalupe Victoria.
In 1825 Ciudad Victoria became the state capital. It is home to higher education institutions such as the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas and the Technological Institute of Ciudad Victoria. General Pedro José Méndez International Airport is located on the outskirts of the city. As a state bureaucratic centre, it is the seat of the three political powers and has sites of tourist and cultural interest.
Pre-foundation
The Viceroy of New Spain, Juan Francisco Güémez and Horcasitas on Saturday, September 3, 1746, founded a colony in the Seno Mexicano (West coast of the Gulf of Mexico), dismembering the New Kingdom of León. Two years later, on Wednesday December 25, 1748, José de Escandon and Helguera founded Villa de Llera, part of the Late Colonization of New Santander, named after Santander, the capital of Cantabria, Spain. Villa de Santa María del Agua de Agüayo was founded on October 6, 1750.
History
Villa de Santa María de Aguayo was named after the wife of the first Count of Revillagigedo Don Juan Francisco de Güémez y Horcasitas, named Doña Antonia Cepherina Pacheco de Padilla, a native of Aguayo, Province of Santander, Spain.
The settlement was founded by José de Escandon and Helguera, Count of Sierra Gorda, during his second campaign of the Pacification and Colonization Plan of the coast of the Mexican Seno, later called New Santander, today Tamaulipas. The Spanish settlement open to the plain to the East and surrounded to the west by the Sierra Madre Oriental, a strategic location that also received breezes from the north and east. The town was administered by Captain D. Juan de Astigárraga, who drew up and carried out the first irrigation works. His work led to an increase in agriculture and, subsequently, a rapid rise in population.
In religious matters, the settlement was under the command of a Franciscan named Antonio Javier de Aréchaga, who was also in charge of the mission of San Felipe, which was founded with 150 indigenous people. That Catholic mission progressed more than those previously founded, because in the lands that were designated, they were opened by local Native Americans.
Captain Astigárraga died three years after the Villa de Agüayo was founded, and Escandon then conferred the appointment of captain to replace him in the command, Don Miguel de Córdoba.
Under the administration of the new captain, the Villa de Agüayo continued to progress, and when its statistics were formed in 1757, the settlement had in its farmhouse and estates located in its demarcation more than 1000 inhabitants who had 8600 heads of cattle and horses, and 4100 of smaller cattle.
The noble and military of Belgian descent, José de Craywinckel, when he visited the settlement, proposed to the Viceroy the reactivation of the Olazarán mine, which was abandoned in the Boca de Caballeros, since this measure would tend to give the settlement greater impetus in its prosperity, creating new interests and attracting new neighbours by this means, it being possible to expect that Villa de Aguayo would soon become one of the main populations of the new colony.
The nobleman also proposed to the Viceroy at that time, to undertake a campaign against rebellious Native Americans of the Síghue, who had their rancherías by the ravines and valleys of the Sierra Madre and in defines of their land harassed the shepherds and estates of the demarcation of Aguayo, arriving in his raids to join with the Janambre people in the attacks they undertook against the nearby Spanish settlements of Jaumave and Llera.
By this date some masonry houses were begun to be built in Aguayo, the materials for the construction of a Catholic church were gathered and large sugarcane plantations were established in the surrounding lands. The neighbourhood of this town also carried out the salt trade that was going to be collected from the saltworks of San Fernando and la Marina, with the villages of the interior of Charcas and the southern part of the New Kingdom of León.
The Spanish settlement of Villa de Aguayo was distributed in perfect grid form, and in its second settlement a few leagues east of its foundation, changing by the constant claim of the Native American tribes of Janambres and Pisones. The settlement was from the beginning the geographical central node communicating with all the settlements of New Santander.
As was the Spanish provision, land was designated for the construction of the Catholic Church, the Public Square, the seat of the Captaincy of the Civil - Military and Trade Authority, spaces that over time are known as the Historical Centre, formerly known as Plaza "Hidalgo", "Plaza de Armas" or "Plaza de Catedral". The settlement was dispersed and composed of 58 families with 409 people.
The river that crossed the settlement is the so-called San Marcos, which has an irrigation ditch, whose abundance of water gave the population all the irrigation it needs for the subsistence of its inhabitants, irrigation of plots and other sowing of corn, fostering also the cultivation of the cane. The quality of the land was adequate for all fruits typical of the region and facilitated the breeding and conservation of livestock.
Its location was one of the most advantageous in favour of the Royal Treasury, both for being the first transit of the colony, and because its crops and livestock promise great movement, evidencing its growth at the beginning of its founding, which was 11 families.
Colonial period
Unlike the modes of settlement that were commonly raised during the vice-regal period in New Spain, which followed a missionary and presidial structure, the new populations designed by José de Escandon had marked differences in the cultural, social, political and economic spheres.
The new populations that Escandon developed in the territory that is now known as Tamaulipas, called in the eighteenth-century New Santander, are based on ideas that have as a reference a way of exercising control over the development of the city and the territory, through its economic production. The direct consequences of this form of urban design marked in New Spain the opening to a new way of consolidating a border territory.
