Acapulco - Acapulco & the Mexican Revolution

Acapulco & the Mexican Revolution

Acapulco After the Revolution

The Mexican Revolution is a very complicated series of events to write about….

In spite of its geographic isolation, Acapulco did not escape the revolution. Nowhere in Mexico did. Such business as there was in the port was monopolized by a few wealthy Caciques who controlled every breath their poorer underlings lived. From what to plant to in some cases whom they could marry. Even the arduous road to Mexico was under the control of what now would probably called Warlords. Mexican's had leapt from the yoke of the Spaniards to a system where life was perhaps even harder.

In Guerrero as in the rest of the country the increasingly dispossessed workers arose in revolutionary fervor in the first socialist revolution of the 20th Century. Acapulco really hadn't developed at all since the departure of the old colonialists. Add to this a steady drain on manpower as American ships came in to whisk away able bodied men to work in the plantations of Central America.

Being the sleepy port it was (and still sometimes is) Acapulco doesn't really seem to figure very prominently in the literature of the Revolution… but rather watched from the sidelines. Suffice it to say that Acapulco muddled through and came out the other side full of socialist ideals which have gradually dwindled ever since.

In the rest of the country the fighting was intense and the recriminations bitter. In Acapulco, the fighting was basically non-existent and the future looked bright.

A key figure in post Revolutionary Acapulco was one Juan Escudero, for it was he who, once elected Mayor, promoted and initiated a real road to Mexico City which opened the town to the rest of Mexico and thereby the rest of the world.

In next to no time, the city was coming back to life and luxury hotels started to spring up and soon after them tourist began to come. The first was The Papagayo which alas no longer stands but has been replaced by a park with the same name on the Costera. More followed, El Mirador, El Malecon, La Marina, El Club de Pesca are all spoken of with a nostalgic gleam in the eyes of the 'old timers'. By the 60's Acapulco was becoming renowned as the playground of the rich and famous. They still come, but the port is so huge now (over 1 million inhabitants, not counting visitors), that they prefer to hide behind the high walls of their palatial villas in perfect anonymity. What all this has to do with the Mexican revolution is beyond me. I guess it really paved the way for the counter-revolution to come.