Charo

Charo is a small town on a hill east of Morelia whose former Augustinian convent of San Miguel Arcángel holds some of the best-preserved 16th-century murals in Michoacán. Before the Spanish arrived, the area was home to the Matlatzinca, also called Pirindas, allies of the Purépecha who had been allowed to settle here; the name Charo is usually translated as "land of the child king."

The Augustinians founded the town around 1550 and stayed until 1758. The church has a plateresque facade with Mannerist touches and a patriarchal stone cross in the atrium, but the treasure is inside the cloister: corridors painted in grisaille with martyred saints, an Ecce Homo, scenes of hermits in the desert and two genealogical trees of the Augustinian order. Few convents in the state keep original frescoes in such good condition.

The convent was also a literary center. Fray Diego de Basalenque wrote his history of the Augustinian province and a grammar and dictionary of the Matlatzinca language here, and the famous sonnet "No me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte" was copied here in 1638, which a small monument on the main square recalls. In October 1810 Hidalgo and Morelos met in the area, and tradition says Hidalgo confirmed Morelos's command here.