The Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt
Almost every large Mexican volcano stands in one band. The Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, or Eje Neovolcánico, runs about 900 km from the Pacific near San Blas in Nayarit to the Gulf coast of Veracruz, is 20 to 70 km wide, and crosses the country at roughly 19° north. It is fed by the subduction of the Cocos and Rivera plates at the Middle America Trench, and it sits oblique to that trench rather than parallel to it, which is unusual and still argued over. The belt built the highest ground in Mexico and, because volcanic soils and high basins hold water, it also carries most of the population: Mexico City, Puebla, Guadalajara, Toluca and Morelia are all on or beside it. The central Mexican basins between the cones lie at 1,800–2,600 m.
The highest and most active peaks
| Volcano | Elevation (m) | State | Last eruption |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pico de Orizaba (Citlaltépetl) | 5,636 | Veracruz / Puebla | 1846 |
| Popocatépetl | 5,393 | Puebla / Morelos / State of Mexico | Continuing since 1994 |
| Iztaccíhuatl | 5,230 | State of Mexico / Puebla | None recorded |
| Nevado de Toluca | 4,680 | State of Mexico | About 3,300 years ago |
| Sierra Negra | 4,580 | Puebla | Prehistoric |
| La Malinche | 4,461 | Tlaxcala / Puebla | About 3,100 years ago |
| Cofre de Perote | 4,282 | Veracruz | Prehistoric |
| Nevado de Colima | 4,260 | Jalisco | Prehistoric |
| Tacaná | 4,060 | Chiapas / Guatemala | 1986 |
| Pico de Tancítaro | 3,860 | Michoacán | Prehistoric |
| Volcán de Colima (de Fuego) | 3,850 | Jalisco / Colima | 2017 |
| Paricutín | 2,800 | Michoacán | 1952 |
| Ceboruco | 2,280 | Nayarit | 1875 |
| El Chichón | 1,150 | Chiapas | 1982 |
Popocatépetl and the volcanoes of central Mexico
Popocatépetl is the volcano that matters most for risk, because more than 25 million people live within 100 km of it, in Mexico City, Puebla, Morelos and State of Mexico. After 67 quiet years it resumed erupting on 21 December 1994 and has since alternated between ash emissions and the slow growth and destruction of lava domes in its 600 m-wide crater. CENAPRED, set up after the 1985 earthquake, monitors it with seismometers, cameras and gas sensors and publishes a three-colour alert. Its twin, Iztaccíhuatl, has no eruption in the historical record and is climbed freely; the pass between them, Paso de Cortés at 3,600 m, is the route the Spanish took into the Valley of Mexico in 1519. West of Mexico City, Nevado de Toluca holds two crater lakes, the Sun and the Moon, reached by a road that ends near 4,200 m. Inside the capital itself, the small cone of Xitle erupted about 1,700 years ago and buried Cuicuilco; its lava field, the Pedregal, is the ground under southern Mexico City.
Colima, Chiapas and the newborn volcanoes
Volcán de Colima, on the Jalisco–Colima border, has been the most frequently active volcano in Mexico for a century, with large eruptions in 2005 and July 2015 that emptied villages within 12 km. In Chiapas, El Chichón was barely known until 28 March 1982, when two Plinian eruptions a week apart destroyed nine villages, killed about 2,000 people and injected enough sulphate aerosol into the stratosphere to be measured worldwide; a warm acid lake now fills the crater. Tacaná, on the Guatemalan border above Tapachula, last had a steam explosion in 1986. Michoacán and Guanajuato share a field of roughly 1,400 cinder cones spread over 40,000 km², and it has produced the only two volcanoes in the world watched from birth: Jorullo, which began in 1759, and Paricutín in 1943.
Volcanoes outside the belt
A few sit well away from the main line. Tres Vírgenes in Baja California Sur last erupted around 1746 and now runs a small geothermal plant; the Pinacate field in Sonora, a desert of cinder cones and giant explosion craters, was made a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2013. San Martín Tuxtla in southern Veracruz, last active in 1793, stands over the Olmec country described on the archaeological sites map. Offshore, Bárcena on Isla San Benedicto in the Revillagigedo group was created by an eruption in 1952. Volcanic heat is used commercially at Cerro Prieto in Baja California, about 570 MW and one of the largest geothermal fields in the world, and at Los Azufres and Los Humeros in the belt itself.
Questions about Mexican volcanoes
What is the highest volcano in Mexico?
Pico de Orizaba, or Citlaltépetl, at 5,636 m on the border of Veracruz and Puebla. It is the highest mountain in Mexico and the third highest in North America, after Denali and Mount Logan, and it carries the country's largest glaciers.
Is Popocatépetl still erupting?
Yes, intermittently. Popocatépetl reawakened on 21 December 1994 and has produced gas, ash and dome-building episodes ever since. CENAPRED runs a volcanic alert traffic light for it and publishes the current phase daily; the summit and the crater area have been closed to climbers throughout.
Can you see Popocatépetl from Mexico City?
On clear mornings, yes. The summit is about 70 km south-east of the centre of Mexico City and about 45 km west of Puebla, and both cities look straight at it when the air is clear, usually in winter.
Where is Paricutín?
In Michoacán, near Uruapan and about 320 km west of Mexico City. It broke out of a cornfield on 20 February 1943, grew 424 m in nine years and stopped in 1952, burying the village of San Juan Parangaricutiro, whose church tower still stands above the lava.
How many active volcanoes does Mexico have?
About a dozen have erupted since records began, and roughly 40 are classed as active or potentially active. CENAPRED monitors Popocatépetl, Volcán de Colima, El Chichón, Tacaná and Ceboruco most closely.