🇲🇽 Mexico · The South
Tuxtla Gutiérrez is the capital of Chiapas and, for most travelers, the gateway to the state: the main airport is here, and from here (or from neighboring Chiapa de Corzo) you reach one of Mexico's great natural wonders, Sumidero Canyon. Unlike colonial San Cristóbal de las Casas, Tuxtla is a modern, hot, busy city, geared more to business and administration than to tourism, but with attractions of its own that make it worth a stop.
Its jewel is the ZooMAT (Zoológico Regional Miguel Álvarez del Toro), considered one of the best zoos in Mexico and Latin America, dedicated exclusively to the wildlife of Chiapas in a jungle setting: jaguars, tapirs, quetzals, macaws and crocodiles in natural habitats. To that add the lively Parque de la Marimba, where people dance every night to the marimba —the emblematic instrument of Chiapas—, the riverfront and the lookouts over Sumidero Canyon, and a tasty, distinctive Chiapan cuisine.
This guide covers the practical side of Tuxtla: how to get there and get around, what to see in the city, how to organize the Sumidero Canyon boat trip from here (it leaves from the Chiapa de Corzo landing) and how to string the visit together with San Cristóbal de las Casas and the rest of Chiapas. Tuxtla is rarely the final destination, but it is the natural base for starting to discover one of the most diverse and fascinating states in Mexico.
The name Tuxtla comes from the Nahuatl 'Tuchtlan', 'place of rabbits', a translation of the original Zoque 'Coyatocmó'. The area was inhabited by the Zoque long before the Spanish arrived. In 1892 it replaced San Cristóbal as the capital of Chiapas, and the surname 'Gutiérrez' honors Joaquín Miguel Gutiérrez, a hero of the incorporation of Chiapas into Mexico. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The southeasternmost province, of jungle, mountains and living Maya cultures: land of Palenque and Pakal the Great, of colonial San Cristóbal, of the Sumidero Canyon and of the 1994 Zapatista uprising.
Read the history of Chiapas →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before it was the capital of Chiapas, the place where Tuxtla Gutiérrez stands today was Zoque territory, one of the oldest Indigenous peoples of the state, with roots reaching back into the Olmec and Mixe-Zoque cultural orbit. The Zoque had a settlement here that they called, in their language, 'Coyatocmó', usually translated as 'house or land of rabbits'.
With the expansion of Nahuatl-speaking peoples and, later, the Mexica presence in the region as part of their tribute network, that name was translated into Nahuatl as 'Tuchtlan' (from 'tochtli', rabbit, and the locative '-tlan'), that is, 'place abounding in rabbits' or 'place of rabbits'. From 'Tuchtlan' comes today's 'Tuxtla'. So the place name of the Chiapan capital preserves, through two Indigenous languages, the memory of that land of rabbits.
In pre-Hispanic times, the region was marked by the Zoque presence and by contact with the Maya of Los Altos and other cultures. The arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century would transform all of this, folding the settlement into the new colonial order, though Tuxtla would still take centuries to become the important city it is today.
After the Spanish conquest of Chiapas in the 16th century, the region was folded into the colonial order, in a territory that for much of its history answered administratively to the Captaincy General of Guatemala, not to the center of New Spain. The great center of colonial power in Chiapas was Ciudad Real, today's San Cristóbal de las Casas, founded in 1528 in Los Altos, which for centuries held the province's political, religious and economic life.
Tuxtla, by contrast, remained through the colonial period a more modest town, inhabited mostly by Zoque people, in the warmer, lower land of the valley. Its location, however, gave it strategic value as a place to pass through and trade, thanks to its climate and its position on the regional routes. Little by little it grew in population and commercial importance.
The great change in the fortunes of Chiapas would come with independence. In 1821 Mexican independence was proclaimed, and in 1824 Chiapas decided, by plebiscite, to join the new Mexican nation rather than stay tied to Central America. That decision set the course of the state and, in time, also the rise of Tuxtla over the historic San Cristóbal.
Through the 19th century, Chiapas lived a long rivalry between two cities and two projects: conservative San Cristóbal de las Casas, up in Los Altos, the traditional capital and a bastion of colonial and church power, and the more liberal, commercial Tuxtla, down in the valley. That tension, which mirrored the disputes between liberals and conservatives across the country, would end up tilting towards Tuxtla.
In 1892, under the government of Emilio Rabasa and in the middle of the Porfirian era, the capital of the state of Chiapas moved for good from San Cristóbal de las Casas to Tuxtla. The decision reflected Tuxtla's growing economic weight, its better communications and the liberal, modernizing bent of the moment. Since then, Tuxtla has been the seat of the state's powers.
The surname 'Gutiérrez' that completes its name honors Joaquín Miguel Gutiérrez Canales, a 19th-century Chiapan liberal soldier and politician, a champion of the incorporation of Chiapas into Mexico and a leading figure in the struggles of the period. In his honor, the city was officially renamed Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Once it became the capital, the city began a sustained growth that would accelerate in the 20th century.
Through the 20th century, Tuxtla Gutiérrez turned from a town into a modern capital. As the seat of state power, it gathered the public administration, commerce and services of Chiapas, and its population grew fast, especially in the second half of the century, as people arrived from other parts of the state looking for work and opportunity.
Building infrastructure —roads, the airport, hospitals, universities— cemented Tuxtla as the main urban center of Chiapas and the gateway to the state. A key figure of this period was the naturalist Miguel Álvarez del Toro, director of the zoo for decades, who drove the creation of what is now the ZooMAT, specialized in Chiapan wildlife, and became a national reference point for conservation; the zoo carries his name today in his honor.
Unlike San Cristóbal, which kept its colonial face and turned to cultural tourism, Tuxtla grew as a modern, functional, commercial city, with less historic heritage but a central role in the state's economy and politics. The marimba, declared the musical symbol of Chiapas, took hold as part of its identity, with the Parque de la Marimba as one of its best loved spaces.
Today Tuxtla Gutiérrez is a city of more than half a million people (close to a million with its metropolitan area, which includes Chiapa de Corzo), the political and economic capital of Chiapas and the state's main transport hub. Its Ángel Albino Corzo International Airport makes it the gateway by air for most travelers arriving in Chiapas.
From Tuxtla you organize the visit to the region's great natural wonder, Sumidero Canyon, done by boat from neighboring Chiapa de Corzo, and you reach San Cristóbal de las Casas by road in a little over an hour, along with other destinations in the state. This strategic position defines Tuxtla's role in tourism: more than a final destination, it tends to be a base and a starting point.
The city does, however, offer attractions that justify a stop: the well-regarded ZooMAT, the night-time musical atmosphere of the Parque de la Marimba, the canyon lookouts and a tasty Chiapan cuisine, on top of the state's excellent coffee and cacao. For anyone who wants to understand Chiapas —its diversity of peoples, its nature and its culture— Tuxtla is the first chapter and the center from which the rest of the state unfolds.