VERACRUZ, Mexico — Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico's Gulf coast yesterday, forcing authorities to close one of the nation's busiest ports and spawning related storms across the region that left at least 66 people dead, most from landslides in El Salvador.

Stan, which whipped up maximum sustained winds of 80 mph before weakening to a tropical storm, came ashore along a sparsely populated stretch of coastline south of Veracruz, a major port 185 miles east of Mexico City.

The storm's outer bands swiped the city, knocking down trees and flooding low-lying neighborhoods, authorities said.

All three of Mexico's Gulf Coast crude-oil loading ports were closed yesterday as a precaution, authorities said, but the shutdowns were not expected to affect oil prices.

Meteorologists said Stan was driving separate storms across Central America and southern Mexico, causing flooding and landslides. Some 49 people had been killed during two days of flooding in El Salvador, Interior Secretary Rene Figueroa said last night. Nine people died in Nicaragua, including six people believed to be Ecuadorean migrants killed when their boat ran ashore.

Four deaths were reported in Honduras and three in Guatemala. In Costa Rica, a 36-year-old woman was killed when her home was buried by a landslide yesterday.

In Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, a river overflowed its banks and roared through the city of Tapachula, carrying away ramshackle homes of wood and metal.

Chiapas Gov. Pablo Salazar said 600 families had been evacuated from homes around Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border. At Chachalacas beach, 20 miles north of Veracruz, Celestino Criollo said the storm's rapid approach had caught many beach dwellers by surprise.

"We knew it would be strong and the tide high, but we didn't think it would come this quick," he said. "They advised us, but they could have done it sooner."

In the southern state of Oaxaca, also affected by heavy rains and wind, officials opened 950 shelters and were keeping an eye on 80 communities considered to be vulnerable.

In Veracruz, schools canceled classes and officials at a nearby nuclear-power plant had readied the facility for the category 1 hurricane's strong winds and rains.

Before reaching the Gulf, Stan raced across the Yucatán peninsula on Sunday, buffeting the region with wind and rain, but apparently causing no major damage.