El Cedral is a small inland village in the south of the island, important less for what is there now than for what it represents. It was the first town established on Cozumel after centuries of abandonment, founded by refugees from the Caste War of Yucatán in 1847.
The tiny chapel on the village green is the modern descendant of the church the original settlers built. Each year in late April or early May, El Cedral hosts a five-day festival of bullfights, horseback races, and traditional dances — one of the oldest continuous fiestas in Mexico, originally a thanksgiving for surviving the 19th-century cholera epidemic. Outside festival time the village is quiet and there is little to do, but the surrounding road is a pleasant detour off the main south-coast loop.