Villa Matamoros

Villa Matamoros lies at the southern tip of Chihuahua on Federal Highway 45, about 22 km south of Parral and 39 km short of the Durango state line. It is the seat of Matamoros municipality and had 2,694 residents in 2020, more than half the municipality's population. The village sits at roughly 1,700 meters, with the Santa Bárbara, El Fraile, Roncesvalles and El Tecuán ranges rising to the west.

Its first name was San Isidro de las Cuevas, and for a long time it answered to bigger neighbors: to Allende through the colonial era, then to Parral from 1847. The state congress made it the seat of a new municipality on July 31, 1874, and in July 1922 renamed it Villa Matamoros after the insurgent priest Mariano Matamoros. The municipality was abolished and folded into Parral in 1931, then restored on May 7, 1932. Since November 18, 1995 the official name has been Mariano Matamoros, though the region still calls it Villa Matamoros.

The oldest landmark is the church of San Isidro Labrador, built by the Franciscans in 1879, and the farmer saint is still the patron, honored on May 15. One kilometer away stands the old Hacienda de Sombreretillo, dating from 1868, near the Río del Valle, and at the turnoff to Ciénaga de Ceniceros is the Hacienda El Mirador, from 1879. Gustavo L. Talamantes, the agronomist who handed out ejido land in the 1920s and later became governor of Chihuahua, was born in 1891 at the Hacienda de Roncesvalles in this municipality.

The country around is mostly cattle range of grass, huizache, mesquite, yucca and agave; the Río Concepción rises in the municipality and, with the Río del Valle, flows on toward the Florido. The climate is dry and mild, averaging 16 °C, with summer highs up to 39 °C and frosts down to −12 °C. Food is all about beef: carne asada, dried beef with chile, barbacoa and carne con chile pasado with melted asadero cheese, with norteño music in the background.