Costa Chica: Visitor and Heritage Guide

Why this page is different from the other two

The other heritage guides in this cluster describe inscribed properties: Teotihuacan, and Oaxaca with Monte Alban. This one describes heritage that is on no list at all, and that is the first thing to say rather than something to apologize for.

Mexico has thirty six World Heritage properties, twenty eight of them cultural, the most of any country in the Americas. They are pre-Hispanic, colonial or industrial. None of them is Afro-Mexican, because what survives here is not architecture. It is dance, music, food and community, and it has to be visited on those terms.

⚠ Where you can go, and where the cited source says not to

The Costa Chica is the stretch of Pacific coast running southeast from Acapulco through Guerrero and into Oaxaca. A state line runs through the middle of it and it changes the answer.

• Oaxaca carries no travel advisory. The Afro-Mexican towns on this side are around Pinotepa Nacional and include Collantes, Corralero, Santiago Llano Grande and Jose Maria Morelos. This is where to go.
• Guerrero is under an advisory against all but essential travel, with only Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa excepted and reachable by air. That covers Acapulco and it covers Cuajinicuilapa, the town most associated with Afro-Mexican heritage and the home of its museum.

This guide does not recommend a journey the source it cites advises against, so it points at the Oaxacan side, which carries the same living tradition and is reachable from Oaxaca city or Puerto Escondido. Check the current advisory before you travel, because the boundaries move and this is one of the places where the difference is the whole trip.

What is here

The Danza de los Diablos

Masked dancers in horsehair beards, led by a figure called the Pancho and his consort, moving to a stamping rhythm driven by a bull-roarer and a jawbone rasp rather than by drums. It is performed around the Day of the Dead, and it is generally understood as having originated in enslaved people's observance under Spanish rule, retained and transformed over centuries.

It is a community observance rather than a scheduled show, which is why the dates and places are something to confirm locally rather than to look up.

The chilena

The music of this coast, a dance form carried north by Pacific sailors in the nineteenth century and reworked here, played on harp and guitar.

The redondos, and what has gone

The round thatched houses that were characteristic of these villages are now rare, replaced by concrete. Some have been preserved for display. That is worth knowing before arriving expecting a built heritage: what is left is held by people rather than by buildings.

The food

Coastal cooking with fish, plantain and coconut, quite distinct from the mole kitchens of the Oaxaca valleys a few hours inland.

How to visit

• Base yourself in Puerto Escondido or Oaxaca city and travel out. The coast has very little visitor infrastructure and that is part of its character.
• Go around the Day of the Dead if you want to see the dance, and confirm the dates locally.
• Go with local guides. The way into a community that is not set up for tourism is through people who belong to it.
• Spanish is essential.
• Ask before photographing, always, and particularly at the dance.
• Pay properly for performance and teaching.

Before you go, one thing worth doing at home

Migration has carried this culture north, and the Danza de los Diablos is now performed by Oaxacan communities in California as well as on the coast it came from. For an American reader that often makes the first step a short drive rather than a flight. Our guide to Afro-Mexican heritage takes that up.

Verify before you travel

Advisory boundaries, festival dates and local operators all change, and on this coast the first of those matters more than anywhere else in the cluster. Check it close to travel.

Sources

• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Mexico's State Party record: thirty six properties inscribed on the World Heritage List, twenty eight of them cultural, the most of any country in the Americas. Accessed 16 September 2026.
• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Mexico travel advice: the eleven states carrying an advisory against all but essential travel and the explicit exceptions within them, including the Copper Canyon rail route in Chihuahua and Sinaloa, Los Mochis and Mazatlan, Morelia and Patzcuaro in Michoacan, Manzanillo in Colima and Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa in Guerrero, and the statement that no travel can be guaranteed safe. Accessed 16 September 2026.
• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Mexico safety and security: the requirement to carry the passport and entry stamp and the refusal of copies or photographs, the illegality of bringing in or selling vaping devices, robbery by unlicensed taxi drivers and the sitio and pre-paid airport alternatives, the Cancun taxi protests that have pulled visitors from ride hailing cars, theft and hijacking on buses and the case for first class services on toll roads, carjacking on the Pacific Highway, methanol in spirit drinks, low hotel balcony railings, the hurricane season from June to November and Hurricane Otis at Acapulco in 2023, and the LGBT+ legal position. Accessed 16 September 2026.