Acapulco an Invitation To Magical Adventure

When Cortes found a sheltered bay some 550 leagues to the southeast of Zacatula he improvised another shipyard there. In his report to Charles V dated April 20, 1532, he notes: “I have underway the construction of an additional four vessels, two in the port of Teguantepeque and two more in a port hereabouts called Acapulco.” On June 30 of that same year Diego Hurtado de Mendoza raised sail, in the port of Acapulco, on the San Miguel and the San Marcos. He discovered the Islas Marias, explored the Sonora coast and then, according to Lopez de Gomara, “nothing further was heard from him.”

Thus the year 1532 was established as the initiation of Acapulco’s preeminance in the field of maritime prowess. Until then the wonderful bay had hardly been taken into account. Certainly overland travellers from the Central Mexican Plateau had viewed the bay as they came through the break in the mountains, but they were indigenous spectators with limited rhetorical gifts. Modem poets have, in fact, claimed the word “gorgeous” to describe this bay.

But while the natural spectacle no doubt impressed and even fascinated those long-ago visitors in their native NahuatI, the local tongue failed to link the bay with the vast sea beyond. They called the site simply “Acapulco”, “the great reeds,” for Acatl is “reed” and pol or pul is a designation similar to the Spanish aumentative ota. Thus “Atlapulco” would be “the great chasm” and “Huipulco” means “the large thorns” and “Tepepulco” is “the large hill”. The termination co means “place of.” Not far from Acapulco, in Coyuca, and, especially, in a place called “The Lost City” in the direction of La Sabana, archeological remains have been found that might belong to the beginning of our own era. However, Acapulco was never a pre-Hispanic center for any important ethnic group, and was less still a working port.