Today, believers of that story have another name for the island: Aztlán, the mythical homeland of the Aztec people, and from where they departed before founding a second capital in a lake, this one in the center of the country and now known as Mexico City.Įarlier this month, Mexcaltitán was recognized as one of the country's newest Pueblos Mágicos, a twenty-year old federal designation for small towns with cultural distinction that’s getting redoubled governmental interest this year as the coronavirus pandemic craters the tourism industry in Mexico.Īlongside the island, ten other towns across the country were granted the “Magic Town” status, joining a program that’s benefited from more than 7.6 billion pesos ($376 million USD) in recent federal funding towards things like small business loans and infrastructure improvement, in a revamp of the program that the country’s tourism minister says will shift focus to each community’s poorest.ĭespite low barriers to entry for foreign travelers - which have given way to a recent revival in some beachside hotspots - the number of foreign tourists visiting Mexico fell by 46 percent this year, according to the latest government statistics. Migrating Nahuas, an indigenous people, chose to settle there after seeing the bird in the center of the island with a snake clutched in its beak - a vision they interpreted as a sign from their patron god, Huitzilopochtli. Some 1,000 years ago, it was a heron that, according to legend, first drew ancestral Mexicans to this spot of land in a lake by the country’s Pacific coast. And herons, with their curving necks and stick-thin legs, perch atop wooden fences between the mangroves that surround the island, keeping guard. On a strip of land just asea of the village’s main wharf, pelicans assemble. Man o’ wars, a dark seabird with a long, forked tail, line up along cables strung between pastel-painted buildings.

With a population of only 800 people, the birds around and above the miniature island of Mexcaltitán may be the majority party.

Aztec capital island