Saltillo () is the capital and largest city of the northeastern Mexican state of Coahuila and is also the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. Mexico City, Monterrey, and Saltillo are all connected by a major railroad and highway. As of a 2020 census, Saltillo had a population of 879,958 people, while the population of its metropolitan area was 1,031,779, making Saltillo the largest city in the state of Coahuila, and the 14th most populated metropolitan area in the country.
Saltillo is one of the most industrialized cities in Mexico and has one of the largest automotive industries in the country, with plants such as Tupy, Grupo Industrial Saltillo, General Motors, Stellantis, Daimler AG, Freightliner Trucks, BorgWarner, Plastic Omnium, Magna, and Nemak operating in the region. The city and its metropolitan area also house a large number of plants providing manufactured goods to various other multinational companies, including Tesla's new plant in Mexico, located less than an hour away in the neighboring Santa Catarina, Nuevo León. Saltillo is a prominent manufacturing hub noted for its commerce, communications, and manufacturing of products both traditional and modern.
History
Colonial era
Founded in 1577 by Conquistador Alberto del Canto as Villa de Santiago del Saltillo, it is one of the oldest post-conquest settlements in Northern Mexico. It can be ascertained that the name of the city comes from a small waterfall that draws water from a spring. Nowadays, the spring is located within the Parish of the Holy Christ of the Ojo de Agua and is still visited by the local population.
In 1591, the Spanish resettled a community of their Tlaxcaltec allies in a separate town, San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala, located just across an irrigation ditch from Saltillo. The measure was taken in order to aid stalled colonization efforts and cultivate the land. In its early years, Saltillo grew slowly due to the hostility of the indigenous Chichimeca people and frequent water shortages. A hundred years after its founding, its population was only about 300 people, whilst the population of the adjacent Tlaxcaltec town, San Esteban, was about 1,750.
In the eighteenth century, Saltillo was a commercial center on the northern frontier which served as a bridge from central Mexico to regions further northeast such as the New Kingdom of León, New Santander, Coahuila, and Texas. It also supplied the silver mines of Zacatecas with wheat. It never rose to great prominence, but it did develop a commercial core and an agricultural and ranching sector that supplied its needs, with surpluses that could be sold. Saltillo became administratively important at the end of the eighteenth century, when a branch of the Royal Treasury was established in the city.Merchants, most of whom were Iberian Peninsula-born Spaniards, constituted the most important economic group, handling a wide variety of goods and selling in shops. They were the provincial branch of the transatlantic merchant sector, with ties to Mexico City merchants. Peninsular merchants in Saltillo married into the local elite society, acquired rural properties, and sought local office.
In the late seventeenth century, an annual trade fair was established, which carried Mexican livestock and manufactured goods to places as far as China and Europe. Saltillo could produce wheat commercially as long as there was access to water, but as with many other parts of the North, drought was a consistent threat. In the eighteenth century, there was a demand for draft animals, which Saltillo supplied.
Early Mexico
In 1824, Saltillo was made the capital of the state of Coahuila y Tejas, substituting Santiago de la Monclova as such. Three years later, Mexican Constituting Congress sanctioned that the city's name be changed to Leona Vicario, after one of the few female figures of the Mexican War of Independence. However, in 1831, a new State Congress decree merged Leona Vicario with the contiguous town of San Esteban (renamed Villalongín) and the name was changed back to Saltillo.