Guachochi

History

Guachochi sits in the homeland of the Rarámuri, or Tarahumara, people. Jesuit missionaries founded the settlement in the mid-18th century as a visiting station, meaning it had no resident priest and depended on a larger mission. The spot was a marshy, shifting lagoon that drew migrating birds, which is where the name comes from. For a long time it remained a tiny Spanish and mestizo hamlet ringed by Rarámuri ranchos, and it passed between several jurisdictions, including the mining centers of Guadalupe y Calvo and Batopilas.

Growth began in 1952, when the federal government chose Guachochi for one of the country's first two centers of the National Indigenist Institute. A dirt road was opened to Parral to haul out timber, one of the most important sawmills in the sierra was set up, and a small generator on a waterfall of the Guachochi river gave the region its first electricity. The town became the commercial hub of the area, and in 1962 the state congress made it the seat of a new municipality separated from Batopilas.

In 1982 a teachers' college, a public hospital and the radio station La Voz de la Sierra Tarahumara arrived, the latter broadcasting in Rarámuri, Tepehuano and other languages. Families from surrounding ranchos moved in and the town grew quickly. It became the seat of the Diocese of Tarahumara in 1994, was raised to the rank of city in 2019, and was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2023.