Travel Guide Palizada

It is a small picturesque village located on the banks of the river of the same name, to which some find a fantasized resemblance with the village of Macondo described by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude: low and colored houses, French tile roofs that cook in the sun and profusion of mangoes and other tropical trees that abound everywhere. In pre-Hispanic times, the region was inhabited by the Chontal Indians, and then the Spaniards discovered the Palizada River while exploring the Usumacinta River. They settled on its banks at the beginning of the 17th century, but it was not until 1792 that King Carlos IV of Spain officially ordered the founding of the village to prevent the region from being invaded by the English, who were occupying Cuidad del Carmen at the time. Precious wood, including the famous dye tree that was highly prized in Europe, was shipped by river to the ports of the Gulf of Mexico, while European goods arrived in the other direction. A few cannons that open their mouths on the river remind us of a past that is less peaceful than the impression the village leaves us today: the incursions of pirates and, more recently, the status of strategic point that the village occupies at the time of the internal wars, on the major river route between the Chipas, the swamps of Tabasco on the one hand and the Laguna de Terminos on the other.