Socoltenango

Socoltenango is the seat of a municipality of the same name in Los Llanos, central Chiapas, south-west of Comitán. The town stands at 878 metres and had 5,244 people in 2020; the whole municipality has 19,092 spread over 99 localities. The name is Nahuatl and is usually rendered as "fortified town of the water jars". The climate is warm and semi-humid with summer rains, the hills are covered in low tropical forest, and the main river is the San Vicente; part of the La Angostura dam reservoir lies inside the municipality.

The town's story turns on one statue. In the 16th century Dominican friars brought an image of Our Lady of the Rosary to the church of Copanaguastla, a town on the old royal road from Chiapas to Guatemala, where her confraternity was founded on 2 February 1561, Candlemas. Because the people of Copanaguastla kept worshipping their old gods, the image was moved to Socoltenango's parish church on 3 February 1629. It was first kept in the sacristy; around 1666, after cures credited to her for the friar Martín de Herrera, it was raised to a niche in the main altarpiece.

That is where the town's big date comes from. Officially Our Lady of the Rosary, she is honoured here as the Virgen de la Candelaria, the patron of Socoltenango, and 2 February opens a week-long market fair: prayers, stalls, live bands and the crowning of a fair queen. The original image stays in the church while a replica is carried through the streets on a litter, and the feast caps a system of religious offices (cargos) that runs events all year.