Guaymas

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Aerial view of Guaymas

Guaymas (formally: Heróico Puerto Guaymas de Zaragoza) is a port city in the Mexican state of Sonora. It stands on a small bay on the Gulf of California, near the mouth of the Río Yaqui, south of state capital Hermosillo and north of Ciudad Obregón. It serves as the administrative centre for the surrounding municipality of the same name, and for the neighborhood San Carlos Nuevo Guaymas, Sonora. Guaymas reported a population of 101,507 in the 2005 census, while its municipality had 134,153.

Guaymas is the second-largest port on Mexico's Pacific Coast (after Manzanillo). It is one of the major shrimp producing cities of northern Mexico and was formerly a major oyster producer, although pollution and overfishing have depleted its stocks greatly.

In a tradition dating back to 1888, one of Mexico's liveliest carnivals takes place on the waterfront every spring.

1 History
2 Guaymas in fiction
3 Locator maps
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

The Jesuit missionary Juan Salvatierra first founded the mission of San José de Guaymas, some kilometres from the bay, in 1703; because of attacks by the local Seri natives, the mission was abandoned and re-established on several occasions. On August 31, 1769, José de Gálvez founded the town of Guaymas and assigned the first plots. on July 13, 1859 it was assigned city status and, in 1862, the local congress renamed the settlement "Guaymas de Zaragoza".

The port was attacked by the French on two occasions in the 19th century: in 1854, José María Yáñez successfully led the townsfolk in repelling a group of filibusters under Gaston Rousset Bourbon and, in 1865, a flotilla of French ships took the port and occupied it until September 1866.

A fascinating account of life in Guaymas in the late 1960s / early 1970s from the point of view of a young American graduate student can be found in the book The Guaymas Chronicles by David E. Stuart. He reveals much of the lives of the poorer citizens of Guaymas as he describes his gradual integration into local society and the strong life changing friendships he made.

The Port of Guaymas received more attention following a worker's strike at the Port of Los Angeles that led some to invite the possibility of further developing the Port of Guaymas as a potential substitute for international trade with California. Currently, it is used more for trade with Arizona, such as aerospace products shipped to Asia.

[edit] Guaymas in fiction

Guaymas was the destination of the ill-fated small airplane in Family Flight, a 1972 TV movie (starring Rod Taylor, Dina Merrill, Kristoffer Tabori and Janet Margolin) about a family of four whose plane came down in the Baja California desert during a thunderstorm; the family cleared a runway in a desperate bid to fly out and never actually reached Guaymas on this trip.

In the alternate history novel How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove, the Confederate States of America acquire Guaymas together with the states of Sonora and Chihuahua, from an impoverished Mexican Empire. This is a causus belli that sparks the Second Mexican War between the United States and the CSA.