Luis Echeverria, Mexico’s President from 1970 until 1976, is acknowledged as the founding father and architect of the charming pueblo of San Pancho. Echeverria flew in his presidential helicopter to the beach at San Pancho at least once a week, where he passed time sipping coffee and visiting with the few local fishermen, farmers, and their families. With his presidency ending in a year, he decided to exercise his privilege and authority and claimed the entire area of San Pancho as his own.
Echeverria set out to shape San Pancho into a model of self-sufficiency third- world countries everywhere might emulate,and he hoped his efforts would earn him a prestigious position with the United Nations. Echeverria outlined his plans to the locals (who had come to admire and trust him) in order to enroll them in helping him to realize his dream. He convinced them to bring friends and families from other towns to help with the labor, and in return, these workers were each given a nice plot of land and a house.

The newly recruited workers labored day and night over the next year to lay the cobblestone streets, including plumbing and electricity, and built 20-30 modest homes (most of which are still standing today). Each house was identical and each came furnished with standard furnishings.

The houses, typical in the Mexican culture, were built very close to the sidewalk, but they had large parcels of land behind them that was part of their land grant. As children grew and married, they tended to construct their homes in the back yard of their parents house. As you walk the streets of San Pancho, peek between the houses and you will see there are extended families now living in tiny houses, little family compounds. Often there are 4 or 5 families with houses behind the home of the parents. They share cooking, chores, child-care, expenses and lots of family time together.

The San Pancho project also included the building of schools. We have a kindergarten, primary and secondary school. The creation of San Pancho also included the construction of a (then) state-of-the-art teaching hospital (which is still serving San Pancho and the surrounding villages).The land surrounding the pueblo was fertile and vast, so they planted acres of fruit orchards in the unused land behind the new village and then they built huge factories to process all that fruit, providing yet another source of income for the new residents. Those factories still stand at the entrance to San Pancho, but are no longer used for their original purpose. Many of the trees from those orchards are still here and most still bear fruit.

The town was nearly complete when Echeverria was forced to flee the country to avoid criminal charges. San Pancho was left to survive and thrive on its own, and it did!A few North Americans found their way to San Pancho in the early to mid 80’s, but the real procession started around 1995. The property values, both on the beachfront and in the pueblo, have steadily doubled, tripled and quadrupled, but the North Americans, Canadians and Europeans just keep coming, It’s easy to fall in love with San Pancho.