José de Escandon y Helguera, developed cattle ranching extensively and in a limited way agriculture, since for the most part "temporary" was practiced, and commerce also developed. The colonized territory was integrated and populated up to the Rio Grande, configuring the map of what is now Tamaulipas.
In addition, Escandon proposed the strategic location arrangements between each new population, a day away, which would facilitate that in cases of reoccurrence of attacks by the natives, could support each other. These are the characteristics that made the colonization of the New Santander transcendent; Although the reality did not always reflect the initial spirit of colonization, the model developed by José de Escandon proposed a new form of territorial occupation that had not been seen until the 18th century in New Spain.
Post-colonial period
After the Mexican Independence New Santander was renamed "Tamaulipas", and the State Congress decrees on April 20, 1825, to elevate the Villa de Aguayo to the category of "City", seat of the Three Powers and Capital of the State, approving the name of Victoria, in honour of the first President of Mexico, Guadalupe Victoria. "The Capitality Decree, Title of City and Name" is published by mandate of the First Congress, signed and sealed by Enrique Camilo Suárez, Vice Governor of Tamaulipas.
In this Capital, the Governor of the State, Lucas Fernández, on May 4 issued a decree to reject the invasion by order of the Spanish monarchy. The attempt of reconquest by the Spanish vanguard army commanded by General Brigadier Isidro Barradas, was frustrated on September 11, 1829, in Tampico, Tamaulipas; At the head of the national forces were the Generals: Felipe de la Garza Cisneros, Manuel Mier and Terán and Antonio López de Santa Anna. Battle of Tampico (1863) was one of the few battles against a foreign intervention in Mexico where the invaders have surrendered against the Mexican forces.
In 1846, in the Mexican–American War, Ciudad Victoria was occupied on December 25 by troops from the United States and was liberated at the end of the war. In 1898, President Porfirio Díaz sponsored the operation of the urban animal-drawn railroad that ran down Hidalgo Street to the Train Station, and a branch to the Hacienda de Tamatán, properties of Colonel Manuel González Jr. and that same year the Paseo Méndez was founded, inspired by Parisian street Champs-Élysées.
20th century
The city began its industrial transformation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the administration of Guadalupe Mainero Juárez which attracted investments and improvements to the city.
On September 15, 1910, the monument to the Heroes of Independence was inaugurated, in the "Plaza Colón" in front of the railway station "La Recoletta". In 1917 General Alberto Carrera Torres was shot at the wall of the Municipal Pantheon, having been tried by an illegal War Council; he is buried in the French Pantheon. In 1923 General César López de Lara took the governorship of the state of Tamaulipas.
The Victorense Casino AC, formerly known as the social and mutualist centre of the city, was founded in 1929. The urban and architectural structure of the city is defined in its buildings, buildings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The creation of the Federal Highway 85 and other road works connect the capital with the Mexico–U.S. border and the centre of the country. In 1939 Eng. Marte R. Gómez inaugurated the Olympic-type Stadium that nowadays bears his name and where the team plays Correcaminos Football Club. In 1941 the "El Petaqueño" Airport, now called General Pedro José Méndez International Airport, began operations.
In 1951 the new Government Palace was inaugurated, built in the building where the Old Theatre "Casino" or "Juárez" was, the new "Juárez" theatre was inaugurated in 1957; The government tower known as "Crystal Tower" exists in the capital since 1980.
21st century
The early morning of July 1, 2010, the city was hit by Hurricane Alex whose eye passed only a few kilometres from Ciudad Victoria, causing destruction in public lighting, billboards, traffic lights and an infinity of trees, as well as suspension of energy services electricity and drinking water for more than 24 hours.
In 2010, the Governmental Complex "Bicentennial Park" came into operation, which today concentrates most of the government apparatus of the state of Tamaulipas. In 2016, the restoration of the old Casa Filizola, now the Pinacoteca Tamaulipas and the main railway station of the capital, began.
Coat of arms
The coat of arms was created on December 18, 1971, at the initiative of Professor Vidal Martínez. The coat of arms has the following characteristics: On the side the map of the state that represents that Victoria is the capital, the balance, the sword and the parchment represent the three powers; the book symbolizes education and the torch the light of freedom, the date is the historical antecedent of the foundation, the landscape symbolizes the geographic environment of the region upon the arrival of the founders, henequen plants represent agricultural production.
Politics
The municipality was recognized as the official capital of the state of Tamaulipas, and named Ciudad Victoria in 1825, and the head of the municipality of Victoria is finally assigned the seat of the Legislative, Executive and Judicial powers.
In state matter, the seat of the organisms and dependencies of the government of the state and the official residence of the governor of the state are in Ciudad Victoria. The current governor is Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca, of the National Action Party, for the 2016-2022 administration.
The municipality is administered by the Ciudad Victoria City Council, comprised by the Municipal President, being the holder María del Pilar Gómez Leal, of the National Action Party as Substitute Municipal President of Victoria for the administration 2018-2021 since October 2, 2020.