Ajijic

History

Long before the Spanish arrived, Nahuatl-speaking groups had settled the shores of Lake Chapala; some accounts identify the people of the north shore as the Coca. The name, once written Axixic, means place where the water springs up.

The Spanish settlement was founded in 1531, which makes Ajijic one of the oldest towns in western Mexico. The conquest of the lake region was led by Alonso Dávalos, while the Franciscan friar Martín de Jesús took charge of conversion and established one of the earliest convents in the west of New Spain. It was later dedicated to San Andrés, who remains the town's patron saint. The cobbled streets, the parish church, and the chapel date from this Spanish period.

Ajijic stayed a small fishing village for centuries. Foreign artists and writers began to arrive in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in the 1930s and 1940s the trickle became a current. Two Englishmen writing as Dane Chandos described village life in Village in the Sun (1945), when the road from Chapala was still unpaved and electricity was just arriving. Retirees from the United States and Canada followed, and tourism now drives the economy. Ajijic was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2020.