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Founding
Founding of San Juan de los Lagos
municipal seat of San Juan de los Lagos, State of Jalisco, Mexico
- 1542
- Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
Founding
municipal seat of San Juan de los Lagos, State of Jalisco, Mexico
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
San Juan de los Lagos (English: Saint John of the Lakes) is a city and municipality located in the northeast corner of the state of Jalisco, Mexico, in a region known as Los Altos. It is best known as the home of a small image of the Virgin Mary called Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos (Nahuatl: Cihuapilli, lit. "Great Lady"). Miracles have been ascribed to her since 1632 and have made the Basilica of San Juan de los Lagos a major tourist attraction. The economy of the city is still heavily dependent on the flow of pilgrims to the shrine, which has amounted to between seven and nine million visitors per year.
For much of the pre-Hispanic period, the Altos area was inhabited by groups of Tecuexes and Nahuas who formed small independent states in the 12th century. Soon after, these dominions would fall under the rule of a single Tecuexe state, with its capital at Metzquititlán.
The first Spanish conquistador in the area was Pedro Almíndez Chirino, sent from Cuitzeo by Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán. The region was placed firmly into Spanish control by Cristóbal de Oñate after he conquered the nearby Caxcanes in Teocaltiche. Subsequently, the Mixtón Rebellion in the nearby Guadalajara area prompted measures to populate and fortify the Altos region under the supervision of the Franciscans. In 1542, the indigenous population of San Gaspar village was sent to the area, founding a new village called San Juan Bautista de Mezquititlán.
However, by the end of the 16th century, the town was still little more than a group of small houses along with a small hermitage. The hermitage, built by Friar Miguel de Bolonia, was dedicated to the Immaculate Conception. This structure was the first home of a very small image of the Virgin Mary, believed to have been brought to the area from Michoacán either by Bolonia or by Friar Antonio de Segovia. Over time, moths damaged the statue and it was packed away in a corner of the sacristy. The image remained there until 1632, when it became associated with its first miracle. After this, the image was taken to Guadalajara to be restored, and it was then returned to San Juan. Pilgrimages to the miraculous image soon began, and pilgrims' valuable offerings permitted the building of newer and grander churches for the image. The first chapel to the image was built in 1638; it is now the Chapel of the First Miracle.
Up until the events of 1623, San Juan Bautista had been a mainly indigenous community. Later, colonial authorities decided to "hispanicize" the Altos region, bringing in a large number of Spaniards and mestizos from neighboring parts, mostly through land grants. Many of these new residents came from the nearby town of Santa María de los Lagos, now known as Lagos de Moreno, and this prompted the changing of San Juan Bautista's name to San Juan de los Lagos. Shortly after this influx of newcomers, the number of indigenous in the city dropped to less than one quarter.
During the colonial era, the San Juan's importance grew as a pilgrimage center because of the miracles ascribed to the local image of the Virgin Mary. This influx of pilgrims provided a stream of potential customers, spurring the city's development as a regional economic center. An annual fair was established to coincided with the busiest pilgrimage season, the time around Candlemas. The economic impact of pilgrims on the city became evident relatively early in the colonial period.
San Juan had a number of advantages which contributed to its growing importance during the colonial period. First, there was a relative dearth of native pilgrimage sites in northern Mexico, as most sites are churches dedicated to Virgin and Christ images physically located in other parts of the country. The Virgin at San Juan, along with the one in Zapopan, were considered "frontier Virgins." Another important factor is that San Juan lies on the border between northern and central Mexico in an area now known as the Los Altos de Jalisco region and as such was an area frequently traveled through. At the town, a number of roads connecting mining and cattle-raising areas intersected. Notably, it was a crossroads between the royal road which linked Tampico, San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas along with the road connecting Mexico City and Santa Fé. This made the town relatively easy to access and prompted authorities to build and maintain roads and bridges in the area, including a main highway connecting it to Guadalajara in 1717. The annual fair eventually drew merchants from many localities across central Mexico, including Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, San Juan del Río, Valle de Santiago, Celaya, Guadalajara, Valladolid, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas, many selling merchandise imported to New Spain from abroad through the ports of Veracruz or Acapulco.
The annual fair and other commercial activity in San Juan steadily grew in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the annual fair was formally recognized by a royal decree in Spain in 1797. However, the insurgent tendencies of the area in the early 1800s led colonial authorities to suppress the annual fair, and the area's economic importance declined. Royalist troops pursuing Miguel Hidalgo passed through the area in 1811. Although the area did recover economically after the War of Independence, it did not have the same relative value as it did before.
In 1824, the San Juan area was reorganized politically, and the city became the seat of its eponymous municipality. It was again recognized as a city in 1869.
Various confrontations during the Cristero War occurred in the environs of San Juan between 1926 and 1929.
The Roman Catholic diocese of San Juan was erected in 1972 as part of the archdiocese of Guadalajara.
The city's current seal was authorized by the municipality in 1987. It was designed by Gabriel Camarena Gutiérrez de Laris.
