Bacalar (municipality)

Bacalar is one of the ten municipalities of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. The municipal seat and most populous town is the eponymous Bacalar. The municipality was formed on February 2, 2011, when it separated from the Municipality of Othón P. Blanco.

Major communities

The 2010 census enumerated 57 populated localities.

References

External links

Media related to Bacalar at Wikimedia Commons

Municipality

A municipality is usually an urban administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction. The term municipality is also used to mean the governing, ruling body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district. The term is derived from French "municipalité" and Latin "municipalis".

The English word "Municipality" derives from the Latin social contract "municipium", meaning duty holders, referring to the Latin communities that supplied Rome with troops in exchange for their own incorporation into the Roman state (granting Roman citizenship to the inhabitants) while permitting the communities to retain their own local governments (a limited autonomy).

A municipality can be any political jurisdiction from a sovereign state, such as the Principality of Monaco, or a small village, such as West Hampton Dunes, New York.

The territory over which a municipality has jurisdiction may encompass

Direct-controlled municipalities of China

A municipality (simplified Chinese: 直辖市; traditional Chinese: 直轄市; pinyin: zhíxiáshì), also translated as direct-controlled municipality (formally), municipality directly under the central government, or province-level municipality is the highest level classification for cities used by the People's Republic of China. These cities have the same rank as provinces, and form part of the first tier of administrative divisions of China.

A municipality is a "city" (Chinese: 市; pinyin: shì) with "provincial" (Chinese: 省级; pinyin: shěngjí) power under an unified jurisdiction. As such it is simultaneously a city and a province of it own right.

A municipality is often not a "city" in the usual sense of the term (i.e., a large continuous urban settlement), but instead an administrative unit comprising, typically, a main central urban area (a city in the usual sense, usually with the same name as the municipality), and its much larger surrounding rural area containing many smaller cities (districts & subdistricts), towns and villages. The larger municipality span over 100 kilometres (62 mi). To distinguish a "municipality" from its actual urban area (the traditional meaning of the word "city"), the term Chinese: 市区, or "urban area", is used.

City council (Israel)

A city council (Hebrew: עִירִיָּה, Iriya) is the official designation of a city within Israel's system of local government.

Municipality status may be granted by the Interior Minister to a municipality, usually a local council, whose population surpasses 20,000 and whose character is urban, defined as having areas zoned for distinct land use like residential, commercial, and industrial areas.

City mayors and members of the city councils are elected every five years.

See also

References

External links

Bacalar

Bacalar (Spanish  [bakala'r] ) is the municipal seat and largest city in Bacalar Municipality (until 2011 a part of Othón P. Blanco Municipality) in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, about 40 kilometres (25 mi) north of Chetumal, at 18° 40' 37" N, 88° 23' 43" W. In the 2010 census the city had a population of 11,084 people. At that time it was still a part of Othón P. Blanco, and was its second-largest city (locality), after Chetumal.

The name most likely derives from Mayan: b'ak halal, meaning "surrounded by reeds", the name of the locality attested at the time of the 16th century arrival of the Spanish.

Bacalar is also the name of the lagoon, Bacalar lagoon on the east side of the town.

Bacalar was a city of the Maya civilization in Pre-Columbian times. This was the first city in the region which the Spanish Conquistadores succeeded in taking and holding in 1543. In 1545 Gaspar Pacheco established the Spanish town here with the name Salamanca de Bacalar. The region of the southern half of what is now Quintana Roo was governed from Bacalar, answerable to the Captain General of Yucatán in Mérida.

Bacalar (disambiguation)

Bacalar can refer to: