Cuencamé

Cuencamé de Ceniceros is a town of 11,585 people (2020 census) at 1,580 metres in the semi-desert of eastern Durango. The founding act of the Indigenous village dates from 23 January 1598; in 1601, when silver was found in the hills, the Real de Minas de San Antonio de Cuencamé grew up next to it. It became one of the most populous mining towns of Nueva Vizcaya and sat at a junction of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, on the branch between Zacatecas and Parral. At the Noria de Pedriceña, now within the municipality, Benito Juárez gave the independence cry on the night of 15 September 1864.

The nickname Land of Generals comes from the Revolution. As early as 1909, the villagers of San Pedro de Ocuila rose against the Sombreretillo hacienda, which had taken their land, and on 20 November 1910 Calixto Contreras took up arms for Madero. With him and with Severino Ceniceros, whose surname the town now carries, local men joined Pancho Villa's División del Norte; more than twenty generals came from here. In December 1915 Carranza's troops burned Cuencamé and Ocuila. A monument on the plaza honours the generals, and a community museum in the bandstand tells the story.

The 18th-century parish church of San Antonio de Padua stands on a raised atrium reached by steps from the plaza, with a two-stage tower crowned by a dome and lantern. At the crossing are two Baroque altarpieces: an ungilded wooden one for the Señor de Mapimí and another for the Virgen del Refugio. The crucifix arrived on 6 August 1715, brought by soldiers from Mapimí after raids emptied that mining town, and tradition says it grew too heavy to move whenever anyone tried to take it back. The town's churches belong to the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro World Heritage Site (2010), including the Sanctuary of Guadalupe, once part of the Franciscan convent of the Purísima Concepción. On 12 December, the Virgin's day, families light torches on their rooftops in memory of the 1915 fire.