In 1990, Pope John Paul II visited San Juan in a pilgrimage to Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos as part of his pastoral visit to Mexico. He officiated a mass for a crowd of six million.
The climate of San Juan is relatively dry and warm with mild winters. The average annual temperature is 19.1 °C, with, on average, about 19 days per year experiencing below freezing temperatures. Most precipitation falls in the summer months, amounting to more than 700 mm per year.
The city of San Juan de Los Lagos is in Jalisco state, about two hours northeast of Guadalajara, in the northeast corner of the state. The municipality is located in a region called Los Altos. It has a territory of 874.47 square kilometers, bordering the municipalities of Teocaltiche, Encarnación de Díaz, Jalostotitlan, San Miguel el Alto, San Julián, Unión de San Antonio and Lagos de Moreno.
The municipality has an average altitude of 1750 meters above mean sea level, with most of the area consisting of flat land or rolling hills, with altitude differences reaching only 200 meters. The lowest point is the San Juan River at 1700 meters, and the highest elevation is to the south, at the Lozano and Los Indios mesas at about 1900 meters.
The area is part of the Lerma River/Lake Chapala/Santiago River basin and the Verde/Grande de Belén/Santiago-Atotonilco River sub-basin. The main rivers through the municipality are San Juan (Lagos) and El Agostadero, with three dams Peña de León, Los Laureles and Alcalá. Streams include El Cedral, El Carrizo, San Antonio, El Barroso, El Corralillo, La Cañada, Mata Gorda, El Maguey, El Arrastradero, El Chilarillo, Santa Rosa, Los Trujillos and La Labor. There are also a number of fresh water springs including Santa Rosa and Charco del Tigre.
Most of the municipality is covered in arid grassland and other dry area plants such as cactus, maguey and arid scrub. About three hundred hectares is filled with dense vegetation, mostly cactus and thorny scrub. Predominant wildlife includes: coyotes, pumas, wildcats, wolves, deer (only in areas with abundant vegetation), rabbits, squirrels, opossums, armadillos and moles.
The municipality as a whole is ranked as having a medium level of socioeconomic marginalization. Of the 260 active communities, most are designated as having a medium or high level of marginalization. However, since the vast majority of the municipality's population lives in the city of San Juan de los Lagos proper, which has a low level of marginalization, the ameliorates the situation. As of 2010, there were 15,088 housing units in the municipality. Most housing is privately owned by its occupants, mostly with a poured concrete foundation and with walks of cinderblock, bricks or adobe. Roofs are mostly of poured concrete or vaults made with bricks. Basic services such as running water and electricity are available in about 90% of homes.
Agriculture takes up about half of the municipality's territory, with most farmland privately owned. It employs about 22% of the working population. Principal crops are corn, beans and sorghum, with livestock consisting of meat and dairy cattle, oxen, pigs, sheep, goats and domestic fowl. There is also some fish farming producing catfish, carp and mojarra for local consumption. There is some exploitation of mesquite trees for wood.
Mining and industry employ about 24% of the working population. Mining mostly consists of sandstone production for construction with some deposits of marble and other construction materials. Most industry consists of food processing, much of which is destined for sale to the tourist market. This is particularly true for the production and sale of cajeta or dulce de leche. This is a common traditional product as the Los Altos region is the fifth highest producer of dairy products in the country. Other products include ice, construction materials, ironworking, textiles and furniture.
Handcrafts include embroidered clothing for women as well as the weaving of wool items such as sarapes, rebozos, quezquémetls and other textiles, herbal medicines, leather items such as bags, belts and wallets are made as well as ceramics and carved stone items. Clothing for charros can be found here from heavily embroidered jackets and pants to embroidered belts called "piteado." Another common handcraft is religious items for sale to visitors, such as reliquaries, candles, images of the Virgin and rosaries made from the local white stone. Many of the areas handcrafts are sold on the stores and street stalls around the main plaza and basilica. These items are either made locally or brought in from other states in central Mexico.
Just under fifty percent of the working population is dedicated to commerce and services, with most of this related to tourism to the city of San Juan de los Lagos, followed by businesses catering to local, mostly primary, needs. This translates to a population of about 40,000 residents who cater to the needs of about seven million or so pilgrims per year. The city has frequent bus service, and is accessible by expressway. However, this tourism is almost purely domestic. Most English language guidebooks do not even mention San Juan de los Lagos.
Many of the buildings in the center of the city are made of pink sandstone dating as far back as the 17th century, with the streets fanning out from the main square. There are twenty two historically notable buildings in the city. These include four parish churches in the municipality, Sangre de Cristo, San Jose, San Juan Bautista and Sagrada Familia and two chapels Primer Milagro and El Calvario.
The Plaza de Armas or Rita Pérez de Moreno Civic Plaza is in the center of the city. It was designed by Roque Picaso in the 18th century, and later modified by Salvador Gómez. In the center, there is a Monument to Independence, erected in 1872. It consists of a thin column supported by a base which has four dragon figures. At the top, there is marble sculpture of a woman holding a laurel crown. The monument stand in the center of a large circular fountain.
Text from the Wikipedia article “San Juan de los Lagos”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.