HISTORY
LINK TO A HISTORY
of the area now known as the
Ría Lagartos Biosphere RESERVE
Yucatán, MéxicoFIRST PUBLISHED MENTION OF RÍA LAGARTOS

The first published mention of the estuary now known as Ría Lagartos was in a map accompanying the 1511 publication De orbe novo by Peter Martyr d’Anghiera. Click on the thumbnail at the right to see the map in larger scale.
In 1517 the Spanish foot soldier Bernal Díaz del Castillo was part of an expedition of Francisco Hernández de Córdoba along the Yucatán Peninsula’s northern coast. In 1632, after Bernal’s death, his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España was published, in which, in the fifth chapter, he mentioned visiting the estuary. He wrote:
“Y había en aquel estero muchos y grandes lagartos, y desde entonces se puso por nombre el Estero de los Lagartos, y ansí está en las cartas de marear”
(“And in that estuary there were so many big lizards that it has always been called El Estero de los Lagartos, by which name it is marked on the charts.”)
Download the full text the Historia in the original Spanish here (4.3mb).
