Cuerámaro

Cuerámaro was born inside a hacienda, and that heritage explains most of it. The original grant dates from 8 January 1543, when Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza gave it to Diego de Orozco, son of Captain Juan de Villaseñor Orozco, who piled up land across what is now Cuerámaro, Pénjamo and Manuel Doblado. In 1762 it was bought by the order of St Camillus de Lellis, the Camillian friars, who held it for almost a century. The Ley Lerdo forced them to sell in 1858; Agapito de Anda subdivided the land and founded the congregation that became the town. A decree of 12 November 1869 made it a municipal seat under the name Cuerámaro de Degollado, and it was raised to city status in 1969.

The name is Purépecha and nobody agrees on what it says: "place of ocote pines", "place of defence" or "sheltered by the marshes". The 1969 coat of arms plays on both the pine and the defence readings and carries the motto "Cuerámaro siempre fiel".

In the centre stand two ahuehuete trees, planted in 1910 for the centenary of the Grito and in 1921 for the consummation of Independence. The town sits on the flat Bajío at about 1,720 metres, but the Pénjamo range starts to the west; on the slopes of Cerro del Fuerte, which reaches 2,500 metres, undeveloped thermal springs rise, mainly near Tupátaro and San Gregorio. The Presa del Aguacate, now inside neighbouring Pénjamo, was built by the hacienda owner in the first half of the 1700s.

With about 15,300 residents (2020 census) the town holds half the municipality's population; the rest live in more than eighty hamlets of under 1,500 people, living off farming.