Villahermosa Travel Guide
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142km (89 miles) NW of Palenque; 469km (293 miles) SW of Campeche; 160km (100 miles) N of San Cristóbal de las Casas
Villahermosa (pop. 520,000), the capital of the state of Tabasco, is right at the center of Mexico's oil boom -- but it's off-center from just about everything else. Oil wealth has transformed this provincial town into a modern city, making it an interesting crossroads for those going overland and a popular port of entry for air travelers.
Prosperity has spurred a number of developments, including a beautiful park containing the Parque-Museo La Venta; the CICOM center for Olmec and Maya studies containing the Museo Regional de Antropología Carlos Pellicer Cámara; and the pedestrian-only area downtown with a few small galleries and museums. These are the three main areas that a visitor will want to see. Of less interest is the modern office building and shopping development called Tabasco 2000.
Two names that you will likely see and hear are Carlos Pellicer Cámara and Tomás Garrido Canabal. The first was a mid-20th-century Tabascan poet and intellectual. The best known of Mexico's modernista poets, he was a fiercely independent thinker. Garrido Canabal, socialist governor of Tabasco in the 1920s and 1930s, tried to turn the conservative, backwater state of Tabasco into a model of socialism. Garrido Canabal supported many socialist causes, but the one that became his passion was anticlericalism. He did such bizarre things as naming his son Lucifer and his farm animals Jesus and the Virgin Mary. He also destroyed or closed many churches in Tabasco, including the cathedral of Villahermosa. Graham Greene provided a fictional depiction of him in The Power and the Glory.
