"San Juán de Ulúa" a San Juan de Ulùa Travel Page by pencho15

Located on a small island, just in front of the port of Veracruz, the San Juán de Ulúa fortress is one of the most important single buildings in Mexico history. San Juán de Ulúa name was given by it`s discoverer Juán de Grijalva, tought oficially the name was given because the spanish disembarked the day San Juán (Saint John) was celebrated, it is said that Grijalva wanted to preserve his name, the word Ulúa was used after the spanish heard the natives saying it. (They where actually saying Culhúa, the name of the indigenous group living near the actual Mexico City, that had conquered that zone).
After Mexio colonization, the first viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, suggested the island would be a good place to build a fortress that could protect the city and the spanish ships from the english and the dutch pirates, and his sucesors began the building wich started in 1535 and was completely finished in 1707.
During the colony the fortress wasn`t used just for the defence of Veracruz, it was also used as customs for every ship (all the viceroys were here before traveling to Mexico City), and as a prison, mainly for the goverment enemies like Fray Servando Teresa de Mier and Antonio López de Santa Anna.
The fortress was the last possesion of the spanish in Mexico, they managed to keep it 4 years after my country won the independence war, and they even tried to reconquer the territory from here.
The fortress failed as a military building, as it proved unuseful during the invations from the United States and France, so it was abandoned.
Fortunately San Juán de Ulúa wasn`t demolished like a similar building in Yucatán, and it survived until it was used as a prison once again before the president Benito Juárez equiped it as his goverment palace when Veracruz was the country capital city, afterwards it was used once again as a prison, specially by the mexican dictator Porfiro Diaz, wich had been a prisioner himself.
During the mexican revolution Venustiano Carranza freed all the prisioners in exchange for their help against the goverment army, after he became the country president, as a reward for the men that had fought for him, he ordered the building couldn`t be used as a jail for the following 100 years (until 2015).
Today San Juán de Ulúa is the main touristic attraction in Veracruz, if you visit this city you can`t miss it.