Acapulco

People lived around Acapulco Bay long before the Spanish: pottery from Puerto Marqués is among the oldest found in Mesoamerica, and Olmec, Teotihuacan and Maya influences reached the area in turn. In the late 15th century the Aztecs claimed it, though the Yopis held the land until the Spanish came in the 1520s. Cortés made the bay a port in the early 1530s, with a road to Mexico City, and from 1565 the Manila galleons sailed in from Asia each year with silk and porcelain, making Acapulco the second port of New Spain after Veracruz.

The galleons drew pirates, and after a Dutch fleet sacked the town in 1615 the Fort of San Diego was built; an earthquake destroyed it in 1776 and it was rebuilt by 1783. José María Morelos burnt the city in 1810 during the War of Independence, and independence in 1821 ended the galleon trade.

Tourism began after a visit by the Prince of Wales in 1920. Hotels rose on the cliffs of La Quebrada in the 1930s, President Miguel Alemán gave the port a highway to the capital in the early 1950s, and Hollywood stars made Acapulco fashionable. The Autopista del Sol of 1993 made it a weekend escape for Mexico City. Since 2006 violence between criminal organisations has hit tourism, and most visitors now come from within Mexico. On 25 October 2023 Hurricane Otis, the first Pacific hurricane on record to make landfall at Category 5, struck just west of the city, killing at least 52 people; Hurricane John flooded it again in September 2024.

Acapulco's culture is that of a resort that has been famous for nearly a century. The city still trades on its golden age of the 1950s, when Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra and Brigitte Bardot holidayed on the bay, and nightlife remains its best-known attraction, with clubs that change names and owners frequently and beach bars along the Costera. Juan Gabriel's 1983 song "Amor eterno" pays homage to the city.

The cliff divers of La Quebrada are its living tradition. Young men began competing to dive from the highest point in the 1930s, onlookers began to tip them, and today professional divers, most of them from the family of Quebrada divers, pray at a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe before leaping into a narrow inlet as a wave rolls in. On the eve of the Virgin's feast on 12 December, freestyle divers jump in her honour.

The calendar mixes religious and civic events: Carnival, the feast of San Isidro Labrador in May, the Nao de China crafts and livestock fair in November, and a Festival Internacional de la Nao at the Fort of San Diego celebrating the port's old links with Asia. Since 2001 the city has hosted the Mexican Open, an ATP tennis tournament. Thursday is pozole day across Guerrero, when restaurants put on music, dancers and impersonators alongside the stew. Horse-drawn carriages called calandrias carried tourists for many years until the practice ended in 2020 over concerns about the animals' welfare.

The 2020 census counted about 659,000 people in the city and about 780,000 in the municipality of Acapulco, a small drop from 2010; it is the largest city in Guerrero, larger than the state capital, Chilpancingo. Tourism is the main economic activity, and about three-quarters of the municipality's population is involved in commerce, most of it tied to tourism and the port, which is Mexico's main Pacific port for car exports. More than 25,000 condominiums serve as second homes, most for Mexican owners, and most visitors come from central Mexico, especially Mexico City.

The city is divided sharply. The Golden Zone and Acapulco Diamante hold the hotels and gated developments, while migrants who came looking for work live in small settlements clinging to the hillsides behind the bay, the areas hit hardest by hurricanes. Unemployment and poverty keep many beach vendors working on the sand, and rubbish in the bay is a long-running problem, though several beaches have won Blue Flag certification.

Getting around relies on buses, colectivo taxis and the Acabús rapid bus system opened in 2016. Security weighs on daily life: in 2018 the armed forces entered the city and disarmed its police. Recovery from Hurricane Otis was still under way when Hurricane John struck in late September 2024, dropping nearly a metre of rain and damaging around 40,000 homes, and the city has been rebuilding since.

Acapulco eats like the rest of Guerrero, with pozole at the centre. The hominy stew comes white, red or green, made with pork or chicken, and is eaten with tostadas, tacos and tamales; on Thursdays, across the city and the state, restaurants serve it as a weekly event with bands, dancers and celebrity impersonators. Relleno is another local dish: baked pork with potatoes, raisins, carrots and chillies, eaten with bolillo bread rolls.

The sea supplies the rest. Pescado a la talla, a whole butterflied fish rubbed with chilli paste and grilled over wood, is associated above all with the beach restaurants of Barra Vieja, south-east of the city, and ceviche is served all along the bay. Deep-sea fishing for sailfish is a long-standing attraction for visitors.

The old town around the Zócalo is the place for everyday food: pavement restaurants, small bistros and street-corner kitchens catering to Mexican families. The Costera's restaurants and bars serve the hotel crowds, and the agricultural land of the municipality grows tomatoes, maize, watermelons, beans, green chillies and melons for the city's markets.