The City of Acapulco

Finally, nearing his seventieth year, Sebastian Vizcaino was honored with the appointment of Mayor of Acapulco, in recognition of his labors in the defense of the Pacific Coast and his long battles against the continual onslaught of pirates. Among these, the fearsome Spilberg had managed to infiltrate a spot facing Zacatula. He had overpowered a ship and made known his intentions, the assault of the Manila Galleon, but Vizcamo was able to stop him. In his charge as mayor, Vizcaino was attached to the Governor and Keep of the Fort of San Diego, until 1619. Just two years earlier this impressive fortification had reached completion.

Later, after suffering earthquake damage, it had to be reconstructed, between 1778and 1783, by the engineer Miguel Constanso, to whom was also ascribed a magnificent map of the City of Acapulco, in 1777. Today the fort, an Acapulco landmark, houses the Regional Museum.

Fernando de Santa Anna established himself in Acapulco in 1550, along with a handful of families. Cortes had died three years earlier, in Castilleja de la Cuesta, in a house later restored by the Dukes of Montpensier. Today it houses the convent of the Irish nuns, in a town some four kilometers outside Seville. Acapulco was to wait nearly 250 years before receiving its dignification as a fullfledged city. On November 1, 1799, its township title was finally granted by Charles IV, King of Spain, in confirmation of an act apparently carried out before by Philip IV in 1626. The Lieutenant Antonio de Mendivil y Cisneros, of the Fort of San Diego, claimed in 1795 that he had seen the royal correspondence, duly sealed, but that possibly it had gone astray.
In addition to the fort, Acapulco was endowed by the Seventeenth Century with a hospital, founded in 1667 by Franciscans, and with the Chapel of St. George, erected by Sargeant Francisco Rincón.