Saltillo, Mexico
| Saltillo | ||
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| City | ||
City of Saltillo
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| Nickname(s): The Athens of Mexico, The Detroit of Mexico | ||
 Location of Saltillo within the municipality |
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| Coordinates: 25°26′N 101°00′W / 25.433°N 101.000°WCoordinates: 25°26′N 101°00′W / 25.433°N 101.000°W | ||
| Country | Mexico | |
| State | Coahuila | |
| Founded | 1577 (Alberto del Canto) | |
| Government | ||
| • Mayor | Isidro López | |
| Elevation | 1,600 m (5,249 ft) | |
| Population (2010) | ||
| • City | 725,123 | |
| • Metro | 823,128 | |
| • Demonym | Saltillense | |
| Time zone | CST (UTC−6) | |
| • Summer (DST) | CDT (UTC−5) | |
| Website | www.saltillo.gob.mx | |
Saltillo (Spanish pronunciation: [salˈtiʝo]) is the capital and largest city of the northeastern Mexican state of Coahuila and the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. The city is located about 258 kilometres (160 mi) west of the Texas border, and 87 kilometres (54 mi) west of Monterrey, Nuevo León.
As of the 2005 census, Saltillo had a population of 725,095 people. 823,098 people reside within the metropolitan area, making it the 19th biggest metro area in the country. The metro area comprises the municipalities of Saltillo, Ramos Arizpe, and Arteaga.
Founded in 1577 by Conquistador Alberto del Canto and Spanish colonists, Saltillo is the oldest post-conquest settlement in northern Mexico. Fourteen years later in 1591 the Spanish resettled a community of their Tlaxcaltec allies in a separate nearby village (San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala), in order to cultivate the land and aid colonization efforts that had stalled in the face of local hostility to the Spanish presence.
Saltillo was a northern commercial center on the northern frontier which served as a bridge from central Mexico to regions farther northeast, Nuevo León, Nuevo Santander, Coahuila, and Texas. Saltillo supplied the silver mines of Zacatecas with wheat. It never rose to great prominence, but it did develop a commercial core and an agricultural and ranching sector that supplied its own needs, with surpluses that could be sold. Saltillo became administratively more important at the end of the eighteenth century, with the establishment of a branch of the Royal Treasury. Merchants, most of whom were Iberian-born peninsular Spaniards, constituted the most important economic group, handling a wide variety of goods and sold in shops. They were the provincial branch of the transatlantic merchant sector, with ties to Mexico City merchants. Peninsular merchants in Saltillo married into local elite society, acquired rural properties, and sought local office. In the late seventeenth century, an annual trade fair was established, with goods from as far away as China and Europe, but also Mexican manufactures and livestock. Saltillo could produce wheat commercially so long as enterprises had access to water, but as with many other parts of the North, drought was a consistent threat. In the eighteenth century, there was a demand for draft animals, which Saltillo could supply.
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