El Porvenir was given town status with the creation of the municipality on 13 January 1890.
The city is also known as El Porvenir de Velasco Suárez. On July 31, 1976, the LII Constitutional Legislature of the Congress of the State of Chiapas added the surnames Velasco Suárez to the Municipal capital of El Porvenir, in honor to the eminent Mexican neurologist, Dr. Manuel Velasco Suárez (1914-2001), who was a governor of Chiapas during the period 1970-1976, but since 1982, it was restored only El Porvenir municipality, retaining that of El Porvenir de Velasco Suárez for the municipal seat.
On August 27, 2001 PresidentVicente Fox attended a ceremony in El Porvenir in which the municipality was officially twinned with San Pedro Garza García,
Nuevo León, thus symbolically uniting the country's industrial, developed north with its rural, underdeveloped south.