Coatzacoalcos
— — a river the colour of working iron.
Not only on a wall.
“A port city at the mouth of the Coatzacoalcos River on the southern Gulf of Mexico, where the isthmus of Tehuantepec narrows the country to its slimmest waist. The name comes from Nahuatl and is usually read as where the serpent hides, a reference to Quetzalcoatl. Tankers and freighters move in and out of the harbour all day, oil refineries glow at the edge of town at night, and Playa Hermosa runs in a long curve to the north. Olmec country is upstream; the river has been a route since before there was a city.
Coatzacoalcos, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Coatzacoalcos sits on the southern shore of the Gulf of Mexico in the state of Veracruz, at the mouth of the Coatzacoalcos River, near the narrowest point of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The municipality holds roughly 310,000 residents and serves as one of Mexico's principal Gulf-coast ports, with significant petrochemical infrastructure along the river. The Tuxtla Mountains rise to the west; the wetlands of southern Veracruz spread east toward Tabasco. The name is Nahuatl and is most often translated as the place where the serpent hides, a reference to Quetzalcoatl, who is said in some Mesoamerican accounts to have departed from this coast.
The Coatzacoalcos River drains roughly 17,000 square kilometres of the Sierra Atravesada and southern Veracruz before opening into the Gulf at the city. Its lower course is wide, slow, and brown with sediment, navigable by ocean-going vessels for the first stretch inland. The river has carried trade since the Olmec period; La Venta and San Lorenzo, two of the great early Mesoamerican centres, sit in its broader basin. Bull sharks have been recorded well upstream, taking advantage of the river's low gradient. The harbour mouth is breakwatered and dredged, and pilot boats work it continuously.
The Malecón runs along the riverfront downtown and is the common evening walk, busiest after the heat eases around six in the evening. Playa Hermosa stretches north of the river mouth and is the city's principal beach, used heavily on weekends. The climate is tropical and humid year round, with a marked rainy season from June through October and frequent norte wind events in winter that drop temperatures briefly and roughen the Gulf. The Minatitlán-Coatzacoalcos International Airport, about thirty kilometres west, connects the city to Mexico City and Houston.